4 ms·

People should not forget - it runs on many architectures. Especially a toaster. I think the Apple Airport Extreme is ( was ) running NetBSD

• gwern 13y ago
  Yes, but so does Linux. Actually, given the tremendous industry support for Linux and the increasing obscurity of NetBSD, it wouldn't surprise me at all if Linux ran on more architectures now...
  • teho 13y ago
    NetBSD supports 10 CPU[1] architectures; Linux supports 27[2] [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBSD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBSD [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_supported_architectures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_supported_archite... In terms of other hardware I believe it bends even more in Linux's favour. I'm not sure if any Linux distribution has as many ports as NetBSD though. Gentoo and Debian probably come close.
    • justin66 13y ago
      What you've said doesn't even agree with the NetBSD article you linked to (which suggests 15 processor architectures). Even if you could create figures that seem accurate, you really lose some of the nuance with a comparison like this. Questions like which OS you're better off with if you're attacking an architecture without an MMU (linux for sure) or which software distribution treats your old SPARC workstation, for example, as a first-class platform (OpenBSD or NetBSD) instead of an oddball orphan seem more interesting. Similarly, it'd be interesting to know WHY so many new platforms are using Linux instead of *BSD for embedded stuff. Is it something inherent to Linux, just momentum, driver vendor lockin from the vendors, name recognition, or what?