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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!uunet!haven.umd.edu!darwin.sura.net!news-feed-2.peachnet.edu!concert!decwrl!usenet.coe.montana.edu!osyjm From: osyjm@cs.montana.edu (Jaye Mathisen) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: Re: FreeBSD or NetBSD-0.9 ? Date: 24 Aug 1993 17:17:08 GMT Organization: Computer Science, MSU, Bozeman MT, 59717 Lines: 39 Message-ID: <25diek$ocp@pdq.coe.montana.edu> References: <1993Aug24.094944.15984@info.brad.ac.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: schizo.coe.montana.edu In article <1993Aug24.094944.15984@info.brad.ac.uk>, Thomas Sandford <t.d.g.sandford@bradford.ac.uk> wrote: >Now that NetBSD-0.9 has been released, and FreeBSD is just around the corner, >how do I choose which one is right for me? > >I mainly want to use my machine, rather than hack at it. This means I want >stability rather than bleeding edge technology. I also want to be able to port >stuff with the minimum changes so I'm looking for compatibility (POSIX ? >SYSV ? BSD ?) rather than wonderful new (but incompatible) research ideas. I am not at liberty to say too much here, but I will say this. If you run 386bsd + a patchkit, the upgrade to FreeBSD isn't hard. NetBSD is essentially a re-install, although not a phenomenal amount of effort if you've struggled through an original 386bsd install before. The future is much more cloudy, as to which direction to go where. FreeBSD's goal is to be stable (not necessarily machine uptime), but slowly changing, as such, it will by nature not be bleeding edge. There isn't too much that is massively changed from 386bsd 0.1, with the exception of patches to make the machine run longer, and update all the utilities. NetBSD's goal is stability (+ being a research OS), however they are replacing subsystems with other (they feel better) subsytems as they come across them. There also is the fact that they seem to be moving to 4.4-style stuff as much as possible. (Which is not inherently a bad thing, just different). There are several technical differences between NetBSD and FreeBSD. NetBSD has added several types of support for different a.out formats, there are other changes as well, many of them made to support different architectures. -- Jaye Mathisen, COE Systems Manager (406) 994-4780 410 Roberts Hall,Dept. of Computer Science Montana State University,Bozeman MT 59717 osyjm@cs.montana.edu