(begin quote)

I am asking on NetBSD mailing lists because that is the Unix-like OS I have.

What are the main differences between NetBSD and Linux?

What areas does each have strengths compared to the other? (I am aware of
many distributions of Linux - does that mean that different flavours of Linux
compare differently with NetBSD?)

Anthony Hilton
(end of quote)

I am new to NetBSD, downloaded for a preview onto a hard disk which became
inaccessible (not sure if it's that particular hard disk that went bad).  I
notice Linux is far ahead of NetBSD for multiprocessor support, and Linux got
ELF long before NetBSD.  Linux has an anarchy of many distributions, some (like
Red Hat) seeming to go out of their way to out-Windows MS-Windows with their
GUI.

Linux and NetBSD have both been ported to many CPU architectures, I don't really
know which has been ported to more.  MS-Windows was ported to PowerPC and Alpha,
but those ports have been discontinued.  CPU architectures supported by Debian
are only a small portion of Linux's many ports.

I haven't had a chance to see which is more dependable or stable between Linux
and NetBSD.  Linux support for my Trantor T130B SCSI has varied from stable to
buggy.  With Slackware 7.1, I can access external SCSI Iomega Zip 250, but
computer hangs when I try to mount internal SCSI CD-ROM lending support to the
notion that Linux is "about as stable as the elements at the bottom of the
periodic table".