Date: Sat, 28 Nov 1998 14:36:03 +1030 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: FreeBSD advocacy list <FreeBSD-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG>, NetBSD-advocacy@NetBSD.org, OpenBSD-advocacy@OpenBSD.org Subject: What are the strengths of FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD? Message-ID: <19981128143603.L6182@freebie.lemis.com>
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As I mentioned in a mail message yesterday, I'm writing an article for SunWorld about the return of the BSDs, and I have a couple of things I want to say which I'd like all *BSD groups to find positive. In particular, I'd like to be able to give sensible answers to the following implied questions: 1. What is the difference between FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD? Once upon a time it was relatively easy to answer this question: FreeBSD aimed at ease of use on the Intel platform, NetBSD aimed at portability, and OpenBSD wasn't. Now it's more difficult: FreeBSD has moved to other platforms, and while I don't know if NetBSD is any easier to install, there's at least OpenBSD to address as well. The best I have come to in recent times has been ``FreeBSD aims for ease of use and maximum performance, NetBSD aims for portability, and OpenBSD addresses security''. I'm not very happy with this statement, which bases mainly on hearsay, and which may not even be a good basis for discussion. I'd welcome any input. 2. What aspects of *BSD would interest a SunWorld reader? At first I thought ``well, they're not going to be interested in FreeBSD, because FreeBSD doesn't run on Sparc'', but it seems to me that it's unlikely that many Sun users would install current versions of *BSD on their modern hardware. Sure, there are plenty of older Sun machines out there, on which it's either impossible or impractical to run Solaris 2, and for them NetBSD or OpenBSD would be a good alternative to SunOS 4. But what are the majority of the users going to want to know about *BSD? Sure, it has the comfortable feel of SunOS 4, but what hardware would they run it on? What would they do with it? I've thought of things like name servers and Internet gateways, but there must be more than that. Obviously there is some interest, because SunWorld has been carrying lots of articles about Linux, and the same considerations should apply to Linux (in addition to the fact that Linux doesn't have this old, familiar feel about it). Greg -- See complete headers for address, home page and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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