NetBSD vs. Linux portability [LWN.net]

NetBSD vs. Linux portability

Posted Nov 4, 2004 3:11 UTC (Thu) by stevenj (subscriber, #421)
Parent article: The state of BSD

It's not quite true that NetBSD is the "undisputed master of portability." At least one Linux kernel developer apparently disputes its claim — see this post.

(I haven't bothered to do a careful count, so I don't know who is right.)

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NetBSD vs. Linux portability

Posted Nov 4, 2004 3:21 UTC (Thu) by mbp (guest, #2737) [Link]

Well, to some extent it depends on how you count it. Are you going to count broad architectural families. Or are you going to distinguish binary-incompatible variants (x86 vs amd64, and various arm and SH subfamilies.) Are you going to allow for the different models of hardware that are supported - NetBSD supports ia64, but only Linux (I think) can run on the larger machines. Are you going to allow for it being more important to most people to run on currently-available hardware?

We can all agree that both of them are remarkably and admirably portable.

NetBSD vs. Linux portability

Posted Nov 4, 2004 8:01 UTC (Thu) by anabis (guest, #15649) [Link]

It might be enlightening to look at NetBSD's PlayStation2 installation page.

http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/playstation2/

Install step.

* Install PS2 Linux

NetBSD vs. Linux portability

Posted Nov 4, 2004 10:58 UTC (Thu) by Ribbit (subscriber, #8400) [Link]

And if you look at the top of that page, you'll find the reason:

<Quote>
To boot the kernel, you will require a special boot disc from SONY. The PlayStation 2 can not read CD-R/DVD-Rs. Currently, the only such disc available is the SONY Playstation 2 Linux distribution.
</Quote>

Cannot compare forks to ports

Posted Nov 9, 2004 13:27 UTC (Tue) by hackerb9 (subscriber, #21928) [Link]

The illustrious Rick Moen pointed me to the Linux User Group HOWTO which he maintains. It lists all of the current architectures and platforms that Linux currently runs on. Comparing that list to the list of NetBSD ports it is now evident that Linux has been ported to more platforms than NetBSD.

One of the problem with this is that it is trying to compare the number of Linux forks to NetBSD ports. Any comparison should focus on either forks or ports.

A fork is a substantial change which is not folded back into the mainline code. For example, ELKS (Linux for the 8086/286) is not actually part of Linux, it is a fork. If a fork isn't constantly patched with the latest improvements from the mainline kernel, it quickly stagnates. Having a lot of forks isn't necessarily something to brag about.

A port on the other hand, is not a separate project. When IBM ported Linux to the S/390 they took the time to do it right and had their changes accepted into Linux. You use same source code to compile a Linux kernel for the S/390 as for the 80386. That's what I call a clean design!

Note that Rick Moen's list showing Linux's portability includes this disclaimer:

Note that some items listed were probably one-time forks, little or not at all maintained since creation.

I'd be interested to know how many of those platforms can actually run from the stock Linux kernel. Probably quite a few, but I doubt it's as many as from a stock NetBSD kernel (at least 40).

Ben