Hi Manuel & Brett,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Brett Lymn [mailto:blymn@baesystems.com.au]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 19:34
> To: Manuel Bouyer
> Cc: Conrad T. Pino; i386 Port; SMP
> Subject: Re: NetBSD 1.6 & i386 SMP, ACPI, mly
> 
> On Wed, Jan 15, 2003 at 10:09:05PM +0100, Manuel Bouyer wrote:
> > 
> > I've got good results with the 1.6 branch + patches from 
> i386mp_plus16_stable.
> >
> 
> OK - but does that mean it is production ready?  Don't get me wrong,
> what we have is fantastic and it is deeply appreciated by me (at the
> very least ;-) but we must be wary of overselling what we have lest we
> get labelled with the "piece of crap" token.  I have experienced
> problems with -current SMP on my i386 boxen.  Normally these 
> are solved
> by a "cvs update" and rebuild but whereas I can live with that on my
> home boxes, I doubt if it would be very satisfactory for a production
> environment - at least any production environment that I have had
> experience with would not tolerate it. 

Manuel, I want to thank you for replying and providing another data point.
My saga started with a need for BIND and began with Linux which got hacked.
Moved onto FreeBSD which got hacked and now I've been with NetBSD 1 year.
All this time I've been working the binary distributions and only compiled
my first kernel this month.  My experience began with Windoze & Solaris 8.
I'm new to the compiling open source side of UNIX.

Single data points like yours are probably useful to established community
members but leave newbies like myself wondering how to use the data point.
This is why Brett's comment resonated with me.  I want a STABLE platform to
run Oracle 8i Linux edition and Tomcat 4 and I don't have the experience
with NetBSD to make that judgment on my own.

At my current level of NetBSD experience hearing conclusions & the reasons
behind them are very helpful.  Opinions add value to my newbie experience
because they all help frame the experience & cultural context of the NetBSD
developer community.

My original question and Brett's second, "Is it production ready?"  Perhaps
the answer is nobody knows for sure.  Nevertheless hearing opinions from
whomever wishes to contribute all richen my experience & may help me narrow
the context where I need to focus in order to advance my goals.

Brett, thank you for speaking up & giving voice to some of my concerns.  As
a newbie to a new community I'm aware poorly expressed opinions may ignite
flame fests and was hesitant to follow up.  I'm want to make only positive
contributions whenever possible.

> -- 
> Brett Lymn

Thanks in advance,

Conrad Pino