Geert Hendrickx has announced the availability of a second release candidate of NetBSD 3.1: Improvements over the first release candidate include: fixed the build of NetBSD-vax; fixed a buffer overflow in PPPoE/ISDN PPP; closed a socket leach in accept(2); removed references to sushi(8) from the afterboot(8) manpage; fixed an integer overflow in FreeType; disabled threading in named(8) to avoid a crash on sparc and sparc64, etc.
NetBSD 3.1 RC2 Released
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Eugenia Loli
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ahh, there comes light to the darkness (http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=15677)
I was wonddering if anybody here uses netbsd, what for, and why? Security, stability, other?
yeah! i am using it in my Digital ALPHAstation 500, a really beautiful machine. its old though, 1995 =) and only with 64MB. in general terms my options were the old Digital UNIX 4.0F that came with it, some linux (gentoo can be stripped down quite good) or some bsd.
first i tried freebsd 6.0, it had lots of ports. however the installation was failing, so i decided to give freebsd 5.4 a try. with freebsd 5.4 the installation went ok, however the after install memory footprint was too big. then i read about the vanishing freebsd alpha support, so i decided to give netbsd 3.0 a try. with netbsd 3.0 the installation went easy, flawless and the after install memory footprint was very small, it had not so many ports but enough for my limited relic.
after reading the ‘darkness’ news i was starting to think about giving gentoo 2006.1 a try. gee! but i like netbsd!
it is true though, that i was missing more ports, hardware acceleration (NVIDIA), default xorg and a few things more, very necessary for my bigger systems…
The most common use I’ve seen is to keep using old hardware, usually as file servers or something. On many platforms, it the only operating system still maintained for them. Personally, I don’t see any reason to use it on x86 or PPC though.
“Personally, I don’t see any reason to use it on x86 or PPC though.”
Haha. Well, it’s hard to ‘personally’ see a reason if you’ve never used it before. NetBSD is an awesome system. Just because its portable doesnt mean it doesnt have any other features. ITS NOT JUST FOR PORTABILITY. Although, portability gives it alot of benificial side effects.
Here is a quote from a guys article at IBM from a few days agao – “NetBSD has an interesting architecture, which is often taken for granted and rarely commented on outside Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) circles. The system’s well thought-out design allows for wide hardware support, a small footprint, stability, and security. NetBSD’s unique features include a new paradigm for handling device drivers and other interesting innovations.
These design decisions and commitment to source code, which not only works but works right, have helped NetBSD lay claim to being the most portable UNIX® derivative in existence. It particularly excels in embedded systems, but you should also consider it as a compelling alternative to more mainstream servers, desktops, and laptop operating systems.”
NetBSD!
.adam.
I’d imagine people who play with it the first time probably do it on older hardware. I first installed it on x86, but have since used mac68k, alpha, sparc, sparc64, and powerpc. After using it, however, I came to appreciate its three biggest attributes: simplicity, consistancy, and quality. It’s not fancy, but it’s quick, stable, and works. It’s also fast; faster than FreeBSD on single proc machines (and with more consistend hardware compatibility since FreeBSD went to >5.x), and certainly faster than OpenBSD, but YMMV.
Hi:
I am newbie using NetBSD. I have installed KDE and KDevelop and I’m starting to write an object oriented library in C++.
I chose NetBSD because its “UNIXity”, its clear and nice design, its portability and its small foot print.
I just hope the internal problems do not affect the development and progress of this nice OS.
Edited 2006-09-05 13:31
I choose to run NetBSD, along with the other two BSDs, to learn how to administrate UNIX, the traditional way.
Edited 2006-09-05 18:32
This system has been great for me since 2000. I migrated from Linux when I wanted a personal system that paralleled a true Unix environment and had goals to do things right rather than any which way but loose. At that time, neither FreeBSD or Linux supported cardbus fully on my new Dell notebook but NetBSD did.
The fact is that it not only works on lots of hardware platforms but also lots of peripherals on those platforms. I can take a Sun qfe card and use it in an x86 machine. I can take an Intel NIC and use it in a HP/Compaq/DEC alpha based system. <– Thats a goal realized.
While its true that many applications have been written for Linux (some in the “open-source” community are not really that open if its not Linux) the application can likely run on a NetBSD system which is able to make calls to Linux libraries necessary to run the app through its emulation layer.
NetBSD also has an interesting combination security-based features.
CGD- cryptographic disk. This disk layer is like a virtual node layer and does not use NFS like others you see. The result is much greater speed. Liken it to FreeBSD gdbe.
Systrace – I have a ssh server running in a systraced environment that allows me to ACL unpriviledged users to only do exactly only what I allow them to do.
http://www.citi.umich.edu/u/provos/systrace/
pf – inported packet filter from OpenBSD
There are hosts of other features plus this is the same platform that won the internet speed record
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2125273/internet-speed-record-sma…
When I want to audit my system and the installed packages from pkgsrc I can run one command that allows me to see the 11 advisories that are out for my version of Firefox.
RC1 did not support my mainboard (ASUS K8N-DL with nforce4 chipset) …