Dave Daniels wrote:

> Like you, I feel that NetBSD is loosing out to Linux, certainly on
> the Acorn platform. If the level of traffic on this mailing list is
> anything to go by
...

> I agree that NetBSD does not push itself. As far as I know there
> are no newsgroups for it. Everything seems to be done on mailing
> lists. I feel that there would be a chance that people would at

...

> Us users of Acorn computers are feeling very lonely at present.
> I hope that NetBSD does not go the same way that RISC OS seems
> to be heading.

Yes, and I can sympathise. But the real question that you have to ask
yourself is, for a new user, what does NetBSD really buy you over Linux?

Sure, as an OS developer having all the sources in one tree is
useful---no need to maintain versions on a gazillion different
things---and many aspects of the architecture are "better," but at the
end of the day these mean nothing to Joe end user who buys his disc from
SuSE and sticks it into the CD ROM drive.

Fine, NetBSD hasn't been commercialised and some could argue this works
for it as well as against it. But too many important buzzword features
are missing for the tecky user (who's a bit more knowledgable than Joe
user) who likes something "cool." At the end of the day, NetBSD really
wins if you need to build, develop for it, and maybe port it.

I've sold many hundreds of NetBSD/arm32 CDs over the years, though
mainly before Linux's rise in popularity. These days, all people want is
Linux. Fine, NetBSD could probably be ported to yet another ARM platform
that Linux doesn't go on, but to win another 4 users, what's the point?

So I think trying to promote NetBSD on the Acorn machine vs. Linux on
the Acorn machine won't make much difference. The Linux PR is better,
the Linux features are higher in number, and the Linux distributions are
easier to use for new users (not sure on the ARM, but the minority
architectures will probably follow what happens to the majority, at
least in terms of popularity etc). SuSE 6.4's admin and installation
environments, combined with journaling, bundled office applications etc.
make the system great for a user unfamiliar with UNIX as they don't have
to chuck themselves in at the deep end.

In any case, I think the whole Linux thing is way overrated too. All
this "yeah, we're slamming Microsoft" crap and slashdotties is just
pathetic. I mean, the platform doesn't even have a decent debugger, a
bad compiler (no insult to those who work on it of course, it's just
nobody unpaid can afford to re-invent such a big wheel) or even a decent
web browser!!! For me, anyway, the toolchain and browser are the most
important things! And on my machines at work, NT handles load much
smoother than Linux, and runs the same X-Windows and all the unix tools
I've come to love anyway as Linux does---it just runs them better. Fine,
it might not be free, but I'd buy the nice car rather than getting a
free clapped out one.

I've probably rattled on about more than I cared to.

	N.