Re: [tlug] BSD vs BSD vs Linux

[Ulrich Plate <plate@example.com>]

Ah, those slow Friday afternoons... :)

Jonathan Q wrote:

> There are at least four: Free, Net, Open, Tiny (don't really know
> anything about that last one; I've just heard of it).  I wouldn't be
> surprised to learn of more.

There's the only commercial BSD Unix you forgot to mention, BSD/OS from
Wind River, formerly known as BSDI. The original TinyBSD was a
floppy-sized version of 386BSD from before the Great Schism, I believe,
but that's probably not what you mean. A small Sendai-based joint called
MagickWorX indeed has a "MWX-TinyBSD" that fits on 32 MB compact flash
cards, is that it? Wouldn't count, though, that's just a stripped-down
FreeBSD 4.something.

> FreeBSD was historically x86-centered and I think is still mostly
> thus, but it also runs now on IA-64, Alpha, PC-98, and UltraSPARC.

I find it particularly disturbing that there's no working PowerPC port,
the RS/6000 under my desk would be mightily pleased to run something
saner than AIX. Oh well, gotta install Gentoo on it, I suppose...

> NetBSD runs on practically anything.  The list is here: 
> http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/  The list is long :-)

Hey, I even found my oven toaster on there! Cool. :) The only drawback
is that many of those ports are highly experimental. My RS/6000 is not
overly optimistic about the NetBSD port for PReP machines, and last year
I managed to convert a handheld NEC Mobile Gear into a useless brick,
with a simple halt issued to the NetBSD/hpcmips port I had installed...

Cheers
Ulrich Plate
PS: Could somebody familiar with AIX 4.3 contact me off-list, please? I
have a number of embarrassingly stupid questions and don't want to make
a fool out of myself in public... :)

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