*BSD News Article 36088


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From: jtc@cygnus.com (J.T. Conklin)
Subject: Re: FreeBSD vs NetBSD
In-Reply-To: jmonroy@netcom.com's message of Fri, 23 Sep 1994 04:37:13 GMT
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Date: Fri, 23 Sep 1994 17:43:04 GMT
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> : I have found compiling things for FreeBSD is sometimes a bit of a chore 
> : (as compared to Linux and NeXTStep, which I also run), especially
> : since there is usually not a default config for it (for example, with
> : gcc, pine, and misc others).  Is netbsd in the same boat?
> :
> 	Since Bill Jolitz is the original author of 386bsd
> 	and the basis for FreeBSD and NetBSD,  it is safe
> 	to assume that porting should be an easy task.

No, it's not safe to assume that porting should be an easy task.  Most
of the problems that people have when porting programs are at the
user, rather than kernel level.  

It was clear from the Jolitz' presentation at the SVNet meeting that
the most of changes to 386BSD 1.0 have been in the kernel.  I wanted
to ask him about user level improvements, but didn't get a chance.

In addition to important kernel improvements, both NetBSD and FreeBSD
have made great progress in compatibility, standards conformance, and
internationalization support in the user level libraries and programs.

	--jtc