> Geeze, they couldn't get bounce-buffer support so they went to Linux..

It sounds like just a little detail, but just about every single PC
I've run accross that was bought before 1995 had an Adaptek 1542
controller.  Partial 1542 support is a real turn-off.

> I guess FreeBSD needs more press, eh? :-)

Well, I myself have been seriously, seriously tempted to switch to
FreeBSD.  The prospect of 32Megs of RAM and a working mmap (with
unified buffer cache) lead me to install FreeBSD on my second hard
drive where it's still sitting...

Note, however, that the FreeBSD install procedure really frustrated
me.  It's beautifully colorful, but very ambiguous and wouldn't give
me a root shell.  I couldn't even get it to untar from my DAT tape, so
finally I had to untar the tape under NetBSD, reboot FreeBSD, and
finish the job.  NetBSD wins big for having the least ambiguous
install procedure of any operating system I've ever seen.  Period.
They even include more on the boot floppy so you can read the scripts!
If you know what you're doing, you know what the NetBSD installation
procedure is doing.

In general, I guess people don't really take a single-platform OS's
seriously.  For a while Linux people were claiming Linux would be
ported to the 68K someday, and then last summer there were rumors that
Linus himself was doing an alpha port.  [These could quite well be
true, its just that the last time I looked at Linux source code there
was a lot of PC-specific stuff (the VM code looked a lot like a 386,
for instance).]

I must say, I used to dislike the idea of running a single-platform
OS.  Now, however, the PC architecture is becoming increasingly
important, to the point where, for instance, I think the research
group I'm in is going to end up with nothing but PC's.  Maybe FreeBSD
made the right decision to go all out on the PC.  [However, it
certaintly would be nice to have the same OS on our Suns and PC's
during a transition.  Of the 4 operating systems, it seems as though
OpenBSD might be the first to work on a sun4m machine...]

David