For the i386, NetBSD 1.0 brings greatly improved performance, stability,
and device support.  To complement the added device drivers, NetBSD
1.0's i386 port has greatly improved device autoconfiguration,
allowing it to correctly find more devices on more machines.  The
final, and perhaps most important point about NetBSD 1.0's i386
support is that it is fully backward compatible with old NetBSD
binaries, so you don't need to recompile all your local programs.
(Note, however, that because of the shared library support, you still
have a lot to gain by doing so.)