On behalf of the NetBSD Release
Engineering team, Matthias Scheler announced the availability of NetBSD 3.0 RC5 for testing. NetBSD 3.0 RC5 is available in the "daily builds" section of
your local FTP mirror, and users are encouraged to test it out and report any bugs using send-pr(1). A brief summary of changes from NetBSD 3.0_RC1 to 3.0_RC5 is available in Matthias's announcement (a list of changes from NetBSD 2.0 to NetBSD 3.0 can be found here).
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i think most people who like bsd probably still think netbsd is only worth using if you have hardware that won't run freebsd... i haven't used net since 1.x (except on sdf), so i can't really say anything about how it is on x86...
some parts of the netbsd source are much cleaner than corresponding parts of freebsd, mainly because it's necessary to achieve the high level of portability that netbsd is known for... and some people prefer pkgsrc over ports...
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Not many users active in online forums, no.
Some propaganda..
NetBSD is/has:
* very easy to configure through the /etc/rc.conf file
* a very nice connection between installed binaries and the source for them. Good for learning.
* very good manual pages
* clean kernel interfaces
* easy to install with many options. Floppy, cd-image, netboot. Just get the machine up and running in some way. Then you can install the distribution from CD, NFS , FTP. If you have an old computer lacking a proper CD? Boot from floppy. or vice versa.
NetBSD is like music played by a professional musician. No missing or false tones. Everything comes together in a nice way. No other OS gives the same warm fuzzy feeling like NetBSD. :-)
And do not come argue that you MUST have 3D support.. I know you won't use it anyway.. Most people buy expensive 3D cards just to surf and chat.. ;-)
And to people who say that building from source is a pain... NetBSD might be the reason you are secretly searching for to try to convince yourself you need that dual-core AMD64 upgrade now..
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Amazing that some people find it easier to post erroneous information in statements beginning with "last I remember..." (which might very well be false, as in this case, and will fool people less informed in the subject) instead of just surf for some facts?
NetBSD is a complete system with its own website, www.netbsd.org.
To find information about support for the AMD64, click on the link to the right that says 'amd64'. It will take you to http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/amd64/
Near the top of the page you can read:
"The port is fully functional. It has been tested on single-CPU and multiprocessor (SMP) Opteron configurations. Since the release of NetBSD 2.0, it is a completely supported platform."
And why on earth would I suggest people to buy dual core CPUs if they were unsupported?
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I suppose that shouldn't be too much of a surprise. Outside of the mailing lists, the NetBSD community is pretty small compared to FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and various Linux distributions. Some sites that I have found useful as a NetBSD user are:
http://www.bsdnexus.com/ - forums
http://www.bsdforums.org/ - forums
http://www.feyrer.de/NetBSD/blog.html - blog
http://blog.onetbsd.de/ - blog
http://pkgsrc.se/ - pkgsrc information
The forums above have NetBSD subsections, but as one can tell there isn't a lot of action. Most communication is done through mailing lists that can be found here:
http://www.netbsd.org/MailingLists
A nice way to read the posts is using http://www.gmane.org/
Anyway, back to the topic at hand. I'm still on 2.1 right now since I'm near the end of my school semester and am too busy to update (no need to risk foobaring stuff). The most significant changes in 3.0 for me would be:
- vnd and vndcompress: this makes creating a live cds a lot easier by allowing for compressed disk images; maybe this will lead to some NetBSD live-cds
- openpam: hopefully this will lead to better login integration with things like LDAP or AFS/Kerberos, not really needed by home users, but for enterprises or universities this can be extremely useful
- new drivers: most significantly for me nforce and intel wireless
- seq: no more using jot in scripts
I'm sure there are other cool things that I've missed (I recall reading something about TCP SACK support), but those are the things that jump off the page for me.
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I switched my workstation over from Debian to NetBSD this year. I couldn't be happier. I took a brief tour though Gentoo and FreeBSD on my hobby machines before settling on NetBSD.
I had grown tired after many years of using APT. It is an amazing piece of software, but seemed more complicated than necessary. I had had some experence with ports-like systems through OpenBSD, and decided they were just more sensible.
Unfortunately, I found gentoo to be a complete mess. The only really positive thing I have to say is installation is very flexible and plesant. Portage occupies a strage space in my opinion: more cruft and complexity than a make-based ports system and still lacking the exceptional qualities of APT.
I have no complaints about FreeBSD. I just found NetBSD to be a bit simpler/more elegant in most respects. A little more polished.
