*BSD News Article 48721


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From: imp@village.org (Warner Losh)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Why isn't NetBSD popular?
Date: 16 Aug 1995 01:24:11 -0600
Organization: The Village
Lines: 32
Message-ID: <40s6er$68a@rover.village.org>
References: <DDACyE.CBt@seas.ucla.edu> <VIXIE.95Aug14011302@wisdom.home.vix.com> <40nj98$8g2@news.belwue.de> <40rhfu$bgb@wolfe.wimsey.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: rover.village.org
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:702 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:4216

In article <40rhfu$bgb@wolfe.wimsey.com>,
Curt Sampson <curt@cynic.portal.ca> wrote:
>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.

Interesting point of view.  I've solved this problem by not upgrading
our router (which is critial to the operation of the village) since we
put FreeBSD 1.1.5.1 on it, modulo a few needed patches.  This has
worked quite well, and things are very very very stable.  There are a
few known problems that we hit, but we know about them, and can
mitigate them to a large degree.  We've also heavily hacked the kernel
to act as our IP filter, so we can't upgrade lightly.

My personal system, I upgrade when the fancy strikes, and the 6 month
or so release cycle that FreeBSD is on seems fine to me.  There are
efforts underway to make me more likely to upgrade, since that will be
easier and it sounds as if it will be easy to go backwards as well,
given enough disk space.

BTW, none of this is to degrade the work that the NetBSD folks have
done.  Just how I deal with FreeBSD's release schedule.

Warner
-- 
Warner Losh		"VMS Forever"		home: imp@village.org
Cyberspace Development, Inc			work: imp@marketplace.com
Makers of TIA, The Internet Adapter.		http://marketplace.com/