Return to BSD News archive
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!constellation!osuunx.ucc.okstate.edu!moe.ksu.ksu.edu!crcnis1.unl.edu!wupost!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!uknet!cf-cm!paul From: paul@myrddin.isl.cf.ac.uk (Paul) Subject: Re: WILL ???BSD DIE? Message-ID: <1993Nov2.234106.5280@cm.cf.ac.uk> Sender: news@cm.cf.ac.uk (Network News System) Organization: Intelligent Systems Lab, ELSYM, University of Wales, Cardiff References: <jmonroyCFv39C.Iv1@netcom.com> <2b64ce$l4o@zip.eecs.umich.edu> Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1993 23:40:55 +0000 Lines: 146 I've cut out a lot from this reply but I'm sure we all know the context by now. In article <2b64ce$l4o@zip.eecs.umich.edu> dmuntz@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Dan Muntz) writes: >First, let's trim down the crossposting a bit... Let's trim it down entirely, we cross-post to all 386BSD groups? >The problem is that other sites (sites that don't care about a measly 120M) >are mirroring agate. *It would be nice* if you (cgd) could arrange things >so that when 386bsd is removed from agate that it doesn't automatically >disappear everywhere else. Perhaps this isn't a problem, since I don't >know how the mirroring is set up. I'd much rather 386BSD 0.1 vanish entirely from all sites. Why provide an exteremely buggy bsd system when two far better systems exist that incorporate everything from 386BSD apart from the bugs? It only leads to people trying to use it and then reporting that it doesn't work. > >>> (2) the 386BSD 0.1 release is no longer very useful; >>> it is old, and newer, more stable and usable >>> releases have been made. >I'm afraid I have to agree with Jesus here. IMHO, 386bsd 0.1 + pk 0.2.4 *is* >more stable than FreeBSD (epsilon) and NetBSD 0.9 (not current). People >discussing stability here have done slimy things like comparing Net and Free to >386 w/o patches, but when it comes right down to it, my 386bsd systems have >stayed up for weeks (probably months) with only one (XS3 related) crash. One >machine acts as a slip gateway, and both are used signifcantly every day for >various tasks (xtroff, simulations, remote login, games, etc.). BUT... This is just totally misleading. Saying that 386BSD 0.1 is more stable than Net or Free just because it stays up for you is bogus. You're just not triggering the numerous bugs that have been fixed in the latter two. 386BSD 0.1 is NOT more stable than the later releases. I mean 386BSD 0.1 with the patchkit when I refer to 0.1, as I suspect most others do as well. >>> (3) For all intents and purposes, 386BSD 0.1 is 'unsupported'. >>> >> This is argueable. > >This is true, and thus I am now using NetBSD on one machine. I ran >FreeBSD epsilon for a few days, but it was far to easy to kill. I've also had My only comment here is that I'm interested in hearing about the problems you had with FreeBSD so we can correct it for the future. >>> There was an unofficial patch kit at one point, >>> but that has since been abandoned, and support by >>> the author has always been minimal. > >I'm not sure what this little bit of rhetoric means. The patchkit was >sufficiently supported and worked quite well. The patchkit was conceived and supported mainly by those who are now the FreeBSD team, together with many of those who are now in the NetBSD team plus many, many others who submitted fixes and are not in either team. It is no more because the patchkit mainatainers decided that it was just to unwieldly and a totally new release was necessary -- FreeBSD was born. The patchkit was well supported but there were just simply too many things to fix. If it had carried on the patches would have been bigger than the original 0.1, it was that broken. Bill never set up any mechanism to maintain and develop 386BSD and still has not done so. > >> As the moderator of "announce" your role has at best been >> obtrusive. I know from my own past experience that the >> pitifull excuses, and muses you contrive bear a real >> relivence to a certain purple dinasour. > >There does seem to be a bit of a conflict of interest here... >This has come up before, but perhaps someone should CFD *netbsd and/or >*freebsd newsgroups. This is premature in the extreme. If we were to set up net of free newsgroups then there would be 6 virtually emptu newsgroups left behind. You may think it's rather presumptious of me to suggest that but let's have some realism here. There's virutally no-one doing any development work with 0.1, and most users are migratin to one of the two newer releases. > >>> Therefore, considering that 386BSD 0.1 has little futher useful >>> purpose, is unsupported and only marginally usable, that we need >>> the disk space, and that there are better alternatives available, >>> I propose that it is yanked from the agate.berkeley.edu ftp site. > >Marginally usable!? I don't think so. >Marginally useful? Possibly, due to the lack of support. >Better alternatives? Not at the moment, stability-wise, but we can hope (and >write code :) I can't comment on NetBSD because I don't have a machine running it but as far as FreeBSD is concerned I have no stability problems. The only serious shortcoming at the present is it's wd driver but that is a high priority with us and we'll get it fixed. It is far more stable than 386bsd 0.1 with patchkit ever was. > >If there's anything we've learned from 386bsd, it's the need to keep things >in the public eye. When the developers retreat to their private >mail/mailing lists, some other group is liable to come along and form >StableBSD (*no*, I'm not suggesting it, there are already at least two too many >BSDs as it is). Along this line, I find remarks by some of the devlopers >to the effect that 'bugs/comments/etc. should be sent to the mailing lists, >because we're to busy to keep up with the newgroups' to be completely lame. >Newsgroups are obviously the way to go if you want to get "the public" >involved. If you don't want the unwashed masses messing with your code, >perhaps it will just go the way of 386bsd. It's a full time job getting something like FreeBSD done and we all have "real" jobs to maintain as well. No-one is trying to hide behind mailing lists, in fact all the mailing lists are "open" lists in that you can subscribe yourself to them -- they're under majordomo control. It's simply that we can't be expected to spend the hour or so it takes to go through all the newsgroups each day looking for bug fixes. A few of us do try and keep an eye on the newsgroups but it makes our life MUCH easier if bug reports are sent to the mailing lists where they are logged so we can ensure they get dealt with. Both groups make their current trees available so we can hardly be accused of preventing the unwashed masses from messing with the code. You should realise though that NetBSD and FreeBSD are dynamic projects. The code changes literally by the hour and we can't gurantee that between "official" releases the code will work. That means we don't encourage those who don't know the ins and outs of kernel hacking to go and grab the latest and greatest version since it may not be that great. This is very different to 386BSD 0.1 which is totally static. It hasn't changed since it was released nearly 2 years ago. If you want to get actively involved in in working on the code then join the mailing lists. If you just want to use the code and discuss the more general aspects of the projects then don't. The newsgroups serve the latter function. Just my few comments. -- Paul Richards, University of Wales, College Cardiff Internet: paul@isl.cf.ac.uk JANET: RICHARDSDP@CARDIFF.AC.UK