Re: netbsd on vax 11/730; booting in sim

[Jochen Kunz <jkunz%unixag-kl.fh-kl.de@localhost>]

On Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:29:38 +0100
Johnny Billquist <bqt%softjar.se@localhost> wrote:

> This last year or two have 
> really seen an acceleration towards getting more and more "new" stuff 
> into NetBSD. Often just because "others have it".
Johnny, NetBSD is alive, not a dead artifact in a museum.

Life is evolution, evolution is change. Live evolutes to higher and
higher stages of complexity. It is natural that complexity increases.
Live has evelved from primitive protozoon to mammals. If you stop this
process you will become a dinosaur... That is why NetBSD needs stuff
that "others have". If you stop importing new stuff NetBSD will get
useless in "the real world" within a few years, leading to a decline
and finaly extinction. NetBSD is not an endemic species on an isolated
iland. It interacts with all that other Unix species out there in the
wilderness. 

So. If you want a lean and fast Unix on your VAXen, install a Unix that
was current when your hardware was current. I.e. somthing like
4.3BSD-Tahoe. I did this on my MicroVAX III. It is fun. But if you need
to interact with the rest of the world (ssh, nfs, IPv6, PGP,...) you
will have trouble as 4.3BSD is an endemic species on an isolated iland,
a living dinosaur.

Conclusion
You have two choices:
1) Live together with other people, computers and operating systems.
2) Isolate yourself and become a living dinosaur on an isolated iland.

I prefere 1) because that way I can reuse the work of other people and
don't need to reinvent the wheel over and over again. I have to pay a
price for it and that is the "bloat" that makes NetBSD slow on my
ancient VAXen, SPARCs, HP9000-[34]00s, ...

BTW: NetBSD still runs like a mad ape on not so ancient hardware like
early UltraSPARC machines because it is still much more efficient then
all the alternatives out there.
-- 


tschüß,
       Jochen

Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/