You haven't stated what your device is actually doing, so perhaps there are 
other advantages to using NBSD.  However, it sounds like a chief part of it 
is an embedded webserver.

It seems somewhat foolish to me to have a device you wish 100% uptime on run a 
webserver you expect heavy load on in an emulation mode, when you've already 
got things ready to go with it in the native OS.

Without knowing more, it seems logical to either use a NetBSD-native 
webserver, or else to use Linux.

You should use the best tool for the job, not the one that you personally 
prefer, especially for a product that a lot of other people(paying 
customers!) are going to be using.  If the customers prefer Linux, are 
already using the product primarily in Linux, and you are running it in NBSD 
only in emulation mode, then logically Linux is the best tool for the job.

On the other hand, there are certainly embedded products out there running 
NetBSD.  That happened to be the right tool for the job in those cases.

On Wednesday 02 February 2005 1:10 pm, Andreas Drewke wrote:
> Hallo,
>
> i like to ask a serious question.
>
> The software company I am working at might make a deal with another company
> to sell server system with a small Flashcard or rom as storage
> device(approx. 256 or 512mb) where a Unix-like-OS and our Server Software
> will be running on.
>
> Actually here in company I develop and run the application on NetBSD, but
> customers who bought the product choosed of course their OS - named linux -
> themself, so there is no real prove that my preferred combination works
> really stable and reliable in Real World Usage (means 100% uptime).
>
> I would like to chose NetBSD of course for the OS.
>
> But now the questions.
>
> 1. Is it possible to run NetBSD/i386 from a CF like storage device(maybe
> more a question of bios)?
> 2. Is it possible to run it without graphics card? Is this possible at all
> on x86 hardware (hmm, might depend on bios and hardware I guess too)
> 2. What about things like swap partitions. There will be enough ram in that
> machine for the task it will do. But does NetBSD prefer a  small swap space
> thow to do some VM tasks?
> 3. Has anyone run a production http server on Java & Java HTTP Server like
> Tomcat reliable, fast(means comparable fast to other unix-like OS) through
> linux emulation layer (I mean a server that really is under pressure of
> course)
> 4. Has anybody any other thoughts that comes to mind when reading this?
> 5. Am I insane just to consider NetBSD?
>
> I thing question 3 is the most interessting one....
>
> Regards
> Andreas