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New $149 NetBSD Single Board Computer Port
An Anonymous NetBSD User writes "NetBSD now supports a new ARM board, the Technologic Systems TS-7200. The TS-7200 is a low cost ($149!) mass produced embedded single board computer that runs on less than 2 watts of power."
It's not expensive, but $150 doesn't seem like Rollback Prices for what you get. A nice microcontroller or all-in-one embedded computer.
Granted, you have to pay quite a bit extra ($180) to get the kit with a power supply (gotta have one of those), and a CompactFlash card (also gotta have one of those. 8MB RAM(or 16 if you get the $165 version) is going to fill up quickly.)
Which is why you should go with Linux, rather than NetBSD, since NetBSD's notion of "support" runs to "we can get it to boot on this hardware" rather than "works well on this hardware and supports all common drivers"
Your description of NetBSD's hardware support is a bit odd. Unlike Linux where the philosophy is "if it works on one platform include it", NetBSD is designed so that a driver written for one platform will work reliably on all those that support the same device. As for missing support for some devices, that's no more or less true than Linux. Compare the support for SGI MIPS for example - when it works in Debian it supports a similar subset of systems and devices. Likewise for the Vax, although here Linux supports a tiny suset of the systems and devices that NetBSD does. Linux has a large proportion of platforms that are only notionally supported (they booted once upon a time, but have languished thanks to Linus being primarily concerned with i386).
all things considered, Gentoo is a better bet
I don't know of a single embedded company using Gentoo (embedded boards being the subject of the original article), and all the embedded Linux kits I've used have been based on RedHat. I also know of no companies using Gentoo on their servers - again it is RedHat along with the odd SuSE box. I did encounter Debian once as a contractor, but the guy who had installed it was reputedly a loose cannon and ahad done it without auhorisation (one of my first tasks was to switch the machine in question to RedHat).
3 ethernets is an odd request?
Isn't the "Internet, LAN, and DMZ" paradigm pretty common for routers/gateways?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
You'll have a hard time convincing anyone in-the-know to run Linux on anything that isn't x86. Its strategy towards porting is "convince the rest of the kernel it's an i386 and work like that", which fails on a lot of systems which are fundamentally different from i386, even if they have some things in common (ISA isn't the same everywhere, for instance).
NetBSD is portable in the Right Way. It actually abstracts architectures, busses, etc. completely, with nothing i386-specific leaving the i386 world (to combat confusion: ports that are LIKE i386 but wouldn't involve the same kernel and installation are exempt - e.g. Xen which doesn't need any hardware drivers but is still based on i386).
The same clean code and clean design that allow this kind of abstraction lead to a generally clean and stable system. NetBSD's worst stability problems occur only in device quirks which haven't yet been fully understood (you'll notice Linux has the same quirks but the hacks around them are usually done earlier, since Linux contributors don't care if something is a hack or not). Where the hardware is non-quirky, the system simply does not encounter problems. Simple as that. You could say the same for Linux to some extent, but for Linux, achieving stability is all about quirks for everything, even where it's not needed [see the first mention of i386 'emulation' above]. That's why the Linux kernel is an order of magnitude larger than NetBSD's but does not have the functionality to justify it.
I ended up typing a lot in response to very little, but the point is: Linux is marketable, so it gets around, NetBSD is proper, so it gets installed over Linux by anyone in their right mind.
Sam ty sig.