The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce that Release 1.5.3 of the NetBSD operating system is now available. NetBSD 1.5.3 is a maintenance release for users of NetBSD 1.5.2, 1.5.1, 1.5 and earlier releases, which provides the following updates relative to 1.5.2: A number of security problems have been fixed, some performance fixes have been incorporated, improved device support in some existing drivers, some new device drivers have been added.
NetBSD 1.5.3 Released
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Scooped the main netbsd web page!
http://www.netbsd.org
However, I am happy to report that the next release, 1.6 has reports of being really stable on a lot of platforms.
> However, I am happy to report that the next release,
> 1.6 has reports of being really stable on a lot of
> platforms
You’re right. I’ve been playing with 1.6 beta for about three weeks now and it runs great. Kudos to the NetBSD team.
This is definately a nicer reaction to see for an early release announcement than some of the FreeBSD users had with the 4.6 release, when they argued semantics endlessly down to “FreeBSD 4.6 available for downloaded, release pending, ISO images still not available”
Speaking of ISO images, do any mirrors have them yet? Or am I just going to have to wait?
that was not FreeBSD’s fault, it was OSNews being over eager
Many kudos to them! It’s nice to see a new release of NetBSD.
Isnt 1.6 supposed to be out soon? Anyone got som real info on when we might expect it?
that was not FreeBSD’s fault, it was OSNews being over eager
No, it was people mindlessly quibbling over the semantics of the word “release”
Now, I can understand it being an error if it were posted that 4.6 was officially released before the announcement had been sent.
Notice there are no NetBSD users quibbling over such minor details. They’re busy doing more useful things like upgradind their systems.
> Isnt 1.6 supposed to be out soon? Anyone got som real info on when we might expect it?
Well, looking at initial 1.6 release process announcement, 1.6 is already over one month late (if that is the right word; there really wasn’t a promise or anything for any specific release date). If we extrapolate from the fact that RC1 should’ve been out June 13, and as I think RC1 still is not out, 1.6 should be at least two weeks away (the original 1.6 announcement said 1.6 should be out one week after 1.6_RC1).
But in any case, I don’t believe/hope 1.6 is going to be pushed further and further anymore. NetBSD already has a “bad” reputation for releasing very seldom. But that’s what makes it kinda different from other BSD’s as well: so far, NetBSD hasn’t had any formal release scheduling, and if they have, it certainly is not something you would use to set your clock (or even calendar).
Had Eugenia not been in a competition to announce FreeBSD 4.6 before anyone else, the conversation never would have taken place. The average BSD user is way beyond ISO releases, I can be building world while doing any number of other things. If OSNews readers want ISOs than Eugenia should recognize that and just wait.
You seem to be implying that NetBSD is somehow better than FreeBSD. The fact is they’re very friendly with each other and the “quibbling” you see here was because of a few minor human errors.
I hope Eugenia acts more responsibly in the future. However, even if she does everything perfectly, there’s no way to stop people from bitching. Especially when you’re talking the larger numbers of people FreeBSD attracts. Notice how nobody is complaining that NetBSD doesn’t have firewire, or this or that other feature. You’ll see a lot more whining and crying with FreeBSD simply due to numbers.
I’m not trolling here, but I honestly wonder why one would choose NetBSD over FreeBSD on an i386 machine. Originally FreeBSD was the 4.4BSD fork specifically for i386 hardware. NetBSD supports *many* architectures, which is great. But why would one choose it over FreeBSD on i386? I looked at netbsd.org for an answer to what I presume is a FAQ, but didn’t find one.
Honestly, the reason you run netbsd on i386 is because you are also running it on another architecture and want consistancy amongst your machine.
For instance, I have alpha, sparc, and hp300. So, being familiar means that I can use a x86 install and am familiar with the specific “gotchas”. It all about experience. However, if you are on FreeBSD, you have a choice of greater technical depth (things seem to come from FreeBSD, then migrate to NetBSD)
In my case, and I think that’s the reason for some others preference, I go with NetBSD not because of the architectures, but because of the leanner system (call it “more spartan” if you like). For some of us, bloat, even the smallest amount of it, is not an option.
Yay!
NetBSD is my choice of BSD as well, both for its superior platform support but also for clean install and other various nice details. Go netbsd.
The installer is neato keen but so much for final configuration…..yack ptooey.
As someone else already said, you’ll have NetBSD on i386 over FreeBSD, because you have NetBSD on some other arch as well.
Though, for me, this is no longer correct, since I only have NetBSD/i386. But the reason for this is because I started out with NetBSD/amiga, so I got familiar with NetBSD.
Also, I want to say that there is not really point asking why people would choose NetBSD over FreeBSD: I *can* see reasons for choosing FreeBSD over NetBSD, but I can’t see any reasons for *not choosing* NetBSD over FreeBSD. As in: FreeBSD is not any kind of the definite choice, if you are going to run *BSD on i386. No real reason for not picking any of the *BSDs.
Well its always nice to try another OS. I use it because I need NSS, which is not in FreeBSD(5.0 will have it). Their VM system is a joy.
Anyone seen them on any mirrors yet?
Because NetBSD runs better than anything on old hardware. You know, not everybody upgrades their hardware only because it’s a little bit dated. Recently I had to make a Nat & firewall server of a 486/33 with 8 MB. Runing Linux even with custom kernel was almos impossible, FreeBSD was a little bit better but not much and OpenBSD won’t even start up for about 10 minutes because of all that crypto stuff. Now this “server” happily runs NetBSD’s GENERIC kernel and it’s FAST (relatively of course)
> (things seem to come from FreeBSD, then migrate to NetBSD)
That’s not true. Much of architecture specific code of FreeBSD is derived from NetBSD code. USB support in FreeBSD is from NetBSD. rc.d is from NetBSD as well. It would be good idea to dig FreeBSD sources yourself to see how many $NetBSD$ cvs tags are there. 😉
newbtconf. It’s the stuff.
it’s true, most innovations come from NetBSD. for instance, FreeBSD-5.0.-CURRENT just recently adopted NetBSD’s /etc/rc.d structure. IMNSHO it beats the pants off any other startup script method. G O B S D !
>things seem to come from FreeBSD, then migrate to NetBSD