I agree that bashing other systems is inappropriate.  (This is *not* a[n
ab]Usenet advocacy group!  (^&)

However, I don't see any sign of GNU/LINUX ``hatred'' in the recent
threads.  Some people have said that GNU/LINUX isn't stable enough for
commercial use on some of its ports; others have said that they never
found a GNU/LINUX distribution that they liked.  There is no hatred in
those comments, just reporting of (sometimes subjective) facts.

Since we're sharng stories about why we like NetBSD, and since this is a
NetBSD advocacy list:

When I first heard of LINUX, it was when a friend was running it on a
386SX of his.  He gave me a dialin account on his machine.  I was pretty
impressed with how it seemed to handle things.  Eventually, I looked into
running the Amiga port of LINUX.  It was at a pretty embryonic stage at
that time.  (I gathered that it was supposed to be bootable, but I never
got it out of the bootstrapping.  It appeared to bail out when trying to
run a ``fake'' bourne shell embedded in the kernel.  Presumably, the fake
shell was just something to help the initial porting effort.)

I didn't have a whole lot of time for it, so I put it aside.

A couple of years later, my beloved Amiga was showing more signs of aging.
Commodore was no longer in existence, and parts were scarce.  If something
on the motherboard died, I'd lose the entire disk's contents...so I
hastily got *something*.  I got a 233 PII Gateway 2000 desktop.  It
shipped with MS-WINDOWS, which I left in place for a while.  (I had to
play the games that came with the machine, right?  Isn't there some fine
print somewhere about that?  *grin*)

Eventually, though, I wanted an OS that didn't insult the user.  The Amiga
OS wasn't available, so I once again considered GNU/LINUX.  Somewhere
along the line, however, I'd heard of NetBSD.  From my finite experience
with programming, I firmly believe in the value of portability to making
code cleaner and saner.  Also,  I imagined that the PC hardware would be a
short pit-stop before I switched to something a little nicer.  (I've never
been a hardware type, and my memory of particular details is fuzzy.
However, between some assembly programming and some comments from others
who *are/were* more the hardware type, I really didh't like the idea of
sitting on a PC for the long term.)  So, NetBSD's goal of portability was
a two-fold win for me.

Well, to make a long story short, I've been very happy with NetBSD
(starting with a 1.3.x release).  There have been little ups and downs
(1.4.0 had a UVM bug that resulted, I gather, in a quick release of
1.4.1), of course.  My original Gateway 2000 is now a headless router.
I've tried a variant of GNU/LINUX (Debian), plus have used various other
flavors of UNIX-alikes (including flavors of GNU/LINUX and BSD) on
university accounts.

From the user perspective, I could probably have been about as happy with
a GNU/LINUX distribution.  I'm not running a large network, and with a
2-year exception, I haven't needed my machines to be reliably up when I'm
not near them.  (That exception was when I commuted 30 miles a day and
sometimes needed access to my home machine when it was not practical to
come back to the physical machine and reset it.)  Although I have a Debian
GNU/LINUX installation that I've spent a little time toying with, I
haven't administrated any GNU/LINUX enough to give a fair report on it.
(Although from using Red Hat in the labs, and Debian at home, I'd say that
GNU/LINUX is much more prone to lockups than NetBSD.)

My wish-list for NetBSD really comes down to:

 * DRI support.  (I'd love to have time to figure out what we need to
   make it work, and try to contribute to the effort.  Right now, my
   life is dominated by being a grad student in mathematics, however.
   (^&  I don't even know if anyone is presently working on it.)

 * SMP support.  (I don't have such a machine, but it seems likely
   that I'll want one someday.  (^&  Probably it will appear in a
   formal release before I have a machine that can use it...)

 * Keep the same level of sanity that NetBSD has enjoyed for as long
   as I've been a user.

 * Maybe some reporting of TNF's doings.  I know that they exist.
   When I sent in a small donation last year, I gather that the
   money did a fast turnaround to go to some developer who was doing
   something for NetBSD.  I assume that TNF runs at least the main
   NetBSD site (is that correct?).  What else do they do?  Even if
   exact financial records are not published, it would be nice to
   see what kids of good deeds they are doing for NetBSD.  (^&
   It might also help people part with money for donations if they
   have at least *some* idea of where the money is going.


  ``I probably don't know what I'm talking about.'' --rauch@math.rice.edu