NetBSD 1.6.2 has been released, with binary distributions for 40 architectures. More information is available in the 1.6.2 release announcement.
NetBSD 1.6.2 Released
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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40 architectures… man, that’s unbelievable! No wonder they’re only at version 1.6.2…
40 architectures !!!, if people help more to NetBSD it will increase to more architectures..
My hope is that NetBSD has to provide PPC64 Support as soon as possible.
They support 17 CPU / instruction set architectures. This is the significant number.
Additional system (platform) “architectures” usually require some setup code and maybe a specific driver or two in the kernel, and nothing additional for userspace.
17 is a lot though.
> My hope is that NetBSD has to provide PPC64 Support as soon as possible.
AFAIK the Itanic also isn’t supported…
I hope I can figure out some day how to install hpcarm/NetBSD on my Handheld PC… that day I’ll be a happy camper. 😉
Yes! I’ve just started downloading from school via VNC and putty…
I hope not many people will notice this and download immediatly… I am downloading from the main ftp site since 1.6.2 isos are not yet on the mirrors (at least not in de and at).
Eugenia: Can’t you modify the site to reject comments containing “BSD is dying” ?
Your argument assumes that all BSD users post on their respective BSD usenet forum. Personally, I’m a user of FreeBSD and OpenBSD and I’ve never posted on either of those discussion forums and I have many friends who use BSD but don’t either. I only use bsdforums.org. Obviously you’ve never studied statistics at a tertiary level, your blind approach to analysis is transparent.
Please don’t respond to the 5 year old Slashdweeb troll.
From the NetBSD 1.6.2 release announcement:
“at the moment, sysinst will not assist you in installing pre-built third-party binary packages or the pkgsrc system itself.”
I may be over-interpreting but this seems to imply that the NetBSD Project is planning to add new functionality to sysinst, possibly for the 2.0 release?
Anyway, could someone please explain briefly the differences between development branches in NetBSD (-stable, -current) and how they relate to releases? I’m planning to install 1.6.2 release and I’d like to know what options I’ll have after NetBSD is installed on my computer.
Mmm 40 architectures, then why can’t I run this on my old Pong-clone machine??
Seriously, that’s just crazy. Good work!
Hello there..
Can someone tell me what is the easiest way to install NetBSD onto a computer. Is there some sort of ISO image that i can download that would help me do this. Im having a hard time with this. Thank you all!
GIJOE
The increase in the number of supported architectures is in itself an astounding feat of engineering foresight… Quite good work I believe.
I happened to be introduced to NetBSD by my friend during university days… it might be not very featureful or flashy but getting it to run on old hardware configurations wherein even Linux doesn’t support (forgot the nic type… some ISA-based 3com card runs just fine on NetBSD while Linux didn’t and still doesn’t support it) is a big plus during our OSS evangelization to our alma mater some months ago.
At any rate, it’s quite good to have choice in software and operating systems, especially for ones that are freely available. To be frank I’m more of a Linux user/sysadmin but I also deploy FreeBSD and NetBSD in places that I could really exploit their strengths.
I am looking forward to trying NetBSD 1.6.2. I will order the CD’s from BSD Mall. Can anyone suggest any good books on using NetBSD ? Something similar to Greg Lehey’s “The Complete FreeBSD”?
Here ya go with the answers I have for ya anyway…
1. You can not play games on it.
Not true, as there are games made for it, and in Linux Compatibility mode will run Linux binaries, so therefore RTCW, UT2K3, etc will run on BSD.
2. It cannot be used by my grandma.
It could be if you set it up with one of the GUI environments.
3. It lacks a GUI of any note.
Have you ever heard of KDE, Gnome, xfce, etc? They run on BSD as they are native to it.
[/i]4. There is no support available for it.[/i]
Forums, Newsgroups, etc.
5. It is an assortment of fragmented OSes.
It is? Which OS’s by chance. First I have heard of this one.
6. It cannot be run on the x86 platform.
Better tell the BSD’s that then. They all seem to run fine on mine. Have you tried installing the release for that architecture?
[/i]7. You have to compile everything and know C.[/i]
This is almost true. One does not need to know C though unless you plan on modifying the programs. Outside of that there are binaries available as well for most of the software.
8. Support for the latest hardware is always poor.
This one is true from my experience. About the only thing you have said that is.
9. It is incompatiable with GNU/Linux.
See above answer referring to the games. As well other software such as VMWare actually runs in the compatibility mode as well.
10.It is dying.
As things do. It is not dead, and probably will not be for a very long time.
“Drill Sgt
See, now you’ve fed the troll.”
Sorry…hadn’t had any coffee yet at that posting
“Drill Sgt
See, now you’ve fed the troll.”
Sorry…hadn’t had any coffee yet at that posting
Forgot to put my name in on the last reply…back to the coffee pot.
Yup. http://www.netbsd.org/mirrors/#iso
is it possible to develop java on netbsd. by this i don’t mean kaffe – mean the full sun j2sdk 1.4.2 … or at the very least the ibm j2sdk with support for swing, and additional sun libraries such as the Java Advanced Imaging API
i’d prefer not to hack or recompile the source from sun
It would be nice to have a book dedicated entirely to NetBSD but so far I haven’t found one. I expect that the best NetBSD-specific info can be found from the NetBSD Guide and other documentation on the project’s www-pages:
http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/
and also from man pages once NetBSD is installed. (I’ve just finished installing 1.6.2.) As for more general aspects of Unix I’ve found the ‘Nutshell’ books ‘Learning the UNIX Operating System’ and ‘UNIX Power Tools’ to be useful primers.
