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#! rnews 3075 sserve.cc.adfa.oz.au Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!news.sprintlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!news.cac.psu.edu!news.tc.cornell.edu!travelers.mail.cornell.edu!newstand.syr.edu!avalon.syr.edu!lruppert From: lruppert@avalon.syr.edu (Lou Ruppert) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc Subject: Questions about NetBSD/current (i386 mostly) Date: 21 Jul 1995 04:00:43 GMT Organization: Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship Lines: 53 Message-ID: <3un8pb$rbh@newstand.syr.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.230.4.223 I have a couple of questions about the current version of NetBSD for the i386 family of machines. I am running Linux 1.3.x right now on my 486, but it is being taken off the network to move this weekend, and I would like to use the downtime to try NetBSD to see how the performance and environment compares to what I have now. First of all, is there any command available that is equivelant to the Linux command 'free'? 'free' tells how much total memory and swap the machine has, and how much is being used. Last time I tried NetBSD ( a year ago) there was apparently no such command. If there's another way to get that info, I'd be interested in that too. Has anyone successfully compiled the NAS audio server with a soundblaster pro card? I use this server all the time on the machine, and would be lost without it. Is there support for an ELF binary format yet? Any plans for one in the future? I have gotten comfortable with the ease of creating shared libs under ELF. If not, is there a straightforward way to create them under NetBSD? I am looking to buy a notebook computer in the near future too. What sort of success do people have running NetBSD on those? Is there support for PCMCIA yet? Pocket Ethernet Adapters? How about the power management features some of them have? What sort of documentation is there for the /proc and /kern filesystems? I was interested in programming stuff that used them before, but couldn't find any formal documentation besides the source code itself. What kind of unofficial patches are there floating around? One of the things I liked about Linux was the variety of different personal tweaks that could be added that were written as patches by different people outside the kernel. Is there a list of such patches available? Finally, is there a migration guide of differences a Linux user would encounter when making the switch? The first change I noticed was the difference in passwd file formats, making vipw a necessity instead of an option. I've used NetBSD before, and liked it, just not for the i386, so I didn't get as much exposure to it as I would have liked. I guess that's it. Please send any email to lruppert@mailbox.syr.edu instead of avalon.syr.edu, since avalon is the linux box that is going down on saturday. -Lou UNIX Weenie and Network Guy -- "Until you stalk and overrun, you can't devour anyone." -Hobbes Lou Ruppert lruppert@mailbox.syr.edu "The UNIX Weenie home page": http://avalon.syr.edu/ My opinions are my own. My attention span isn't long enough for