Submitted by The NetBSD Project recently released NetBSD 5.0, the 13th major release of its Unix operating system. If you are not familiar with the BSD mentality, it’s a back-to-basics approach. In this gallery we go from install to running a GNOME desktop in a virtualised VMware instance. This process is console-based.
The install procedure hasnt changes for 10 years or so. So why the screenshots? Maybe to warn users that you are going back in time compared to modern installers like in ubuntu.
Altought NetBSD has a desktop project, they are not nor they try to be Ubuntu.
You are right, they are not Ubuntu (Thank God for that.) But I have to disagree with you about not wanting to be Ubuntu…
Take a look at their Desktop Initiative.
http://wiki.netbsd.se/Desktop_Project
in particular: http://wiki.netbsd.se/Desktop_Branding everything looks just like Ubuntu ( from the GDM theme to the wallpaper).
I hope they go in a different direction.
Edited 2009-05-13 15:58 UTC
This is a small fraction of what The NetBSD Project is. The desktop project is driven by only two developers.
You’re saying NetBSD at all is trying to be Ubuntu just because the Desktop Project uses the same theme. Can I say Ubuntu is just a theme on Debian distro?
Oh, shit…
Looks like the standard GNOME desktop to me… shouldn’t this topic be on NETBSD alone? Not everyone finds GUI’s appealing, some of us just prefer the good old text based installation. These guys work very hard just like any other coder/programmer out there, show some respect.
Thanks NetBSD,
Bradley
Edited 2009-05-13 23:01 UTC
the same direction (duplication of effort argument). The only thing I would like them to go to a different direction is to release a netbsd or bsd flavor on L4.
a text based installer is ideal for hardware where no graphics display is easily possible or where driving graphics is not appropriate.
remember netbsd is not just for ix86 systems with nvidia/ati/intel graphics cards.
But, but it uses a TUI with colors, that way you can’t even install it properly on a toaster with a line printer interface. :p
I’m glad they are staying consistent with this. The screenshots should make people more comfortable with the install process to give NetBSD a shot!
In Today’s, world, you download and burn an ISO. The scariest install I’ve ever done was an older FreeBSD where 50 parts had to be downloaded over a modem then reconstructed. Things are so much better now.
Windows 2000 ish.
I love how they skipped over the whole /etc/rc.conf thing one must do to set networking, etc. That is, to me, the hardest part of the whole thing.
You can totally configure networking by using other files such as /etc/ifconfig.<iface>, /etc/mygate. This is not new and allows for scripting your install configuration if needed.
One thing I used to like in the past was pkgsrc. But if you use a simple and consistent package manager like ports in OpenBSD, you’ll see the difference.
The pkgsrc approach to support every package on every archictecture and on every OS (oh!) seems too bad for pkgsrc. And for users too. Why not just support NetBSD? It would make things easier. The OpenBSD approach is a lot smarter: “We have few developers, we will do this way because it’s better for us.”.
In pkgsrc, there are a lot of ways for doing the same thing, and no real consensus on why doing this way is better than doing that way. There are a lot of package tools which is in fact a third party package, e.g. in pkgsrc/pkgtools directory, meaning you have more than one tool to do the same thing.
Also, no consensus on the syntax of the tools like underscore, e.g. pkg_add and pkgclean (the last a package in pkgtools/), however.
No binary packages.
I think there is no better word than that: pkgsrc isn’t consistent. I do appreciate that. A lot. And for an OS, it’s essential to have a good (and consistent) package manager.
What are you whining about? Pkgsrc works very well on NetBSD and other Unix OSes. You have a robust and consistent framework for building the same software on BSD, Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, etc.
What makes you say there are no binary packages? Have you even looked? Go to ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/ there are binary packages for NetBSD and a few other OSes like Solaris and QNX. There aren’t any NetBSD-5 binary packages, I think because version 5 has been recently released, so they’re in the process of building them. If there aren’t any packages for your specific architecture, you can always build them from source, it’s quite easy with pkgsrc.
