Guest post by Another version of the extremely portable unix-like operating system NetBSD was released today. This release fixes many security issues and bugs. It also includes a good amount of new features. Please read the announcement here.
Another version of the extremely portable unix-like operating system NetBSD was released today. This release fixes many security issues and bugs. It also includes a good amount of new features. Please read the announcement here.
Well, all the *BSD’s are Unicen, at least genetically, if not certified ones.
Mostly security fixes in this one, but downloading none-the-less. Wonder if I should replace my Ubuntu test-installation* with NetBSD? How well does the proprietary ATI-driver work on NetBSD?
* Don’t worry – I’m using gentoo as my primary system.
So far as I know, there is no binary driver option for ATI or nVidia cards for NetBSD. Driver support is limited to what’s available in Xorg.
FreeBSD has an official nVidia driver, however.
It’s a legal technicality, you can’t refer to an OS as Unix as that’s a certification which costs money.
Indeed the various free BSD projects are based on 386BSD(4.3BSD) and 4.4BSD, which have been the basis for many certified commercial Unix systems today.
Unix-like isn’t an insult really, BSD is still probably more Unix-like than most Linux distributions today.
As for driver compatibility, the most popular project is FreeBSD and as such any proprietary binary-only drivers released tend to be exclusively for FreeBSD.
There is no binary/ABI compatibility for BSD drivers, source compatibility isn’t even guaranteed at that level.. fortunately porting source code is more of a likelihood, because of shared heritage (..but they have all diverged considerably).
Open source Xorg/DRM+DRI/Mesa drivers have improved considerably over the years, and the performance is far from terrible.
nVidia officially recommends the “vesa” framebuffer if their blob is unavailable.. like on OpenBSD/NetBSD.
Edited 2010-11-20 03:00 UTC
Really? I haven’t used NetBSD in recent years, but there used to be the “nv” driver which provided excellent 2D performance.
The “nv” driver is pretty much discontinued by nVidia (..if you’ve followed recent event).
For older graphics cards, “nv” is an option for 2D/Xvideo but not for newer ones.
By your logic, Tru64 isn’t Unix then.
Why worry? Ubuntu is much better then Gentoo – by normal standards of course.
Tru64 is certified as Unix98 compliant by the opengroup.
http://www.opengroup.org/public/prods/brand2700.htm
Edited 2010-11-20 16:31 UTC
Maybe “logic” does not mean what the previous poster thinks it does?
Huh? I didn’t state that certified Unix wasn’t Unix. The only thing you can say by my logic is that any descendant of Unix is Unix. Tru64 is obviously Unix. Genetically as well as certified. That said I don’t consider all certified Unicen for Unix. OS X is not Unix in my mind, even though it is certified Unix. Compatibility layers are not enough for me
Define normal. Ubuntu is good for beginners coming from Windows, but the build system is horribly broken (evolution-sharp does not compile at all in newer Ubuntu’s – unlike the situation in other distributions). Below the surface Ubuntu is an ugly mess.
Arguably MacOS is the compatibility layer on OS X, not the NeXTStep bits that include a BSD personality of CMU Mach.
(OSF/1, DEC’s own Unix which became Tru64, and some other commercial Unixes use it – CMU Mach with a Unix personality was arguably the most standard SysV configuration at the time NeXT was popular). It’s entirely possible to run OS X’s “Darwin” without some of the MacOS bits, hence the Darwin distributions.
Perhaps, next you’re going to argue that CMU Mach disqualifies these SysV Unixes as Unix, or perhaps the mere presense of the NeXT Frameworks on the system does (please don’t install GNUstep then, it’ll make your Linux stop being a Unix clone. 😉 )
I would add that I agree that Unix certification isn’t enough, however, after all, we all can agree that IBM OS/390 isn’t Unix. 🙂
Edited 2010-11-21 16:09 UTC
Are there any Darwin distributions?
There’s PureDarwin (www.puredarwin.org)
Though, the latest bit of activity on the page I can find is from May 32, 2010.
Mach was originally derived from the 4.2BSD kernel. All the things one thinks of when talking about Mach the microkernel were added, then most of the BSD bits were removed as Mach evolved into a microkernel.
