Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!swidir.switch.ch!newsfeed.ACO.net!paladin.american.edu!gatech!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.sprintlink.net!in1.uu.net!van-bc!news.wimsey.com!cynic.portal.ca!curt From: curt@cynic.portal.ca (Curt Sampson) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Why isn't NetBSD popular? Date: 16 Aug 1995 01:26:22 GMT Organization: Internet Portal Services, Ltd. Lines: 82 Message-ID: <40rhfu$bgb@wolfe.wimsey.com> References: <DDACyE.CBt@seas.ucla.edu> <VIXIE.95Aug14011302@wisdom.home.vix.com> <40nj98$8g2@news.belwue.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: cynic.portal.ca Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:727 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:4325 Well, as Terry pointed out, NetBSD is much more popular than either FreeBSD or Linux on non-PC platforms. :-) To my mind, this may give NetBSD a big advantage in the long run, because they have a very large head start on both FreeBSD and Linux in this department. If we have cheap, powerful RISC workstations available in a couple of years, NetBSD will likely be there with a stable system before the others. I'll agree that the user side of NetBSD is definitely not as friendly. There aren't tons of binary packages for it, for a start. (There probably never will be; with over a dozen platforms to support, that binary archive would grow very large very quickly.) Also, there doesn't seem to be quite as much care put into the user programs that go into the distributions. For example, due to something interesting the kernel (I am still undecided as to whether to call it a bug or not) the stock uucp as distributed with NetBSD 1.0 doesn't work. Also, the documentation is not as good as Linux, and it seems likely to me that FreeBSD is better in that department, too. The setreuid() system call documentation, for example, is blatantly incorrect. The general setup and install of NetBSD can be pretty tough the first few times, until you have put in the work to find out exactly how these things work. (Once you've done that, things often get easier. Now that I've done a couple dozen installs, I can do a NetBSD installation more quickly and easily than I can do a FreeBSD installation.) Now to experienced Unix gurus, these are not major problems. They can eat up some time, but they're not that hard to fix. On the other hand, these sorts of things tend to stop a more novice user in his tracks, and he just can't get going again. Markus Baeurle writes: >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. No, I don't think it is, either. If you look at the types of messages in the two groups, I suspect that you'll find that there is a much greater proportion of `I'm stuck; please help me' messages in the FreeBSD groups, and even greater again in the Linux groups. With NetBSD, you really have to be willing to dig in and get your hands dirty, as it were, solving your own problems. This generally means going and reading the source (which is, in the end, the most correct documenation, after all). This is hard work, though fun if you've got the right mindset for it. Most people would rather have someone else fix their problem rather than fix it themselves. (Let's face it, even I often would rather someone else fix my problems. :-)) That's a lot more likely to happen with Linux than FreeBSD, and with FreeBSD than NetBSD. And I'm certainly not discouraging that sort of attitude; that attiude, after all, is responsible for most of my consulting income. I really enjoy learning the many things I do by being forced to dig into the source code. But many people don't have the either the time, inclination or expertise to do this. Another person mentioned that one of the reasons he went with FreeBSD was that there were upgrades more often. This may be fine for personal systems, but there are circumstances in which frequent releases are undesirable. I run an ISP on NetBSD. I have several production machines which Must Not Go Down if it's at all possible to avoid it. Upgrading an OS and making sure everything is working under the new version is a huge task for me, and not one I care to undertake lightly. Having a long time between new releases encourages the devlopment team to take testing very seriously. I definitely don't want to do an install unless I'm sure that everything is working well. I can't afford the time, much less the hassles. Once a year is fine by me. Once every six months is a bit frequent. I think NetBSD tends to be a bit more conservative than FreeBSD, and both are a lot more conservative than Linux. This conservatism makes NetBSD extremely suitable for commercial systems. cjs -- Curt Sampson curt@portal.ca Info at http://www.portal.ca/ Internet Portal Services, Inc. Vancouver, BC (604) 257-9400 De gustibus, aut bene aut nihil.