Re: OpenBSD vs MS (non trivial)

[Alf Breull <puma@hannover.sgh-net.de>]

Thank you very much for your kind replies, comments and time, 
specially to Nick Holland, Seth Arnold and José M. Fandiño 
(in order of email recept) !

In summary, my original question on OpenBSD vs MS was based 
on discrepancies I couldn't resolve myself and which were 
(also) initiated by OpenBSD's fdisk: 

Once understood, OpenBSD's fdisk has (to me) an attractive 
output, is easy to manage, and is a powerful tool with a 
detailed man page. Different, 'my' fdisk from MS has 4 
possibilities to select something, reads/ sorts the partition 
table by creation dates and doesn't allow to create more than
one primary partition. [1]

'If the rest corresponds to this', was my idea which was more 
and more supported when reading emails in this list,  'I wouldn't
need anything else than OpenBSD, at least for my job and once 
when OpenBSD was half-way understood and practiced/ experienced
by me'.

However, this contrasts with other observations (my own or in 
this mailing list), [2]
(a) complaints of the type something runs under MS but not 
    under OpenBSD, [3]
(b) the rare but regular advice in this list to use MS tools 
    for 'solving' a problem, and 
(c) an exclusive support for winnt or win2k at the university 
    I'm working at, due to a regulation of corresponding 
    ministery.

So, basically I wanted to understand (and structure) those
divergent observation and experiences.

Thank you for time, help and guidance. 

Alf

[1} Further, even commercial products, like Partition Magic, 
v 5, quit service under MS osses (msdos, win9*, winnt) when a 
pc's partition table is sorted by rank of position and not equal
to ranks by creation date.

[2] (a) and (b) were explained by Nick Holland, (c) cannot be
explained; José M. Fandiño indicated http://www.unix-vs-nt.org/ 
(the 'Kirch Paper') and Seth Arnold encouraged to read Bach's 
Design Of The Unix Operating System -- and to be more precise 
in my questions :)) (I learn, I try, I learn, ... ).  :))

[3] yes, I also have something (the kbm-ps2 chip at the p6vap-A+
board by AMR). However, I blame this on its introduction date 
(6 months ago), meanwhile.