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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!yeshua.marcam.com!news.kei.com!eff!news.umbc.edu!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!sunic!EU.net!ieunet!news.ieunet.ie!jkh 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 Lines: 53 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