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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!foxhound.dsto.gov.au!fang.dsto.gov.au!yoyo.aarnet.edu.au!news.adelaide.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!yeshua.marcam.com!usc!howland.reston.ans.net!noc.near.net!news.delphi.com!usenet From: John Dyson <dysonj@delphi.com> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: net / free bsd ? Date: Sat, 19 Mar 94 18:31:34 -0500 Organization: Delphi (info@delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice) Lines: 37 Message-ID: <hw6vAjW.dysonj@delphi.com> References: <2mfhs2$r65@kaiwan.kaiwan.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: delphi.com X-To: syd kahn <skahn@kaiwan.com> syd kahn <skahn@kaiwan.com> writes: >Please pardon a newbie question. Is there a difference between FreeBSD >and NetBSD. If so What? I installed FreeBSD on a machine at work and am >just starting to play around with things. If NetBSD is a more robust >system, I would rather switch before I get too os specific. I am a FreeBSD core team member, and my involvement is restricted mostly to the new VM work. I will say without question (excluding initial bugs in the 1.1BETA) that FreeBSD's VM is more advanced and will give better performance under marginal memory conditions. The 1.2 stuff is already underway and gives *much* better performance under plentiful memory conditions. The biggest thing that FreeBSD doesn't have is multiplatform support (but we are open to ports when we think that the basic platform is stable enough.) It is much harder to retrofit enhancements into alot of platforms!!! There is currently an ftp server at cdrom.com that supports up to 200 ftp sessions simultaneously using FreeBSD (limited by T1 access.) Again, my scope is limited -- and I look at it with near-sightedness regarding the VM stuff. We will be folding in the 4.4 stuff just as soon as it comes out. I believe that our VM system has some features that 4.4 doesn't and there are a few things that 4.4 has that looking forward to. We are Now as NetBSD vs. FreeBSD really goes -- as a user their API is very similar, things that get ported to FreeBSD usually get ported to NetBSD, vice-versa. (Usually there is little or no work in porting from one to the other.) There are some minor differences in the shared libs that can cause some binary incompatibilites if you link with them. Both the FreeBSD and the NetBSD teams have people on them that try to help. So, when it comes down to it, I can't make your decision for you. It is more a decision based on what you have gotten used to. If one or the other teams dry up (which I do not seen on the horizon), then it is not a big deal to switch. You might see some performance differences (Free might be faster at some things, Net at others), but that is mostly it. John dyson@implode.root.com