Later on other people and projects added a (then) more up to date BSD kernel layer (based on 4.3BSD and some time after 4.4BSD) on top of Mach either as a ‘single server’ or integrated back into the microkernel.
Just because he think BSD is UNIX doesn’t mean something else can’t be.
And seriously, even though Linux lack heritage it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to include that either.
You can try searching “jibbed livecd”
Thank you.
The live CD can be found at jibbed.org.
It’s a pretty good live disc for testing NetBSD.
Yes Unix-like
*BSD are no more Unix than my Windows system with cygwin.
Edited 2010-11-21 01:05 UTC
You’re mixing up the trademark with the operating system. *BSD evolved from original UNIX, that’s a fact. It’s sometimes hard to find some direct genetic links to someones anchestors, but this doesn’t change the relationship at all, if there are other proofs.
No the fact the BSDs have no UNIX code in them. Remember in the early 90s BSD purged all UNIX code from the system.
I dont remember SCO going after any of the BSD’s for having UNIX in them? So its just as unix-like as Posix extensions on Windows. One could make the argument that your average Linux distro is more UNIX than any *BSD
Huh?
You’re misinformed. BSDs don’t contain any AT&T/Bell Labs copyrighted code, but they sure as hell do contain “Unix” code. The only way in which a BSD isn’t a Unix is in the sense that it isn’t necessarily certified as such and can’t call itself UNIX(tm). The BSD guys are very sensitive to the copyright, trademark and certification issues due to the lawsuit. As such it is typical to call BSDs Unix-like, or even to censor the word and say e.g. UN*X when talking about BSD, but that doesn’t in fact make BSD not Unix. It’s a legal fiction.
I’d love to hear you attempt such an argument.
Linux has code in it from/given by SGI,IBM,Sun, taken and ported from their “UNIX” systems into Linux kernel and userland. If one says the BSD’s are UNIX then Linux is the bastard child of UNIX that takes the best genes and discards the bad.
This is a rather bold statement. The userland part I will disregard, because it’s unimportant even if true, but the kernel part is interesting. Do you think AT&T copyrighted code somehow made it in to Linux via contributions by SGI, IBM or Sun? I would be extremely shocked to learn that this was the case. Cite ’em if you’ve got ’em.
Easy …
BSD: From AT&T-Owned to Freely Redistributable
http://oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/kirkmck.html
Explaning BSD: What, a real UNIX®?
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/explaining-bsd/what-a-real-u…
… and some UNIX-history:
http://www.levenez.com/unix/
I can’t mod you up, so I’ll just say thank you
I thought that, at least, the install would be on par with FreeBSD but I haven’t seen one this old-school since ’97
I’m not sure what you’re implying here, I’ll take it NetBSD install is too old fashioned for you.
Let me tell you, this is exactly the point of NetBSD install. It is designed to be simple, easy to use, low memory footprint and it works on wide variety of hardware, including serial console.
If all you care about is a pretty splash screen, well lucky for you there are other options in the land of Windows, Linux, …. etc.
Neither you nor your chums who voted your comment up noticed that I mentioned ONLY FreeBSD, the late ’90s and
not a damned word about a splash screen.
Here’s a link to the earliest BSD I can recall installing: http://www.freebsd.org/releases/2.2.2R/notes.html
Go install it, compare it to the NetBSD install / config and get back to me.
It’s also about the quickest installer I’ve come across.
I think most people place way, way to much emphasis on the installer. Installation should be a rare experience.
It only really matters to the people who write reviews, as they spend a lot of time installing software.
The platform coverage the changelist shows is impressive.
If you’ve been used to the OpenBSD changelists, then just the organisation and format is pretty impressive.
The content isn’t very different, NetBSD wins the web design award, though. It is certainly more appealing.
That said, I can understand people not caring about the changes, but I don’t know what do you expect from the change-lists.
Neither project will advertise a new skin for Gnome with a slide-show – because they don’t care about Gnome.
NetBSD cares about:
* Implement DIOCGDISKINFO for xbd disk driver.
OpenBSD cares about:
* ssh-keygen(1) now supports signing certificate using a CA key that has been stored in a PKCS#11 token.
Stop the presses.
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NetBSD users are without boots, apparently.
Can UGG output to a serial console when booting?