Date: Thu, 5 Jan 1995 03:43:08 -0800 From: David Muir Sharnoff <muir@idiom.com> To: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: guest account: Yggdrasil information Message-ID: <199501051143.DAA27272@idiom.com>
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Jordan says: * I have this CD and it's not lying * about the degree of flexibility it provides. NetBSD is not the * competition. This is. I have to agree. I've just spent the last two weeks playing with NetBSD 1.0 (N), FreeBSD 2.0 (F), and Slackware Professional 2.1 (S). Impressions: Base OS installation: S: DOS-like install. Works. Is very easy. F: DOS-like install. Kinda works. Is very easy. N: Nasty nast install. Base OS configuration: S: DOS-like, called from install, works, very easy. F: Some done by install, the rest you're on your own N: You're on your own. OS add-ons (/usr/local): S: DOS-like install called from main install. Everyting you could ever want except for a decent version of vi. F: A fair number (20%) of what you might want. Unfortunantly, 20% of the packages don't install. N: A poor selection (10%) of what you might want is distributed on a 3rd-party disk that shipped many months after NetBSD 1.0. Multi-boot: S: LILO can either be primary boot selector or secondary. Installation of LILO is handled by install. F: Boot selector with F is broken, but OS-BS works fine N: destroys boot blocks of other OSes. Building a kernel: N: Must find conf directory. Is easy after that. F: I'm having a bit of troube, but I haven't been at it long. S: Must answer 500 yes/no questions. Device drivers: S: Includes drivers for everything made. All the ones I tried worked perfectly excpet for the 3c509 plug & play dead problems I had with every os except Windows For Workgroups NF: A good selection of drivers, unfortunatnly the authors of the drivers are split up between the F & N camps and thus there is no one os with the best set because the idiots (I mean you :-) haven't maintained compatability with each other. OS emulation/binary compatability: S: DOS, SysV, iBCS2, Windows(Wine) NF: SysV, iBCS2, Windows(Wine) OS source compatability: S: Everybody ports to Linux or SunOS. Linux does whatever it can to make it easy to port things. There are no fish to fry. F: Inherits hubris from Berkely folks. Breaks the world in the name of POSIX and correctness. For example, what's sendmail doing in /usr/sbin instead of /usr/lib? Where is /usr/ucb/vi? Or /usr/ucb/Mail? The paths are the interface! N: Inherits hubris from Berkely folks. Breaks the world in the name of POSIX and correctness. Is proud. OS Filesystems: S: DOS, OS/2 (readonly), SysV, cdrom NF: DOS, cdrom Filesystem write perfomance: F: 3.7MB/sec on my computer S: I didn't time it, but my estimate is 2MB/sec N: 770K/sec on my computer Filesystem read performance (tar news spool | dd): S: don't know, 'cause my system's running FreeBSD... F: 550K/sec N: 340K/sec Filesystem read performance (dd if=bigfile): S: don't know, 'cause my system's running FreeBSD... F: 6.5MB/sec ! N: 760K/sec Raw disk read speed: S: don't know, 'cause my system's running FreeBSD... N: 6.3MB/sec ! F: 3.5MB/sec Backups: NF: dump S: tar Networking: NF: based on Berkeley S: has only one redeeming feature: SLIP & PPP won't ever crash the system. Security (totally subjective): N: high priority, probably done right F: medium-high priority, probably done right S: too many cooks, probably messed up Documenatation: S: Came with full printed docs that have been very useful in geting *bsd working. F: online manual pages + FAQ N: online manual pages Support: N: most querys replied to in < 2hours F: most querys replied to in < 2days S: don't know where to report a bug Bugs: S: I didn't stress it as much, but I hardly found any bugs. NF: I find bugs at a rate of 1 every two hours that I use either of these systems. It's not acceptable. It's not distribution quality. Panics: S: 0 F: often during installs, rarely afterwards N: there's a bug in the ncr disk driver ... I choose *BSD of Linux becasue of sevarl factors. 1. Brand loyalty. I've been a bsd bigot for years. SysV sucks and Linux is kinda SysVish. 2. Security. I don't trust Linux. 3. Networking. I'm a *TINY* ISP. Good networking is important. However, after playing with Linux, I have to keep repeating a mantra: "BSD==my frieds, Security, Networking; BSD=my friends, Security, Netowrking..." I think I'm going to use FreeBSD instead of NetBSD because at least the FreeBSD camp is trying to compete. The NetBSD crowd is off in an ivory tower as far as I can tell. They don't distribute a useable system because it's missing too much from /usr/local. With the new installs, FreeBSD is trying to become a 90's operating system: a bit flashy; easy to install; fun. NetBSD is stuck in the 80's: functional, clean, fast, isoloted. I hope I don't offend any of the NetBSD folks with this characterization. I'm trying to oversimplify. The most amazing thing for me, since I hadn't used *BSD or Linux two weeks ago, is that FreeBSD and NetBSD are NOT COMPATABILE WITH EACH OTHER!!! It's crazy. All the Linux distributions, every single one, can run each others binaries(*) and use each other's device drivers. -Dave * I'm guessing. :-) Artistic license!
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