*BSD News Article 28730


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From: mashton@dcs.warwick.ac.uk (Beeblebrox)
Subject: Re: NetBSD vs FreeBSD vs Linux? 
Message-ID: <1994Mar24.074827.19432@dcs.warwick.ac.uk>
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Organization: Department of Computer Science, Warwick University, England
References: <SHEFF.94Mar23151209@indigoa.cr.usgs.gov>
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 1994 07:48:27 GMT
Lines: 57

sheff@indigoa.cr.usgs.gov (Keith Sheffield) writes:

>I am looking into using NetBSD, FreeBSD, or Linux to create several cheap
>Intel Unix machines for a turnkey system.  Here are the requirements I have:

>1. Must be a stable platform.  I would like to have the machines up 24 hrs a
>day, 7 days a week if possible.

I run Linux. My machine is up 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and has yet to
crash.

>2. Can use a wide variety of hard disk controllers, network cards, and display
>devices.  The actual machines that the OS will be running on will vary
>depending on availability and price of the components.

I think Linux has support for a pretty wide range of peripherals. Those
deficiencies it does have are documented.

>3. Relatively easy to install.  I do not want to spend a lot of time trying to
>figure out how to install the OS, since I might not be doing it on all the
>machines.

Fine, get a slackware distribution.

>4. Relatively easy to maintain once set up.  These systems will only have a
>couple users running a limited set of programs.  The only admin type work the
>users will have to do is backing up and possibly restoring filesystems.

Fine.

>5. Simple network support (ie. TCP/IP, sockets, ftp, etc).  X amd NFS would be
>really nice, but not necessary.

You got it.

>I don't know a lot about the specifics of any of these OS and I would
>appreciate the help.  I had planned on using xenix mainly because it was
>available, but cost ruled it out (it was also incompatible with a lot of the
>stuff I could download from the net, too).

Well, linux is awfully cheap (being free and all that) and I can compile most
X stuff straight "out of the box". Non-X applications certainly give me no
problems and everything I've written (being written properly :-) gives me no
problem either.

>I really need VM and multiprocesssing for this system.  Using Dos wouldn't
>really provide a good solution to my problem

I think any of the above system would do, but I only have first hand
experience of Linux, which works just fine IMHO.

>(I don't know about OS/2, I've never been exposed to it).

Lucky Devil.
___
mashton@dcs.warwick.ac.uk                 M.S.Ashton@csv.warwick.ac.uk
C++ consultant and emacs support. Mail me if you have any problems.