Exactly.  This is one of two main reasons that I still use NetBSD; the
centralization that it has.  Linux is just the kernel; NetBSD is the
kernel and more (ie userland).  When I send a message to
port-i386@netbsd.org, I can expect that message to go to a very high
percentage of people who run NetBSD/i386.  As you can imagine, this is
very useful when having problems with NetBSD; everyone who might have had
this problem can help you out.  There aren't 100+ different NetBSD/i386s
to get, just one.

The other main reason is that it felt different some way from Linux; a way
that I kind of liked.  When I used it, I felt like saying, "this is what
a real BSD Unix feels like.  Ahh."

--fission

On Tue, 4 Jan 2000, Thomas Michael Wanka wrote:

> on the other hand there are also disadvantages of linux:
> 
> many sources (so called distributions) and to choose from these 
> sources is as hard as to choose an OS itself, you need or at least 
> should have in depth knowledge of the sources structures as you 
> cannot expect anything to be at the same place on different 
> sources, and therefore precompiled software may or may not run on 
> your system.
> 
> mike