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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!not-for-mail From: forrie@visgraph.UUCP (Forrest Aldrich) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: FreeBSD vs. NetBSD vs. BSDI Date: 19 Sep 1993 11:06:16 -0500 Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway Lines: 61 Sender: daemon@cs.utexas.edu Message-ID: <199309191453.AA04519@visgraph.uucp> Reply-To: <forrie@decvax.dec.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu I'm using a mail->news gateway, so who knows where this will go... I would like some objective opinions about which OS would be best to go with. BSDI seems to be a very 'robust' and stable system. A friend of mine is running it for his business and has had no problems at all. The support seems adequate, and all of my questions about it to BSDI, Inc. have been answered fully and completely. A bunch of really nice guys at BSDI, definately. NetBSD (where can you get it?), I understand, is more 4.4BSD, and growing. That would be a definate preference to me. Does NetBSD have 4.4BSD source code? I thought that most of 4.4BSD was on hold because of that ridiculous law suit. FreeBSD, from what I understand, is basically 386BSD, and doesn't get a lot of development/support, and is more of a hacker's OS? This is just what I have been told via private email. One thing that I need is the ability to run my SCO binaries on this newer platform. BSDI is implementing this feature "real soon now". And that, IMHO, is a big plus. The fact that X windows doesn't run on NetBSD yet isn't a factor to me as I don't use X windows, because of the overhead and space requirements. But I'm sure that a port of X for NetBSD is in the working and will be around soon enough. Another concern is system security, reliability, and stability. And portabililty ability ;) :) I assume that most GNU programs will compile with no problem on these. What about INN? Networking stability is also a plus plus. Then there is the DOS/Windows issue. I use DOS/Windows quite a bit... and I appreciate the feature of DOS MERGE with SCO right now, even though it's slower than I would prefer (I have a 486/50/EISA w/ 16meg RAM). Do any of the other products have support for this? SCO is an okay OS, but ridiculously expensive for me, a student, to have to maintain and upgrade. It also has some non-standard, SCO-custom hacks that make porting some things a pain in the a**; and then there is a lot of overhead to the system as well... at least more than I need, really. I also happen to think it rather pathetic that you have to pay for unlimited users and purchase the development set separately and a considerable cost... and networking isn't even a part of the std distribution! That's MORE money. No can do. (poor student!) I understand that you can't get something for nothing... and I can appreciate the efforts of BSDI, and I'm tending to lean towards a preference in BSDI. The source-code license for BSDI is 600.00, and a binary-only release is about 500.00. Something to consider. What are the space requirements for these OS's? Memory/resource requirements? I would appreciate any and all responses to my query. Please respond via email to "forrie@decvax.dec.com" as I do not yet get these groups at my local site. Thanks in advance... Forrest Aldrich