My way from Debian Linux m68k to NetBSD m68k and BACK to Debian, using AMIGA 1200.

["nzabrod" <nzabrod%yandex.ru@localhost>]

Hi All !
I have been using Debian m68k on Amiga since December 2005. Some persons from 
mailing list helped me out with PCMCIA Ne2000 support in kernel, thank you guys 
again.
In the beiginning of March 2006 I decided to move my system to NetBSD 3.0, 
because, I *thought*, that it would be more robust, fast and nice system. My 
test 10 gb HDD worked nicely, also I solved the problem with big hard drives, 
installing AmigaOS 3.9 (thank god, I have KickStart 3.1 =)). 
Why I tried it ?
I already had WORKING Debian system, busy with torrent downloads via bittornado 
and some other P2P stuff, like GiFT framework, running nicely.
But I liked pkgsrc - it was something really cool and smart (debian bin 
packages are good too, but pkgsrc has something charming - everything I tried, 
worked). Also, I wanted to repartition my drive and give swap partition REALLY 
big size, like a couple of gigabytes - I have only 32MB of RAM available - and 
no idea where to get a 64 or 128 SIMM =). 
Also I heared, that NetBSD has a better-designed kernel architecture, and so on.
The last 5 cents - I could install NetBSD for i386 on VirtualPC on my XP box 
and compile any kernel for any architecture. That was cool, I decided to 
kick-off all Draco and SCSI stuff, I have Blizzard 1230 and no SCSI. So, kernel 
was build in a couple of hours. That inspired me greately for expirements.
The first thing, that made me mad, was that my 30 GB HDD showed tons of errors 
during formatting, while NetBSD installing. Linux worked there good.. I was 
really angry and confused.
Second... my IDE ATAPI CDROM was not found in NetBSD. No way. No ATAPI CD. No 
even traces of any ATAPI devices... I have installed FileZilla FTP on XP box 
and performed installation via FTP. 
During install I've got TONS of errors like - "timeout reading, soft error 
(corrected)" or "interrupt lost, soft error, corrected". My dmesg was full of 
that stuff. Again, in Linux everything went nicely on same HDD. I don't belive, 
that HDD can degrade so fast and in such a lot of places =). 
So far, so good. 
The second thing I installed, was an SSHD. 
Troubles:
Key pair generation is REALLY slow. And after that, when I connect via SSH to 
AMIGA, it takes REALLY LONG TIME. Don't know why, Debian Sarge worked quite 
faster. (2 times faster, as I think)
After that I installed WGET and enabled FTPD in inetd. 
WGET performance was like in Linux, FTPD worked better. (But I think, it 
depends on inetd settings, not on OS)
And now here comes the moment of truth =). It's out here. After 12 hour or 
above of compilin python 2.4 and installing bittornado after that.. I've got 
CORE DUMPS every bittornado start. Looks, like NetBSD cannot handle large 
amount of connections and such "hard" scripts like bittorent.
Anyway, I don't need such OS at home. It cannot utilise my DSL connection and 
bring me new movies every night through torrent =)
My lame little comparison between NetBSD and Linux for AMIGA computers.
1. Kernel maintainance. NetBSD is better. I can install it in 5 minutes on 
VirtualPC and start to utilise cross-compiling nearly immediately. And the 
kernel WORKS. 
2. Kernel design. I'm not a unix freak, but I THINK that NetBSD design is 
better.
3. Real life. Linux (Debian). NO ALTERNATIVES. It works FASTER. SSHD works 
FASTER, binaries starting FASTER, Make-files are parsed FASTER, and I think, 
even configure scripts run FASTER.
4. Hardware handling. Linux is a champ. Everything works (especially, IDE 
power-down on shutdown. That's nice).
5. Usability. Quite same. But Linux has a better console on AGA PAL =). White 
font on black bg  (out-of-box version) is quite nice. NetBSD out-of-the-box 
consloe makes me sick because of terrible flickering and white background.

So, the conclusion. 
1.NetBSD is NICE system, but AMIGA version (may be only on my a1200 with low 
mem amount and pain-in-the-ass IDE) is not suitable for my purposes. (Using as 
P2P machine).
2. Linux has better handling of my EXISTING hardware. (And I like this penguin 
logo on fb console =)). And python does not dump core here =).

May be I had to download and compile latest bleeding-edge source code for 
kernel and base system, may be I missed some secret option in kernel config, 
that makes 68030 run Quake IV in ASCII mode =))... But as a real user, who 
wanted to USE OS, not test and throw away, I can say - I will continue to 
utilise Linux for AMIGA and leave NetBSD for other platforms (planning to get 
used Toshiba Libretto and install it here. It will work like "mothership" for 
sony PSP, if it will be able to handle PCMCIA usb boards =)).
Today I will install Linux back. But... I will miss NetBSD greatly =).
 


-- 
Best Regards
Nikolay O. Zabrodotskiy        
http://mech.math.msu.su/~zabrod