*BSD News Article 27002


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From: jkh@whisker.hubbard.ie (Jordan K. Hubbard)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: Re: NetBSD or FreeBSD? Stability ??
Date: 05 Feb 1994 02:28:44 GMT
Organization: IEunet Limited
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Distribution: world
Message-ID: <JKH.94Feb5022844@whisker.hubbard.ie>
References: <2ir0h9$cme@winx03.informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de> <2isnsi$3ot@crcnis1.unl.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: whisker.hubbard.ie
In-reply-to: rse@cse.unl.edu's message of 4 Feb 1994 05:53:22 GMT

In article <2isnsi$3ot@crcnis1.unl.edu> rse@cse.unl.edu (robert ellsworth) writes:
   Ok.. Here is my stab at the difference between the two (please, correct me
   if I am wrong.  I'd like to know the truth if I'm off).

Well, since a NetBSD person will probably go ballistic upon seeing some of
this, I'll confuse them by jumping to their defense first :-)

   FreeBSD is a BSD unix that is geared torwards stability.  The *BSD's have
   sounder networking code (wouldn't say better because I don't know the
   state of the current Linux network code).  The *BSD's use NET/2 code which

I think it's sound enough to say that *BSD has a nicer networking base than
Linux, since it's had it in from the very beginning and had the benefit of
some nice networking code to start from.

As to whether or not "FreeBSD is a BSD unix that is geared towards stability"
implies that, somehow, FreeBSD is more stable than NetBSD, this I would very
much hesitate to say.  Here are three facts to chew on:

	1. NetBSD has made a lot more changes than we have, particularly in
	   general organization of sources and cross-platform abstractions.

	2. NetBSD has fixed a wagon-load of bugs, some of which were discovered
	   as a direct result of doing cross-platform work.

	3. FreeBSD has fixed a wagon-load of bugs, and made some changes of its
	   own in response to requests and/or contributions from its own unique
	   user base.

Given these 2 groups, each fixing their own sets of bugs and doing
their own individually focused development work, it's almost
impossible now to say which is "more stable".  FreeBSD has its own
goals, and its own unique resource limitations, and we do what we can
to make our operating system "stable" yet reasonably active (by our
own definition) with these constraints.  NetBSD have their own goals,
their own [different] resource limitations, and their own yardstick
for stability vs progressiveness.  Whether this results in a more or
less "stable" operating system on any given day depends a lot on
what's been recently changed and how conservative everyone was feeling
that particular week!

When it all comes down it, we're both groups of volunteers doing the
best we can with the time and equipment we have, eager to produce an
operating system that both exhibits the best possible stability while
still satisfying our definition of a growing and dynamic project that
remains interesting to work on.

> a lot more stable than the new Linux code.  NetBSD is a unix geared towards
>development of unix ideas.  NetBSD (in the -current form) has shared libraries

As does FreeBSD.  We're both interested in new ideas!  :-)

				Jordan