Subject: Re: NetBSD being used as the core for secure OS distro
To: Shane M. Coughlan <shane_coughlan@hotmail.com>
From: Greg A. Woods <woods@weird.com>
List: netbsd-help
Date: 09/26/2003 18:48:36
[ On Thursday, September 25, 2003 at 21:14:25 (+0100), Shane M. Coughlan wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: NetBSD being used as the core for secure OS distro
>
> I may regret asking this, but what known limitations are likely to come and
> bit me (especially on the i386 flavour of the system)?

There's much more current i386 hardware support in FreeBSD than in
NetBSD across the board, especially if you consider FreeBSD 5.1 (though
5.1 is really not ready for general production use in my opinion).

One example I'm quite familiar with is the "ahc" driver.  The
NetBSD-current version has been updated to be on par with FreeBSD,
however the version still used on the netbsd-1-6 branch is very dated
and won't work very well, if at all, with any recent Adaptec card in
combination with any recent high-end SCSI drives (where "recent"
includes the last year or _two_, depending on specifics).  (I'm working
on getting a back-ported version of "ahc" tested and hopefully it can be
pulled up for 1.6.2.)

However if you know for certain the hardware you'll be using is all
happily and fully supported as far as your needs go in NetBSD-1.6.1 then
you should be fine.

-- 
						Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098                  VE3TCP            RoboHack <woods@robohack.ca>
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