*BSD News Article 5035


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Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!uniwa!uniwa!nfm
From: comrade@uniwa.uwa.edu.au (Peter Cooper)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: 386bsd -- The New Newsgroup <Summary>
Date: 15 Sep 1992 11:31:36 +0800
Organization: The University of Westrn Australia
Lines: 44
Message-ID: <193leoINN7kt@uniwa.uwa.edu.au>
References: <22376@venera.isi.edu> <1992Sep12.205451.15726@terminator.cc.umich.edu> <1992Sep12.232207.25719@cs.sfu.ca> <1992Sep13.204309.8174@cs.wisc.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: uniwa.uwa.edu.au

jcargill@grilled.cs.wisc.edu (Jon Cargille) writes:

>>In a soundbite
>>
>>	comp.os.bsd
>>	comp.os.bsd.pc-clone
>>
>>Which would cover bsd386, 386/bsd, mach-386, BNRSS-386, (the last two
>>only in regard to their BSD nature, not their mach nature)
>>

>Hate it, hate it, hate it.  Why should people have to read about
>systems they're not interested it, just because they're (possibly)
>similar?

It's not just (possible) similarity.  It's more than 90% of the code.
It's the whole user philosophy.  It's the huge number of programs that
have been written for this family of operating systems.  BSD.  It's more
than just a state of mind :)

>By this reasoning, we could just do away with newgroups altogether,
>and revert to one top-level group called 'news'.  If everyone had
>*really* nifty threaded newsreaders, it might work...  Not!

For most users, and even kernel hackers, it is difficult to find more
than small differences between each *implementation* of BSD.  None of
the above mentioned OS's have diverged enough to justify stuffing up the
usenet namespace for some really stupid politiking.

A modernish BSD on a VAX is similar to a modern BSD on an HP300, is
very similar to a modern BSD on a 386.  Software generally "just
compiles" (hahaha).  There is a justification for separate groups for
each implementation (after all, you've got all of those messy device
drivers ...) but none for a seperate *hierarchy* "go it alone cos
we're soooo much different from everyone else".


Peter

-- 
email:  comrade@uniwa.uwa.edu.au   snail:  Peter Cooper
fax:    +61 9 380 1041                     Guild of Undergraduates
phone:  +61 9 380 3929                     University of Western Australia
"It was the banana that did it!" - Julia Marley