NetBSD, the operating system specifically designed to run on anything from a supercomputer to a toothpick, just released version 11.0. There’s a ton of changes and improvements here, such as a brand new port to RISC-V, which supports a number of the more popular RISC-V SoCs (sadly, not the one I have just yet). NetBSD 11.0 also adds initial support for the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite platform, as well as a port to the virt68k platform, which means the Motorola 68000 port in QEMU using paravirtualized devices.
Speaking of virtualisation, they’re also introducing a new MICROVM kernel for x86:
New MICROVM kernel for x86, supporting both i386 and amd64, NetBSD 11.0 introduces a dedicated MICROVM kernel designed for extremely fast virtual machine boot, leveraging PVH boot, VirtIO MMIO, and multiple kernel optimizations, it can boot in about 10 ms on 2020-era x86 CPUs.
↫ NetBSD 11.0 release notes
There’s also improved support for Linux system calls in compat_linux, the npf firewall, and much more. Of course, the list of other improvements, buigfixes, and smaller changes is long, including many changes for old, outdated, or otherwise odd architectures and platforms, as is the NetBSD way. Which other operating system proudly lists substantial improvements to their PA-RISC, Motorola 68000, and Alpha ports, among others?
The last AT&T Unix,
i.e., a system that provides a set of simple tools for operating a computer, and where almost everything is a file, stream of bytes.
AIX, HPUX and Solaris are Unix’s, but you will end up using some “big” Management Tools for the system administration. This is what is happening with Systemd for Linux, instead of many small programs, there is a big one taking care of many aspects of the computer administration (not necessarily bad).
Some years, many pointed to OpenBSD as the OS preserving the “spirit” of classical Unix. In my opinion it was, but in the last few years one can feel that one faces less text editing. Not much but, after using current NetBSD, it looks like different trends.
So, I think NetBSD is the last operating system that follows the original Unix philosophy of AT&T. Is it good? Not necessarily. Is it fun? Maybe. Will you learn fundamentals of system administration? Definitely.
Ben, I’m curious to re-try NetBSD at some point. It’s maybe been 20 years since the last time…
What are the changes to OpenBSD that make you feel as you do? You made me think of how in OpenBSD you no longer edit rc.conf to enable/disable services, instead using rcctl (although this just edits rc.conf.local which you could do by hand). I have found the small extra layer added here-and-there in OpenBSD to enhance everyday usability without adding much complexity, but I’m sympathetic to minimalism as well. There also seems to be an anti-customization trend in the OpenBSD community, somewhat dovetailing the sane/secure defaults philosophy. Just interested in your thoughts..
I love OpenBSD and NetBSD, and I do not think this KISS point of view should go into any useless discussion. I am not even of the idea that KISS necessarily is the best option.
I think your are right, there are only some small extra layers with text files behind, not sure this makes a “trend”.
But I would say that Netbsd comes with less constrains, while openbsd has a more opinionated administration (safety by default) and stronger conventions ? Definitely, OpenBSD isn’t “more complicated” in a chaotic way.
>designed to run on anything from a supercomputer to a toothpick
Not on Itanium computers though!
well … first, someone would have to provide an Itanium computer to a NetBSD kernel hacker.
Any donors? Any kernel hackers willing to step forward?