Reply regarding the Linux portability comments...

----- Forwarded message from Rob Kolstad <kolstad@ace.DELOS.COM> -----

>From ace.DELOS.COM!kolstad Tue Apr 13 18:16:48 1999
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 11:01:23 -0600 (MDT)
From: Rob Kolstad <kolstad@ace.DELOS.COM>
To: david@fundy.ca
Subject: Re: Inaccuracy in Rik Farrow's "musings" column in April's ;login

I have seen Rik's next column.  He apologizes profusely.

RK

	From david@fundy.ca Thu Apr  1 11:17:56 1999
	Date: Thu, 1 Apr 1999 14:17:44 -0400
	From: David Maxwell <david@fundy.ca>
	To: kolstad@usenix.org, jel@usenix.org
	Subject: Inaccuracy in Rik Farrow's "musings" column in April's ;login
	X-Status: 

	Someone brought the following statement to my attention in the
	referenced article:

	"While Linux already runs on more different processors than any
	other operating system, ..."

	NetBSD, another Open Source Operating System, which has a
	background in the BSD version of Unix is much more widely
	ported, and stable on many more platforms than Linux.

	It would be nice to see some sort of correction to the
	statement made in the article. NetBSD has always been focused
	on portability and machine independant quality code, while
	Linux has had an Intel x86 focus for a long time and is
	just beginning to become more machine independant, as
	vendors jump on the marketability of being Linux-friendly
	at the moment.

	A quick scan of the NetBSD mailing lists will show you
	many comments along the lines of "I've been trying to
	install Linux for Alpha for a while, and had problems...
	then I tried NetBSD, and it _just worked_. Thanks"

	See 'Supported Hardware' on www.netbsd.org, but the
	list includes these stable platforms:

	Architectures with formal releases

	For these architectures, binary and source distributions of the latest formal release are available.

	      Port	Processor	Machines
	      alpha	alpha		Digital Alpha (64bit)
	      amiga	m68k		Commodore Amiga, DraCo
	      arm32	arm32		Acorn RiscPC/A7000, CATS, Digital Shark, EBSA-285, VLSI RC7500
	      atari	m68k		Atari TT030, Falcon, Hades
	      hp300	m68k		Hewlett-Packard 9000/300
	      i386	i386		i386 family IBM PCs and clones
	      mac68k	m68k		Apple Macintosh
	      mvme68k	m68k		Motorola MVME boards
	      pc532	ns32k		The PC532
	      pmax	mips		Digital MIPS-based DECstations and DECsystems
	      sparc	sparc		Sun SPARC
	      sun3	m68k		Sun 3
	      sun3x	m68k		Sun 3X (merged with sun3 in -current)
	      vax	vax		Digital VAX
	      x68k	m68k		Sharp X680x0

	With these in development (running, but not recommended for
	production environments):

	      Port	Processor	Machines
	      pica	mips		Acer Pica
	      bebox	powerpc		BeBox
	      ofppc	powerpc		PowerPC systems with OpenFirmware
	      newsmips	mips		Sony NEWS 3400
	      macppc	powerpc		Apple Power Macintosh
	      next68k	m68k		NeXT-68k
	      sparc64r	sparcr		Sun Ultrasparc (64bit)

	-- 
	David Maxwell, david@vex.net|david@maxwell.net --> Mastery of UNIX, like
	mastery of language, offers real freedom. The price of freedom is always dear,
	but there's no substitute. Personally, I'd rather pay for my freedom than live
	in a bitmapped, pop-up-happy dungeon like NT. - Thomas Scoville 


----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
David Maxwell, david@vex.net|david@maxwell.net --> Mastery of UNIX, like
mastery of language, offers real freedom. The price of freedom is always dear,
but there's no substitute. Personally, I'd rather pay for my freedom than live
in a bitmapped, pop-up-happy dungeon like NT. - Thomas Scoville