Aaron J. Grier said:

>this is netbsd-ADVOCACY -- I think some hatred and flamewars are to be
>expected, even if they are in bad taste.  some of my best friends are
>hardcore linux hackers, but I don't hold it against them.  ;)

I don't really have hatred for Linux, but I do see the problems they are
having with 2.4.x and the frequent postings to bugtraq. It is more work
to keep a Linux machine safe and secure than a NetBSD machine.

>I caught the NetBSD virus due to surplus decstations being thrown my
>way.  linux was barely getting started on decstation at that point,
>(even now it seems to have stagnated,) and with more non-linux-running
>hardware following me home, (VAX and then a couple turbochannel alphas,)
>I didn't know of any other non-commercial options.

My domain, rmkhome.com, started out as a 286/16 running Coherent in 1989.
It was connected to the world through UUCP, and was known as rmkhome.UUCP.
Later I moved up to Coherent 386 and ran it until 1995, In 1993 I got my
UUCP provider to host my MX record and became rmkhome.com.

By 1994 it was apparent that Coherent wasn't going to get networking anytime
soon, and I started looking around for alternatives. In April of 1994 I
hacked together a 486/66 box with 8 megs of memory and a 540 meg SCSI drive.
I then installed NetBSD 0.9a from a tape that I got from John Woods,
jfw@funhouse.com, and got a PPP connection. In 1995 I switched my Coherent
system over to NetBSD 1.0a, got a dedicated 24x7 dialup account and became
a permanent net presence. The original NetBSD box became my webserver,
tencats.rmkhome.com, and ran without a hitch until January 1997 when it got
hit with a lightning spike.

And then I started buying used Sun boxes and i386 parts, and went crazy. :-)

>there's a lot of reasons I like NetBSD: the strong unix-nature of NetBSD
>is one of them.  I dig the minimalism.

NetBSD is BSD UNIX without a lot of added frills.

>some the other main reasons I like NetBSD are the fantastic uniformity
>and ease of administration across platforms.  I really appreciate the
>little things like the daily reports, /var/backups, and mtree -- stuff
>that eases sysadmin tasks.  it is easy to administer NetBSD on all my
>different platforms.  the actual box I'm running on has become a true
>commodity.

Yup. I have i386, sparc, and sun3. And your reminding me that I have a
decstation 3100 that I want to get working. Plus I want an Alpha system.

>and finally I love the code uniformity.  being able to build kernels and
>userlands for all my different architectures from the same source tree
>is elegant.  when build.sh gets all hammered out, I'll be able to build
>from any platform to any platform as well.  cross-compile an /i386
>kernel and userland from my VAX!  (or maybe that's the other way around?
>:) )

Ultimately it will probably be cross-compile anything, anywhere.

-- 
Rick Kelly  rmk@rmkhome.com  www.rmkhome.com