An added bonus to moving to NetBSD was being introduced to pkgsrc, the NetBSD ports system. I've moved from fink to pkgsrc on my powerbook and couldn't be happier.
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here's why i think it sthe best BSD, and probably he best OS:
* it is well designed - some OSes are not - think linux and the number of times different devfs-like systems have broken things. its design properly - generically - and holistically. forget micro-optimisations or hacks.
* it is simple - no over-complications things are logical, or rather things are not illogical
* it is fast. check out the feyrer benchmarks - netbsd 2.0 was much faster in terms of kernel tasks (open socke, close file, copy memory, etc) than other BSDs. netbsd will obviouslly be better.
* sure SMP is slow progress - but its done properly. no regressions or hacks on hacks.
* example, USB was not in netbsd. then it was. and itw was done properly and it is rock solid - unlike the history of USB on linux.
* pkgsrc is good - so good that people on other platforms use it - liek dragonfly BSD and solaris.
* its clean. interfaces are clean and well documented.
* its clean - adding 3rd party apps doesn't pillute /usr/bin.
* its a good well thought out base - if you build appliances or other devices then netbsd is perfect - so perfect that many devices do infact use netBSD inside. routers and things. ok- so its never going to be a super-lite embedded OS - but in some cases it works and products are sold with embedded netbsd.
* the community and the developers are enlightened and zen.
talking of zen - there's a reason why the Xen system was first implemented in Linux and NetBSD - because its netbsd is clear, stable and perfect to build things on.
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From the link in the summary:
ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-daily/netbsd-3-0-RC5/200511302123Z...
I think the NetBSD-daily folder is organized as:
RELEASE/BUILD_DATE/ARCHITECTURE_OR_ISO_OR_SOURCE
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Is gcc processes crashing at seemingly random places or is it always at the same spot, while compiling the same source file? Random places would suggest faulty hardware. Same spot would suggest faulty software, which in this case would be NetBSD.
How is the thing under WinCE? What happens there when you put some load on it? Is it possible in WinCE? Perhaps the only available applications are notepad and solitaire? If so, it won't be anywhere near comparable with running gcc. gcc, by the way, is my favourite memory/cpu test bench.. :-)
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>Is gcc processes crashing at seemingly random places or is it always at the same spot, while compiling the same source file?
I have my pkgsrc tree and swap file on my networked laptop under NFS, which seems to work fine. The first thing I did under 2.1 & 3.0 RC5 is upgrade pkg_install. gcc gets thru the configuration fine but then seg faults almost immediately.
After doing some reading I'm guessing it's dodgy memory on the MP 780. It works fine under WinCE, even playing videos without crashing. But gcc seems to really stress memory in a way WinCE dosen't.
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I intented to install NetBSD on a tiny home server, but at the end, I had to get back to FreeBSD.
The system might be very nice, but the NetBSD guide is far behind the FreeBSD Handbook. Mostly because of that, I find FBSD quite easier to use.
Does anyone know of any step-by-step tutorial which explains how to build FreeBSD-like jails using systrace and chroot on NetBSD?
Hopefully the NetBSD team will invest time and effort to improve the documentation for NetBSD 4.0.
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2005-08-27
One of the factors that led me to NetBSD was that it was actually the first OS to support Cardbus well. Linux and FreeBSD had immature kernel drivers at the time, and I had been a longtime Slackware/Debian user.
I did not want to try NetBSD because of the negative press it always seems to get.
1. Its only for old hardware
2. Its installer will trash your system
These two statement could not be further from the truth.
1. Because its ported to so many systems, NetBSD aims to support as much hardware for its ports that it can, including the oldest and the newest technologies.
2. The first installer I used was with 1.4.2 and it was quite straightforward then and has only improved.
Lately NetBSD has been tested to show greater scalability than FreeBSD and and Linux in a lot of areas. See http://bulk.fefe.de/scalability/
The NetBSD community shares advanced attributes as well. I recall in a slackware forum, when acpi was new, an OP asked about having the OS shutdown the computer and an -------- responder was quick to point that the OP must have some device to "reach around and turn off your system". This was one reason I started looking to other operating systems besides Linux. It seems that other communities are quicker to answer questions, without understanding the question, which does not happen most of the time with NetBSD lists.
NetBSD's development follows by having a clear goal of clean design, and understanding code and code changes rather than throwing in miscellaneous changes because someone felt good about it.
