On Fri, 14 Jan 2011, Matthew Mondor wrote:
(I hope you don't mind me CCing netbsd-advocacy :)
Whatever works to get some traffic on the -advocacy list. It could use some stirring up so it doesn't freeze solid. :-)
But it's funny; I haven't kept up with recent developments at all for the last year or so, and only a few days ago started browsing the mailing list archives to see what has happened lately. What surprised me was seeing several people, and at least two new-to-me users saying the same thing: "NetBSD is so stable and nice, thanks guys".
Not something I remember happening a lot previously. Of course, it could be from my "compressed" reading that it stood out this time...
It's still as quiet as ever on this list though, so the next person who says anything like that will be nudged to forward or cc: here too.
I concur, the stability and reliability of NetBSD (other than its versatility) is a major reason I've kept with it, and there are some systems which are still running which I upgraded from source regularily over the years, two of them old enough to have started with NetBSD 1.6, most of them now tracking the netbsd-5 branch and now running NetBSD 5.1_STABLE.
Can I say "me too"? Even right down to the bit about starting with 1.6 and being on netbsd-5 now; actually on the system I'm typing this on.
The only real, severe, issues I have had have been with USB in the past -- but it's striking just how few problems there are, if you think about it. Which is something you rarely do as long as things keep working.
Something got me thinking about it recently though. About a week ago I had a conversation with a friend who deals mostly with Linux and Big Unix systems at work. Somehow I kept returning to the subject of how nice NetBSD is, and kept heaping praise on how logical and downright *reasonable* the whole system is, compared to some others I have used.
(It might have been slightly annoying having to listen to all that but hopefully we are still friends.)
So it seems only right to "officially" add my voice too. Thanks, everyone. It's not all perfect, but it's pretty damn good.
I can remember a few X11 related issues here and there on local workstations, as well as some power management ones,
Somewhat tangentially: Running on headless (and constantly on) servers seems to be the unstated assumption for many people around here.
I have had the feeling of Doing It Wrong by using NetBSD as my main desktop/workstation OS in the past; that certainly seems to put the spotlight on the weaker areas, or the ones that see the least testing. But I'm not switching to Linux, and getting a Mac would completely ruin my beer budget.
And there are no doubts about what to use for the machine that should just sit in the closet and do its job until everyone forgets it's there.
MAgnus