[236] in NetBSD-Development
Re: [sdfranks@MIT.EDU: Re: NetBSD/i386 1.0 AFS port, release 1.00 ready]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Greg Hudson)
Wed Nov 30 12:30:06 1994
To: sdfranks@MIT.EDU
Cc: netbsd-dev@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 30 Nov 1994 11:42:19 EST."
<9411301642.AA19228@banana>
Date: Wed, 30 Nov 1994 12:29:34 EST
From: Greg Hudson <ghudson@MIT.EDU>
Hi, John Kohl forwarded your question to netbsd-dev, which I'm on.
> I am no programming expert, and I am just getting familiar with the
> linux layout. Is netbsd very different? Is it easier, harder? Is
> the support here good? Is there all the athena stuff (zephyr, mail
> etc) that linux has? Sorry to bother you and I would appreciate the
> info if possible.
I think you will find the following differences between Linux and
NetBSD:
* Installation is a little bit less user-friendly, and will
require copying floppy images onto floppies. This is something we
hope to fix as NetBSD support gathers more momentum. Installation
will also be considerably more structured (as NetBSD is considered to
be a unified operating system, rather than a collection of packages),
and the distribution will not include as many random applications
(like ghostscript and TeX) as Linux does.
* There are many fewer users of NetBSD than there are Linux
users, so there won't be as many people to help with fixing bugs.
There are, however, active mailing lists for support.
* Less hardware is supported. There's still a good chance
that it supports everything on your system, though. Since you'd be
using the same X server (XFree86), video cards aren't any more of an
issue than they are with Linux.
* The NetBSD-Athena installation will be a bit different.
Instead of installing packages, you'll probably install a small amount
of software in /etc/athena and /usr/vice, modify your startup files,
your /etc/services and maybe /etc/inetd.conf, and then make a symlink
from /usr/athena into the sipb AFS cell for the bulk of the Athena
stuff. At some point, I plan to write a script to do this
automatically, but it shouldn't be very much work to do by hand.
There isn't currently any documentation for this, though, and the
"small amount of software in /etc/athena and /usr/vice" isn't yet
packaged up.
* The NetBSD AFS port is much more stable, and has good
performance. This is probably the most crucial advantage NetBSD has
over Linux right now, and the main reason why I prefer using NetBSD
over Linux.
* There won't be any third-party application support for
NetBSD for a while, since NetBSD doesn't currently have anything close
to the volume of Linux users.
I'm planning to install NetBSD on my system (I'm currently running
Linux) as soon as I find a convenient place to buy a supported SCSI
card.
I hope this is helpful.
