Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!lll-winken.llnl.gov!hookup!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.cac.psu.edu!news.math.psu.edu!ra.nrl.navy.mil!cs.umd.edu!not-for-mail From: fwmiller@cs.umd.edu (Frank W. Miller) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Comparison Date: 3 Sep 1995 00:24:23 -0400 Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742 Lines: 50 Message-ID: <42baln$7kb@zagnut.cs.umd.edu> References: <427nlp$9c1@parsifal.nando.net> <429mv4$7on@i-2000.com> <429r1b$8un@gryphon.phoenix.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: zagnut.cs.umd.edu A while back, a thread started up asking why NetBSD isn't as ``popular'' as FreeBSD, actually, I still see a few followups even now. Anyway, I am a long time NetBSD/i386 user and have recently made the switch to FreeBSD. After getting my FreeBSD configuration setup similarly to my old NetBSD configuration, I am now in a position to compare the two now since I have just made the switch to FreeBSD. I consider myself to be one interested in the ``stable'' versions of the respective OS's, so my comparison is between FreeBSD 2.0.5 and NetBSD 1.0/i386. So here's a few I've up til now. The FreeBSD kernel is bigger, by about 150Kbytes I think (I'm talking the generic distribution kernels here). This is probably due to the FreeBSD kernel having more devices built into it. If you missed my previous post, FreeBSD recognizes my old HardCard XL, NetBSD did not. I ended up having to remove it tho, it crashed the installation after the device probe phase. I don't think NetBSD 1.0 comes with user ppp, only the kernel version. I started with NetBSD 1.0 appox. a year ago. I downloaded the floppy images for the binaries and sources and XFree. I had to do everything by hand and it took awhile. This included partitioning the hard disk, loading the base system, doing intial configuration, loading the rest of the system, more configuration, loading XFree, A LOT more configuration, etc. I can tell you, the installation procedure that is included with FreeBSD is a *MAJOR* difference between the two. I have to hand it to whoever wrote the installation program, it is GREAT! NetBSD 1.0 does not include make use of the ``slice'' abstraction. The only visible difference I can come up with here so far has to do with what shows up on the OS/BS menu. I had three NetBSD partitions, one for /, one for the swap, and one for /usr. OS/BS listed then all, even though I could only boot correctly off of /. The fonts I used in XFree under NetBSD look different under FreeBSD, this is probably due to a different X server config but I don't know. One interesting thing. My pulldown menus on applications like xfontsel and xman don't work with my Logitech 3-button mouse under FreeBSD, they worked fine under NetBSD. Anybody have any ideas about that? More later, FM -- Frank W. Miller Department of Computer Science fwmiller@cs.umd.edu University of Maryland, College Park http://www.cs.umd.edu/~fwmiller College Park, Maryland 20742