Pkgsrc tools are very consistent and they all have manpages. They are already installed with the base system on NetBSD, or they get installed when you bootstrap pkgsrc on other OSes. Tools under pkgsrc/pkgtools directory are extra tools and are not required for basic package management, they can have whatever names their developer chooses, because they’re not core tools.
I think you’re missing the point of pkgsrc. It’s supposed to work cross-platform and is a very nice framework if you have to administer different Unix OSes, like Linux, Solaris and BSD. In my opinion, the fact that pkgsrc is cross-platform doesn’t interfere with it’s consistency, or flexibility. Quite the opposite, because it supports so many different platforms, more people tend to use it and submit bug reports and patches, which improves the quality of software.
dbolgheroni – “No binary packages. “
rom508 – “” rel=”nofollow”>ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/”
I was about to jump in a correct dbolgheroni on pkgsrc, but I see you’re already on the job… way to go rom508!
Bradley
Edited 2009-05-14 17:50 UTC
Sometime recently the binary tree for Solaris 10 and 11 was pulled. This was the last time I installed a binary package from there. There is now only a bootstrap tarball letting you know you’re gonna have to build from source I suppose. Yeah, I’m already bootstrapped.
You sound like they charged you money for access to Solaris’ binary packages and then removed those packages. I don’t see other Linux or BSD projects hosting binary packages for other operating systems. It would be nice for NetBSD/pkgsrc to provide binary packages for all supported permutations of OS + hardware architecture, but they probably have limited resources, bandwidth and disk space on ftp servers.
Seriously, how difficult is it for you to build your own packages?
Yes, it’s easy. But can take a lot of time. Binary packages isn’t necessary, but it’s more than convenient.
I have a machine with a Celeron 766 MHz with 128 MB RAM I like too much. It’s more than convenient to run a GUI with Firefox 3.x, but it’s slow enought to take ages to compile it. Actually it takes ages even on better machines I have here.
I don’t like OpenOffice, nor I do use, but have you tried to compile it?
NetBSD support lots, including some very slow, architectures. I used to do a lot of things sometime ago in a Quadra 650, 68040 33MHz with 32 MB RAM. Like the first example, it can do a lot of work very well, but take days if you want to compile even the simpliest packages.
This is not the point. I know I can have a better machine for a very low price. But in a architecture supposed to run on lots of embedded devices, don’t you think having binary packages matter?
What is your point? If you need binary packages they’re all here for NetBSD-4.0 and all the architectures that NetBSD runs on
ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD-4.0/
There aren’t any packages for NetBSD-5 yet, it was released just a few weeks ago.
So if you run NetBSD-4.0 on i386 architecture and you want to install Firefox3 from NetBSD’s repository of binary packages, then all you have to do:
# export PKG_PATH=”ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD-4.0/i386/All;ftp:/…
# pkg_add firefox3
Sparc Solaris binary packages are at:
ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/SunOS/sparc/5.9_2008Q3/Al…
I don’t understand why people are moaning about building packages from source. Pkgsrc automates everything for you, i.e. it downloads the sources, checks the checksums, builds and installs the packages. All you have to do is go to package’s directory and type ‘make package’.
I run very old Sun Ultra 10 that has 440MHz UltraSparc IIi CPU. I always build my own packages from source. I’ve built large packages like kde3, koffice, firefox3, gimp, etc. on this very machine. Yes it does takes a few days to build kde3, but I don’t mind waiting, I just leave the machine running all day and night for a few days or so, untill all the packages are done. Right now I’m building complete kde-4.2.3 to see how it works on this slow machine. So what if it takes 2-3 days to build the package, the world is not gonna end by this time…
Its not hard at all to build the packages especially in my own chrooted enviroment + pkg-chk + pkg_tarup and other tools, but ‘you sound like’ you’re attempting to cover up the statement “there are binary packages for NetBSD and a few other OSes like Solaris and QNX.”
I know what pkgsrc is. And actually, I do like pkgsrc.
What’s the point in having binary packages for NetBSD 4.0? Binary packages are something the pkgsrc people know they must have, I’m not the only one in the world who think the same.
…it’s just me, but installing NetBSD is a pretty straightforward experience. I’d wish Gentoo was this easy ;D
Setting up network has never been easier than this