I chose NetBSD because:

1. it is a direct descendant of Berkeley UNIX
2. full source code is available
3. most important, machine/architecture independence is a major goal

Machine independence as a goal, in my view, makes NetBSD the inheritor of
the UNIX legacy - working toward a world in which hardware is a commodity,
and we don't even care which CPU or instruction set is underneath the OS.

However, some people do care about the hardware underneath. You might have
a problem with Intel's products (little-endian?). You might need 64 bit
processing that only the DEC Alpha can provide (of the platforms we
support). If you're doing the RC5 keyspace search, a fast processor with a
"rotate" instruction is necessary for ultimate speed (PowerPC wins big
here). If you're a graphics guy, you want the fastest current CPUs you can
buy for your rendering engine.

Unfortunately, we have been remiss in collecting, for the prospective
system buyer, a directory of places where each system type can be bought. I
am not suggesting that we review or recommend any system vendors - only
provide a listing where systems can be bought that are known to work with
NetBSD, for each platform (i386, sparc, alpha, mips, arm, powerpc, etc). In
this way, we can make it a little easier for people to choose to run NetBSD.

In the reverse direction, it would also be a good idea to let the systems
vendors know that our stuff runs on their hardware, and encourage them to
link our web pages (and point out that NetBSD can indeed run on their
hardware, in addition to NT, OpenVMS, etc). While I doubt that Sun or Intel
will care, I bet some of the cloners, distributors, systems integrators,
and used-computer dealers might be interested in expanding their markets a
bit.

Yow, am I marketing yet?

	your comments and suggestions are sought,

	Erik <fair@clock.org>