>[moved to netbsd-advocacy to avoid starting an OS war on mailing lists i
>don't read]
>
>On 2 Dec 1999, Matt Curtin wrote:
>
>> if you have a specific need, you might find that one satisfies that
>> need a bit better than the other. . . . The "one size fits all"
>> mentality that permeates mainstream computing is really the backward
>> way of looking at things.
>
>How about an example, Matt?
>
>I want to be convinced that Irix, Solaris, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD
>are all different-sized hammers optimized for specific jobs.  I think they
>aren't. I think they are five attempts at making The Uberhammer, all of
>which are incomplete.  In some rare cases, one attempt has less
>inconvenient incompletenesses than another.  Fine.
>
>More often, _much_ more often, one ends up running


Well, Windows.  This really sucks rocks because it's the technically worst
OS I think I've ever seen.  Something like 3500 system calls.  Talk about
bloatware, and software churn.

I just installed NetBSD this evening and, once again, it's not nearly mature
enough.  I can see that a NetBSD developer would love it, and I would love
it if I could figure out how to get anything to run on it.  But there are no
manuals, no instructions, and, really, if you can't rewrite it yourself, you
can't get there from here.  Here's how I see them stacking up.

NetBSD.  Pure UNIX hacker OS.  Very pure, very portable, very dense and not
at all comprehensible to those who are not initiates.

OpenBSD.  The NetBSD for left and right wing paranoids whose governments
may, justifiably, be spying on them.  Encryption can come in handy when you
want to bomb the legislature and want to plan it via the Net.

Linux.  Freeware ala Microsoft.  Massive software churn.  Following in Gates
footsteps, the license is a virus.  Anyone notice the exceedingly slight
differences in the sounds of the names Stallman and Stalin?

FreeBSD.  Wants to be UNIX, but wants wide acceptance and users, so limits
platforms and makes entry easy for people who want to learn but don't know a
lot yet.  Even has an available manual at a reasonable price which answers
most of the basic questions.  Still dense but workable if one wants to
learn.

All are somehow equivocal.  All are very minor-league players because,
really, as Dennis Ritchie told us all, in no uncertain terms, in a talk he
gave in 1986, an OS is really a philosophy and a belief system about what an
OS is for, and UNIX and its variants surfacing at the time made an
exceedingly strong statement that UNIX was all about developing more
software, and nothing else at all.  His statement has worn well over time.
It can be more clearly restated now.  UNIX is all about developing more
software for the sake of more software, and it need not be clear in purpose
except to those who are priests of the true faith.

Ultimately, to be at all productive, for the OS to be more than a toy for me
at present, I'm retreating to FreeBSD, although I'll hang out here in the
hopes that I can get into NetBSD with time.

Linux and FreeBSD are by far the most thriving versions because both go out
of their way to cater to users.  There is no rule that says an OS should
have lots of users, or should try to appeal to lots of users.  FORTH systems
come to mind as an example.

Largely, what strikes me as so incredibly stupid in most of the UNIX world
are the flavor wars, nonsensical religious abstractions which are meaningful
to less than a tiny fraction of a percent of the world.  What remains of
UNIX is not a thriving community, but one that, apart from the Internet,
would be a backwater eddy of a genre surviving only on old, junk hardware.
Linux, the most popular flavor, is little more than a reaction to
Microsoft's arrogance and clear Big Brother attitudes as he tries to lock
out all the software industry until only Microsoft itself remains.

I'm sure I'll get flamed but this is the truth as I know and see it.  Of all
the BSDs, only FreeBSD seems to have any hope of a significant audience.
NetBSD remains very attractive intellectually and as a matter of taste.  But
since I'm not a UNIX hacker at this point, well, I can't use it.  And with
the core team looking at expanding platforms, this is how it will stay into
the foreseeable future.

I have, BTW, seen NetBSD developers install NetBSD and get seriously chewed
on for the lack of applications for anyone but a few programmers.  The
bottom line is that NetBSD got ripped off of all machines but the
programmers machines and Windows installed instead because, really, the CFO
has no use for grep and yacc and awk and sed but does need a good
spreadsheet and vi ain't cutting it for the secretaries and support staff.

All flavors of BSD are, in essence, niche players.  They have to be, per
Dennis Ritchie.