On Mar 16, 2006, at 4:57 PM, Georg Schwarz wrote:


> why don't you use NetBSD 2.X at least?
>
<MINDLESS_RANT>
2.x is still pretty painful on a VAXstation 3100 m30 w/ 16MB of RAM  
in my opinion.  Not quite as bad as 3.0 however.  I had been pretty  
happy with 1.4.  It's not quite as lightweight and zippy as Ultrix  
but getting newer software to compile wasn't THAT bad.

I just really like lightweight and efficient UNIX.  If I want the  
latest and greatest with slick eye candy, I have MacOS X.  I am into  
VAX hardware for fun and occasional real use, watching the poor box  
choke for a week or so, thrashing disks, while GCC3 tries to compile  
a kernel is not fun.  It borders on sad.

What can I do with NetBSD 2.x or 3 that I couldn't do with 1.4.3 on  
this hardware?  Run KDE?  Quake 3 maybe?

I don't think the hardware support for this box has improved much  
since then but I can't say that with certainty as I am not a kernel  
developer.

Again, I'm not going to say NetBSD 3 sucks because it doesn't, I just  
think NetBSD is starting to outgrow older VAX hardware.  I'm sure on  
a SPARCstation 5 w/ 128MB of RAM, which is damn slow by today's  
standards, it does pretty well.  Even a VAX 4000-300.  Even on a beat  
up 68040-based mac with 64MB of RAM or so it's probably OK.    All  
I'm saying is THIS particular hardware, NetBSD 2.x and 3.x are too  
sluggish and cramped for me to consider it usable or fun.  All I  
would gain is the "My 20-year-old VAX can run the latest version of  
BSD" factor.
</MINDLESS_RANT>

Anyway, that's just my opinion.  I'm not trying to start a flame war  
or make anybody mad (as I'm sure I've just become flamebait) as I do  
like recent NetBSD versions, just not on these VAXstation 3100's.

--Kevin D. Ogden