The BSD family of Unix-like operating systems evolved from the last release of 4.4BSD, released by the University of California some years ago. This article discusses why you might want to run the -current branch of NetBSD, how you would go about it, and a bit of what could go wrong.
Getting and installing NetBSD-current
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
It would probably also be nice with an howto right from the
start also – that is how to install and use NetBSD from the latest release. For the uniniated it can be tough enough if you’re used to installing Mandrake, Windows or similar.
If you got experience with Slackware or Debian, it should be a breeze though. And the docs from NetBSD itself helps a lot, the docs are high quality.
Once installed, and one understands the basic concepts and got pkgsrc installed, NetBSD is a pleasure.
Clean, easy to use, and rock stable. Give it a try. It can’t hurt.
Excellent article for those who are interested in running the latest and greatest from NetBSD. NetBSD -current is quite stable. I run -current as my desktop exclusively and have been doing so since 1.5 or so. It has never given me any trouble. Rock solid.
For those of you who have never installed NetBSD, don’t let the “tui” scare you off. The installer is actually quite simple. NetBSD was my very first UNIX-like operating system experience and I had no trouble installing it. All I did was follow the excellent docs on the web site http://www.netbsd.org/guide/en/
I think this might be something I’ve been looking for for a long time. I’ve got an SGI Indigo2 with no OS, and NetBSD 1.6 doesn’t seem too keen on running on it. Time to test -current.
Well, I just wanted to say thank you to Eugenia for posting this here so I noticed it, and to Peter Seebach (the author of the article) as well.
Nice article, I always liked NetBSD!
> Probably the best way to get started is to get a recent
> “snapshot” release. A snapshot is simply a full build from
> NetBSD-current; using a recent snapshot instead of an
> etc etc
IMHO the best way to install the latest current from scratch is to start from here:
ftp://releng.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-daily/current/
http://www.netbsd.org/Changes/#releng200311
We have been working on the NetBSD Guide to gear it up for the next big release, NetBSD 2.0. This means the guide is currently usable for NetBSD-Current. There are is even some -Current/2.0 specific information, like the CGD chapter. An up-to-date version of the guide is available in two languages, Dutch and English.
Dutch: http://www.NetBSD.org/guide/nl/
English: http://www.NetBSD.org/guide/en/
If you would like to contribute to the guide or translate the guide it is a good idea to subscribe to the netbsd-docs mailinglist and offer your help.
Grateful for any info on likely release dates for NetBSD 2.0.
On the subject of -BSD flavours, anybody know of any reviews comparing -BSDs with Solaris 9 or even OpenDarwin/GNUDarwin? (to run on x86 platform) If that hasn’t been done, perhaps someone could write one?
I can’t wait for NetBSD 2.0! SMP support woo hoo. Good article ! not enough good articles on NetBSD. It trully is a great OS.Easy to use clean and rock solid. Although getting X to run on it can be a PITA.
It doesn’t have some nice config tools, only the ones shipped with XFree. But anyway, XFree86 -configure should give you a starting XF86Config
So does 1.6.1 not support SMP?
If not, is there a way of getting it to work, would I need to move to current?
thx
If you want SMP you should really move to -current. There were, at some point, patches to 1.6.1 for SMP, iirc. However, I wouldn’t trust them. In addition, with -current there is now a kernel level threading system, which works quite well with SMP.
Adam
Thanks! I always like to stay on cautious bleeding edge. I can wait until the official release of 2.0. (call me lazy)
Smartpatrol, you could install -current from releng.netbsd.org and get all the smp and native threading goodness without having to go through a lot of trouble now instead of waiting for the releasee of 2.0. Once again, don’t let -current scare you off. It is extremely stable and rock solid.
I tried installing 1.6.1 because I read the manual and was very interested in the rc.d init scrips and the disk encryption, only to find out I coulnd’t get the latter without recompiling the entire OS. I tried jus trecompiling the kernel with the 1.6.1 base and “config MYKERNEL” bombs. IS there any timeline whatsoever for the 2.0 release?