On Saturday 06 August 2005 08:57 pm, Hubert Feyrer wrote:
> In his article about the current state of the Linux kernel[0], Geoff
> Broadwell writes ``Linux now supports more devices on more platforms than
> any other operating system ever (Linux passed NetBSD last year, an
> impressive achievement)''.

<sarcasm> What, that we were there first? </sarcasm>

maybe in aggregate, but are the drivers portable (or even in the source tree 
(or in source form))?

> My question in that context is: What is that "Linux" that's supporting all
> these devices? Is it what everyone can grab on kernel.org? Or is it just a
> term for a set of operating system kernels that behave roughly the same on
> all platforms they run? Or do they really all run kernels from the same
> sources? Reminds me of my musing about portability[1] some time ago... is
> Linux (the kernel) really there were NetBSD is today?
>
> What are your thoughts? Anyone know Linux good enough?
>

	Well this really strikes me as being about drivers and, to a lesser extent, 
ports. However, for me, the "messiness" of the Linux kernel and its drivers 
negate many of its benefits.

Drivers/support NetBSD lacks (that Linux (possibly with 3rd party additions) 
has)
 * Aureal AU88x0 PCI sound
 * (for the time being) NDIS wrapper
 * 3D acceleration on NVidia GPUs (not our fault really)
 * DRI
 * support for nForce ethernet (reverse enginered or otherwise)
 * many DVB/(HD)TV boards

Ports we lack
 * IA-64 (FreeBSD has made progress though)
 * S390
 * PPC64 systems
 * MIPS64 systems
 * Linksys WRT54G and compatible systems (but Linux even gets a _Broadcom_ 
WLAN driver)
 * a completed OpenRISC port

Just my .00000002 megadollars.

	I need to try my Ralink RT2500 (ral) board on my hp700 (a B180L running 
Gentoo, it's a production box so I haven't tried NetBSD/hp700 yet) to see if 
Linux's driver works (I expect it won't). I wasn't impressed when my AU8830 
sound board had interupt issues (IIRC the kernel paniced). The portability of 
NetBSD prevails.

	Jonathan Kollasch