NetBSD

Hello everyone.

As frequent user of FreeBSD and OpenBSD, I really enjoy using both of them.

However, I have not yet played with NetBSD and was starting to gain some curiosity about it.

I know that NetBSD is known for its portability, but does it have any other plusses or minuses?

I was curious if anyone out there has some experience with NetBSD and would like to share their opinions...

Thanks.

BD

check out bsdforums.org

You may get a better response over there. I've found this site better for developer support...not admin stuff...

BTW- I have played with NetBSD and have had varying degrees of success....FreeBSD it the most supported.....however...it was cool to run Net on my old IMAC.

I love netBSD. I'm writing this article on my NetBSD/Win2k dual booted laptop. I have a SUN Sparc IPX in my basement running NetBSD also.

NetBSD is fantastically awesome if you want to learn all the unix tricks that work in ALL the other flavors of unix. NetBSD is totally barebones when you first install it (the install fits on one of those mini-cds, and the installation process takes about 5 minutes). If you're looking for pretty gui installs and windowsiness, then linux is the direction to head. NetBSD is the other end of the spectrum.

If you really want all sorts of pretty programs and what have you on your netbsd system, you can have them: NetBSD has a directory tree called pkgsrc which is very similar to FreeBSD's ports tree.

Theres a great manual for NetBSD at http://www.mclink.it/personal/MG250...eng/netbsd.html, to which there is a link at the NetBSD main site, http://www.netbsd.org.

If FreeBSD has sucked you into tcsh, which it defaultly installs and calls /bin/csh, NetBSD doesn't have that. By default, NetBSD installs the classic 4.4-BSD csh. I don't know about you, but if I'm going to bother learning unix, I don't want to take shortcuts. I want everything I learn to work on every flavor of unix. I don't want to find myself sitting in front of an SGI workstation one day wondering why up-arrow doesn't give me the last command I typed.

I've been working on a web page on help on works-anywhere unix utilities at http://rfc791.org, if that's your goal.

I believe NetBSD is better than FreeBSD because FreeBSD is practically linux with a BSD kernel. I believe NetBSD is better than OpenBSD, because the OpenBSD team falsely prides itself on creating the most secure O/S on earth. Why do I say falsely? Once upon a time there was a remote root vulnerability found in BSD's ftp daemon. Guess who fixed it last? The OpenBSD team. Their excuse: the ftp daemon is not enabled by default, therefore OpenBSD is still more secure. Funny how nothing is enabled by default. Or at least that's how it was when I was using it back around v2.8, maybe it's better now.

I do have one qualm with NetBSD. If you want to compile the userland (ie, everything but the kernel) under FreeBSD, you can type make buildworld, and then you can later drop to single user mode to install it (with make installworld). Under NetBSD, unfortunately, both these steps are combined into one, so your system has to be offline during the compile stage as well as the install stage.

That entirely depends on which version you are currently using. The build procedure for NetBSD is far more superior and customizable than Free/Open.

I was also looking for some information on FreeBSD-vs-NetBSD (I don't like OpenBSD so it's out of question).

Can anybody tell me if FreeBSD sticks to standards as much as NetBSD does?

And is the file hierarchy (the filesystem) the same as on NetBSD?

Which one is more advanced?
I've heard that BSD is having some troubles with threading (couldn't get MySQL compiled on NetBSD).

Also what are the pros and cons of Linux compared to BSD.

Anybody here?

What "Standards" your judging by?

Second off is I know that most of the threading issues were solved in the latest releases. At least that was the last I read about the object. I have just started to use OpenBSD for the first time and proably will not. I still like FreeBSD better.

Linux Vs. BSD

This is IMHO. Linux greatest feature and problem is the fact that its has some loose standards. I have run into problems that apps designed for say Red Hat won't work on Mandrake because of where header files or other libary files are in different places. This to me is annoying since I have to either write multiple install methods or fix it for each system.

BSD, at least with Free and Open as I am not all that familar with Net, has a central core of developers and there is only 1 release of FreeBSD. If I write an app for FreeBSD, it will mostly likely work on any default install of FreeBSD provided that a sys admin hasn't messed with the core install that much.

My second complaint with Linux. Is it a Server OS or is it a Desktop? Right now there are the distros that focus on each, but at the end of the day, Linux does both okay, and neither one all that great. *BSD, in particular FreeBSD, was designed as a Server OS. Some people use it as a workstation, but its a server OS first and foremost.

The best thing about *BSD in general:
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html

49/50 are BSD of some type.

http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2...ng_freebsd.html

>> I've heard that BSD is having some troubles with threading (couldn't get MySQL compiled on NetBSD).

NetBSD -current has had native support for pthreads since mid Jan 2003 (http://www.netbsd.org/Changes/#merge-nathanw_sa). Just out of curiosity, I'm booting up my little test netbsd box here to see if mysql will install from pkgsrc. I'll post an update if/when the process completes.

[edit]Installed mysql-3.23 successfully from pkgsrc. Seems to run with no problems [/edit]