>      I have been lurking on this ML trying to learn a few things.  Since
> changes for the BBS here are coming then I have some decisions to make.

 First of all, next to a welcome, a small hint: the NetBSD community is
based upon volunteer's work. Please don't expect fast answers, or answers 
at all. It simply might take some time to answer.

 The NetBSD/Amiga distribution is older than any Linux/Amiga. Traces have 
been lost over the years, but I believe that I am using NetBSD/Amiga since 
at least 1993. I just couldn't find my discussions with Markus Wild
(the original porter of NetBSD/Amiga) in my Irc-Logs :-)

 In the NetBSD community we failed as yet to mount a professional support
and/or (re-) distribution like RedHat. This doesn't mean NetBSD's distribution
is not professional, it simply means, that it is not commercially driven.

 If you do not want to use a fancy, much advertised, commercial-orientated,
crowded OS, and if you like a professional but heartly-driven environment,
and, last not least, prefer a deamon rather a fat penguin as mascot:
welcome to NetBSD :-)

>      Would these questions be covered by info on the BSD web site?  If yes then
> answer this question and ignore the rest.

 Some of them are, other can't.

>      Since BSD has a longer history with Amiga than the others, is there some
> flavor of official BSD tech support (other than this ML)?

 See expl. above.

>      Does this ML have an official BSD rep that can give an assist when needed?

 No. But mail us anyway. There is no "official" NetBSD support.
Please note: NetBSD is one distribution of a BSD-based OS. Other distributions
of BSD, such as BSDi, FreeBSD, do have commercial and "official" support.

>      Does BSD in it's various flavors use the Linux kernel?

 Yes, Linux may use some BSD-based ideas in their kernels :-)
I hope you note that this question is a faux pas. Just like "Does UNIX 
contains some of the Windows NT ideas?"
 
>      Does BSD have multi-threaded capability?

 Yes - but this doesn't belong to this list, and cannot be answered with
a simple "yes" or "no", as it depends on the application.

>      Does FreeBSD have cfgs for diff platforms?

 FreeBSD is designed in a completely different manner, and is orientated
and dedicated to the i386 based platforms. It is very unlikely that the
support for non-i386 architectures is anything as good as in NetBSD
(or OpenBSd for that matter). NetBSD - as a side note - is generally not
dedicated to any architeture, which makes it less optimised but strong
in it's openness.

>      Is the latest FreeBSD still in Beta?

 Who cares. FreeBSD doesn't run on Amiga... :-)

>      How much overhead does BSD require (min RAM/HD space/cpu/speed)?

 This is covered by the web pages and of course depends on your needs and
demand. You might be able to run NetBSD on an A1200, with barely 4MB RAM
and on a single floppy. But does it make any sense to do so?

>      What major (or possibly minor) diffs are there to watch for between BSD
> and Linux in it's various incarnations?

 This is an advocacy question, I sure won't answer directly. The biggest
advantage of NetBSD in general is, that it contains a complete distribution
set, where Linux is no more than a simple kernel. The disadvantage is beeing
less powerful because of having a (slightly) smaller community :-)

-- 
Markus Illenseer