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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!swidir.switch.ch!scsing.switch.ch!news.belwue.de!news From: Markus Baeurle <s671687@rghx50.gp.fht-esslingen.de> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Why isn't NetBSD popular? Date: 14 Aug 1995 13:32:24 GMT Organization: Hochschule fuer Technik Esslingen Lines: 40 Message-ID: <40nj98$8g2@news.belwue.de> References: <DDACyE.CBt@seas.ucla.edu> <VIXIE.95Aug14011302@wisdom.home.vix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: rghx51.gp.fht-esslingen.de Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 1.1N (X11; I; HP-UX A.09.03 9000/715) X-URL: news:VIXIE.95Aug14011302@wisdom.home.vix.com Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:691 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:4148 vixie@wisdom.home.vix.com (Paul A Vixie) wrote: > NetBSD is quite popular among the folks who used raw 4BSD from CSRG and > thought it was exactly what an operating system should be. > > FreeBSD and Linux are quite popular among the folks who used SCO or MiXinu > and thought that operating systems ought not to be wizard-specific. To some extent, this may still be true. But I think there's a much more important thing about it: NetBSD is mainly interested in supporting a lot of platforms. So it's naturally used by people from different platforms, but the PC userbase is much larger than all of them together. PC users normally choose Linux or FreeBSD. Let's face it, I wouldn't recommend NetBSD to a PC user because they don't have such a nice installation and an easy way to add packages that come in binary form as FreeBSD does. There's nobody to blame for that, it's just a matter of fact. It would be quite difficult and very time consuming to support more than ten platforms and still offer dozens of programs in binary form for each of them. So, NetBSD is not bad IMHO. It just addresses a different user base. What I would like to see for NetBSD is a little bit more user friendliness. This may be a nicer installation process, but first of all I think it should mean better documentation and other support. The FreeBSD newsgroup is quite busy, while this can't be said for the NetBSD one. This cannot all be up to the smaller user base. When I started to study at the FH (a bit like college) I developed interest in Unix and the Internet. Some PCs have Linux on them and we've got several workstations. When the port of NetBSD for my machine at home (an Acorn Risc PC) progressed, I wanted to learn more about this "BSD stuff" of which I knew nothing. I got the possibility to install a BSD on one of the PCs. More or less by chance I took FreeBSD 2.0-R which I recently upgraded to 2.1.0. I also worked with Slackware-based Linux quite a lot. I tell you all this because I want to emphasize that I was not pre-biased and learned about all this from a mostly neutral point of view. But still it's my own point of view for which I reserve to right to be wrong. ;-) Markus Baeurle