| I actually got 386BSD up and running.  It is a *MESS*.  People have compared
        It seems to depend on your hardware... I've got a 486/40, AMI
Bios, and I haven't had any major problems getting 386BSD up and on
the net using SLIP. (I haven't seen any of the "extra interrupt"
problems on my system.) Sure it is a little shaky in places, but it
isn't a year behind linux -- it's hard to even compare them
meaningfully. (Linux has it's own style of shakiness... 0.12 would
wedge if I tried to doshell to a pty that wasn't configured at
startup, for example.) I know of someone successfully using the WD
ethernet code, too.
        The difference is that Linux was constructed whole from
scratch, recently, while BSD has been developed over years. Linux
started out with a 386 base, whereas BSD started out on VAXen and the
386 code was only recently written. There are a lot of OS'es out there
which started with earlier versions of the BSD code -- SunOS and
Ultrix, just to name about 50% of the workstation market :-) So parts
of BSD are "vintage" and parts are very new.
        For myself, the difference is that I can get more real work
done under 386BSD than I can under Linux. (NFS is already there, SLIP
is already there, etc.) This is a statement, not a criticism -- Linux
is a "good thing", having it under GPL is a *really* good thing. It's
an interesting kernel to hack on. In time, people will port other
features to it. There is a place for both... and I expect to see a
large amount of "cross-pollination."

                                _Mark_ <eichin@athena.mit.edu>
                                MIT Student Information Processing Board
                                Cygnus Support <eichin@cygnus.com>