From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Jun 21 20:43:07 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id UAA24965 for questions-outgoing; Fri, 21 Jun 1996 20:43:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from onyx.southwind.net (root@onyx.southwind.net [204.95.83.2]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id UAA24944; Fri, 21 Jun 1996 20:43:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from Ucomplet@localhost) by onyx.southwind.net (8.7.4/8.7.3) with UUCP id WAA29696; Fri, 21 Jun 1996 22:36:22 -0500 (CDT) X-Authentication-Warning: onyx.southwind.net: Ucomplet set sender to jgoerzen@complete.org using -f Received: (from jgoerzen@localhost) by complete.org (8.7.5/8.7.2) id VAA05739 for msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au; Fri, 21 Jun 1996 21:16:51 -0500 (CDT) From: John Goerzen Message-Id: <199606220216.VAA05739@complete.org> Subject: Re: Status of DOS emulator? To: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au (Michael Smith) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 1996 21:16:50 -0500 (CDT) In-Reply-To: <199606210420.NAA08565@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> from Michael Smith at "Jun 21, 96 01:50:53 pm" X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL19 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > Jordan K. Hubbard stands accused of saying: > NetBSD have both the BSDI emulator (doscmd) and a port of DOSEMU. > Rundos is even more moribund (but possibly originally technically superior > to either of the above; certainly more ambitious). I am facing a very difficult decision here and maybe some of you can help me regain my sanity :-) I have asked some questions of both NetBSD and OpenBSD. In response, I did get some very helpful answers. I also got a lot of hostility, like "That's a stupid question. What did you expect?" OpenBSD people seem to hate NetBSD people, the ones that they owe their existance to. I even saw a message, don't ask me why it was CC'd to me, where an OpenBSD person said he knew of 20 serious bugs in NetBSD but refused to tell the NetBSD people about it because he thought they were "pricks". Plus, the OpenBSD developer (probably the leader of the project) basically called me stupid for asking what was in the snapshots. I don't want to be perpetually running prerelease code like I would be in OpenBSD, and I don't care for all the fighting. Both systems have a big lack of documentation and have poor serial code (which is important to me), so I will be not switching to either of them. Just a word here to you guys at FreeBSD: thanks for the great website, it has lots of useful info. NetBSD/OpenBSD had very little. My decision is now this: FreeBSD or Linux. I know right off the bat that I will lose some of FreeBSD's legendary stability. What I need to know is how much. Also, how much more secure is FreeBSD than Linux? I am running a BBS sort of thing, where anybody in the public gets free dialin FreeBSD shell account. I don't want to open up my system like that under an OS that isn't secure. DOS emulation is becoming more important to me. Unix still doesn't have a decent word processor that I've seen. WordPerfect 5.0, a very outdated DOS word processor, is much better than even the best Unix word processor I've seen so far. (Yes, I have tried Andrew). I hate booting to DOS. It feels like I'm going back 20 years in computer history. Probably that's true :-) I lose multitasking, stability, etc. It's enough to turn my stomach So I need advice. And I thank everyone here for being polite in spite of my long messages! -- John Goerzen | Turn your PC into a Workstation for FREE! Custom programming | Check out www.freebsd.org NOW! For free FreeBSD jgoerzen@complete.org | Unix shell access, 316-367-8490 with your modem.