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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msuinfo!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!MathWorks.Com!noc.near.net!news.delphi.com!usenet From: John Dyson <dysonj@delphi.com> Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: Re: NetBSD vs. FreeBSD Date: Thu, 14 Apr 94 21:45:19 -0500 Organization: Delphi (info@delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice) Lines: 24 Message-ID: <5s8PS1v.dysonj@delphi.com> References: <2ojiol$mkd@Mercury.mcs.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: delphi.com X-To: Daniel Leeds <dleeds@MCS.COM> Daniel Leeds <dleeds@MCS.COM> writes: >What exacrtly are the differences with FreeBSD and NetBSD...I want to put >*BSD on my 486/66 but am confused as to which one to use. Can someone please >tell me the differences...ie, which is better and why in their opinion... The biggest difference that I can tell (I am a FreeBSD team member) is that FreeBSD is working on spiffying up the kernel (VM, and other things that I cant talk about because they are not my part of the project), while NetBSD is currently supporting other architectures. Eventually, (very soon) FreeBSD will be supporting other architectures, and NetBSD will improve the kernel efficiency. So, in the long term it is the personalities of the people that you deal with. NetBSD and FreeBSD have similar (excellent) interrupt performance, NetBSD has write clustering in its wd driver. FreeBSD has a generic clustering scheme that works for all disk devices. FreeBSD has a very very significantly improved VM system (even over 4.4 in some respects as I have heard from people that know 4.4). FreeBSD has ISA bounce buffers, NetBSD has support for long off_t's. Again, my guess is that the system that you use will be the one that you choose. And if you choose FreeBSD, that is cool, and if you choose NetBSD, that is cool too. John dyson@implode.root.com