For what it’s worth, what’s his name who writes Big Scary Daemons over at O’Reilly’s website–Michael Lucas, I believe–is putting out an Absolute NetBSD book shortly.
I think it works fine under linux emulation.
NetBSD 2.0 is supposed to run j2sdk under linux emulation as fast as linux…
This means NETBSD mangaged it to upgrade to XFree86 4.3 in stable before DEBIAN.
Shame on you Branden Robinson and your laughable X Strike Force.
Not sure about NetBSD, but it works fine on FreeBSD…
% javavm -version
java version “1.4.2-p6”
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.4.2-p6-kitsune_17_feb_2004_03_25)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.4.2-p6-kitsune_17_feb_2004_03_25, mixed mode)
Last year, I printed the NetBSD guide and noticed that it dealt with the 2.0 release. Was that a typo by Federico Lupi ?
When Greg Lehey complained about the “FreeBSD is dying” troll, I thought he was exaggerating. Apparently, that lamer has decided to up the ante with his nonsense.
Well I wanna try my hand at BSD again. Ive tried a couple of times /w FreeBSD 4.8 on my main rig but always had trouble when it got upto networking.
This time im going to try on an old Compaq Presairo 99′.
somebody better tell Apple…..;-)
“Beneath the easy-to-use interface and rich graphics of Mac OS X is Darwin, an open source UNIX-based foundation built on technologies such as FreeBSD, Mach, Apache, and GCC. Darwin provides a complete UNIX environment, with X11 and POSIX services comparable to Linux or FreeBSD, including familiar kernel, libraries, networking and command-line utilities.”
http://www.apple.com/macosx/architecture
“Netcraft confirms: BSD is DYING!!
By Not a BSD user (IP: —.org) – Posted on 2004-03-02 10:03:36”
“Here’s what I found out about BSD
By Guy who would have used BSD (IP: —.org) – Posted on 2004-03-02 12:59:33”
“Unfortunately….
By AC (IP: —.org) – Posted on 2004-03-02 16:34:56”
BORING…
I kindly ask the admins to ban this moron’s IP. Maybe the whole D range. And if the OSNews filter is capable of doing forward/reverse NS lookups, his domain, too.
weren’t you telling me yesterday that you are a professional spammer?
XFree86 4.3.0 was uploaded to Debian unstable on the 19th of February.
I don’t think that’s a typo. Search the mailing lists.
Well this is good news for NetBSD users. I like NetBSD because it feels a little lighter than the other BSDs (I could be wrong) and it knows I have a pcmcia nic card. Just wish it could detect the model
Someone port that Linux code over to *BSD!
is more difficult then it should be, more specifically the insane partitioning tool they use! Ugh…. All else is fine I think. OpenBSD is easier to install I think, its disk partitioning tool is easier to use. More straightforward.
Yes, Michael Lucas is writing a book on it:
http://www.absolutenetbsd.com/
bittorrents for ISO images (of some architectures) are at
http://www.netbsd.org/~wiz/torrents/
Hi Mother,
great news for you, NetBSD 1.6.2 is out. Since i know you like clean systems without bloat or redundant code you should give it a try.
I know you like to build things yourself, so simply checkout the code via cvs or download it from http://ftp.netbsd.org and use build.sh to crosscompile it from your linux-box. It’s all well documented. Please take the time and build it also for Pa’s PowerPC and my Sparcstation.
As you can read on http://www.netbsd.org there are a lot precompiled packages, they are ok, nothing wrong with that, but if you need newer versions use the current pkgsrc. Btw, pkgsrc works also fine on your Linux-Server in the kitchen because everything installed via pkgsrc is well separeted from Linux own stuff. The site http://www.pkgsrc.org provides some binary-kits to get started, but i know you, you prefer the code and bootstrap pkgsrc on your box yourself
.
For the case you need more information read the guide on http://www.netbsd.org, it’s written for the next big release (NetBSD 2.0) but most, if not any, information applies also to 1.6.2.
What else? Oh, greetings to the family,
Karsten
“Yes, Michael Lucas is writing a book on it:
http://www.absolutenetbsd.com/ ”
Thanks, this may be yet another book worth buying. At least the sample chapters from the guy’s earlier books look OK. And now that he’s had some practice writing on FreeBSD and OpenBSD, the book on NetBSD will quite likely be better than its predecessors.
As always, people that have no idea about what they are commenting on, are commenting on it.
-You can’t play games on it.
It’s not an X-box.
-It’s dying
That’s why a new release came out?
-They’re only on release 1.6.2.
And? Just because 2.6 is bigger than 1.6 does not mean it’s better.
-It’s not very featureful.
It’s a complete OS that aside from having all standard OS components also comes with an excellent package manager, GUI, firewall, web server, hundreds of development tools, and thousands of other software packages. What features are you lacking?
In short, if you want kazaa pr0n and flash bowling games, not to mention gigs of virus infested bloatware, stick to XP . If you want a clean and easy to maintain system that runs on everything from palm to alpha servers, NetBSD is an option.
“Last year, I printed the NetBSD guide and noticed that it dealt with the 2.0 release.”
It is not a typo. We worked on gearing up the guide for the future NetBSD release.