From owner-freebsd-isp Wed Mar 12 15:48:47 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA20431 for isp-outgoing; Wed, 12 Mar 1997 15:48:47 -0800 (PST) Received: from ns2.harborcom.net (root@ns2.harborcom.net [206.158.4.4]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA20421 for ; Wed, 12 Mar 1997 15:48:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (bradley@localhost) by ns2.harborcom.net (8.8.5/8.8.4) with SMTP id SAA16867; Wed, 12 Mar 1997 18:48:40 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 12 Mar 1997 18:48:39 -0500 (EST) From: Bradley Dunn X-Sender: bradley@ns2.harborcom.net To: Ron Bickers cc: isp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: BSDI and binary compatibility In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-isp@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Wed, 12 Mar 1997, Ron Bickers wrote: > I've considered switching things to FreeBSD, but we do have a few binary > only products (and I know there are others available) for BSDI. Does > anyone know how compatible BSDI binaries are with FreeBSD and if the > developers intend to continue compatibility? We have a customer running BSDI binaries of the Netscape Commerce Server on FreeBSD 2.1-STABLE no problem. I hear the support for BSDI binaries is even better in 2.2 (as is the Linux support). I'm not a developer but I think they realize the desirability of compatibility and will do their best to keep it. > Also, any opinions from those that know both BSDI and FreeBSD are welcome > as to the strengths and weakness of each. We used to have a mixed BSDI/FreeBSD environment. Switching over to FreeBSD-only was fairly easy (after recompiling the world to support 16 character login names). Some of the shortcomings BSDI had that we didn't like are supposedly fixed now (like a clean flag in the superblock), but we would never consider going back. I really don't see any major advantages of BSDI over FreeBSD for ISP use, unless you need technical support (which costs extra anyway). Besides, the FreeBSD mailing lists are usually excellent for support. pbd