The NetBSD Foundation has published its fourth quarterly status report, covering the months October through December of 2004. Among many other things, this status report covers the publication of the new NetBSD Logo, the new pkgsrc branch, the new NetBSD/iyonix port and of course the release of NetBSD
2.0.
NetBSD is great! I’ve been using Linux for almost 7 years and FreeBSD for a few months now, but recently am trying out NetBSD 2.0 and it is great so far. I’ve got a lot to learn still, but it seems very well designed- I like the new logo, too.
Can you elaborate ? i want to know what is the “great” factor of NetBSD over *BSD or even linux. I am a heavy Linux users mainly for server, but i keep an open mind regarding OS’s.
Any examples would be great.
NetBSD feels more “unix-like”
Linux while great has some annoying inconsistancies,
between distributions .
Lately I tried both, NetBSD 2.0 and Ubuntu Linux in that order. I downloaded NetBSD first (there are two isos, one raw minimal iso with the basic system plus XWindow and one with the same plus some precompiled packages including KDE 3.3, some databases, apache, php, perl, phyton and more).
I had had problems with 1.6 blocking on boot in my laptop, but this time everything went smootly. I used it gladly for a time, but as I am a gnome user and there where no gnome packages precompiled on iso, I gave a chance to Ubuntu just to take a look at gnome 2.8. It is great, but the difference from Linux to BSD can be felt once you have been using both for a time.
Maybe it is just default configuration, but to me NetBSD boots faster, and the whole OS experience feels cleaner at least to someone looking for a unix-like system.
The idea of a distro with a bare-bones OS and bare-bones graphic server (optional), and the posibility of adding just exactly what you want as need is very appealing to my taste. Add to all that a very good Linux emulation layer that just works, it is wonderfull.
In order to learning Unix (in a command line way),which is the best between FreeBSD NetBSD ?
Hello NetBSD supporters / user,
Is running old games on WINE faster on NetBSD or on a linux distro? do any of the BSD’s support newer nvidia or ati video cards? How is the BSDs sound card support (especially for ISA sound cards?)
Finally, how is their package management, if any? does every application need to be compiled by command line interface? What steps are needed to remove a program or driver, etc?
I use knoppix at home and am a big fan of apt-get and synaptic. Are there any tools like that for the BSDs?
My home PC is a lowly AMD K6-2 395MHz with 128mb ram. After re-installing win98se too many times while adding various hardware (wireless network usb card dwl-122,) among other things, I’ve given up on win98se. I would still like to use my older software for the win9x series.
My main interest is running the older games as fast as possible, but the games crawl when running wine (maybe because I use KDE?) I’m going to try out IceWM when I get a chance since it takes up less resources than KDE.
One big question for both Linux and NetBSD is how do I get either of those to use my MMX, 3D-Now, or whatever other features they have? Knoppix is listed as i386 compatible, but doesn’t that mean that it ignores my MMX and 3D-Now features? How would I enable this in NetBSD?
thanks,
the uninformed
I hear you can use FreeBSD’s nvidia drivers in NetBSD using the FreeBSD emulation. I Never got that working right. Anyone aware of a tutorial or have they done it themselves and care to elaborate?
Is running old games on WINE faster on NetBSD or on a linux distro?
Probably better on GNU/Linux
do any of the BSD’s support newer nvidia or ati video cards?
Nvidia offers binary drivers for FreeBSD but none other. ATI does not support any BSD, to the best of my knowledge. Well, OS X is supported by both, if that counts.
How is the BSDs sound card support (especially for ISA sound cards?)
Much better than Linux’s support. And with in-kernel mixing, you don’t need those terrible sound servers (aRTS, etc.).
Finally, how is their package management, if any? does every application need to be compiled by command line interface? What steps are needed to remove a program or driver, etc?
pkg_add adds a pre-compiled package and dependencies thereof. pkg_delete uninistalls packages. The BSD ports system allows you to compile from source easily if you prefer (Gentoo is essentially a re-implementation of ports for GNU/Linux).
I use knoppix at home and am a big fan of apt-get and synaptic. Are there any tools like that for the BSDs?
pkg_add and the other pkg_* tools do the job just fine.
One big question for both Linux and NetBSD is how do I get either of those to use my MMX, 3D-Now, or whatever other features they have?
Change the machine type description in the kernel configuration file and the system/ports configuration file, then recompile. Recompilation on *BSD is a breeze.
d:
“How is the BSDs sound card support (especially for ISA sound cards?)”
emagius:
“Much better than Linux’s support. And with in-kernel mixing, you don’t need those terrible sound servers (aRTS, etc.).”
These pages seem to list the soundcards supported by NetBSD:
http://www.uk.netbsd.org/Hardware/isa.html
http://www.uk.netbsd.org/Hardware/pci.html
What about support for 24bit audio capture? Must that be done on Linux or Windows? The cards that I know to support 24bit recording aren’t listed on those pages. Perhaps USB audio on NetBSD is worth considering.
NetBSD would not be the best OS for an all out dedicated workstation depending on an individuals needs. NetBSD shines when it comes to creating a minimalist clean purpose build server. The default install is the base OS with nothing else enabled. The idea being that you only enable install what you want on the system rather then the Average linux distro approach of installing everything that most users need. 200mb install for netbsd vs 2GB+ install for average linux installs. The package management system in NetBSD is very easy to use and is similiar to the package management system in Solaris. I personally have always prefered NetBSD of all the other BSD’s and even linux.
“The idea being that you only enable install what you want on the system rather then the Average linux distro approach of installing everything that most users need. 200mb install for netbsd vs 2GB+ install for average linux installs.”
It depends on the distribution. An installation of Debian Sarge, without modifying ang package selection/deselection is about 250 MB. Fedora, selecting “minimum” in the packages collection would be about 600MB.
OpenBSD would give you about 250MB and the smallest would be FreeBSD, wich if you select “minimal” would give you just above 100MB.
If you will be setting up an “all out dedicated workstation” then it is assumed that you are knowledgable in operating system installation. Having said that, you would definitely not use the “default install everything” or the “Average linux distro approach”. You will definitely customize, whatever os you use.
Is running old games on WINE faster on NetBSD or on a linux distro?
Wine has had threading issues and some more on FreeBSD, but it’s working fine now. They’re fixing the linuxisms in the code.
do any of the BSD’s support newer nvidia or ati video cards?
The proprietary nvidia cards require their own crap proprietary kernel and X drivers, but they support both FreeBSD and DragonFlyBSD. Some people have reported limited success using the FreeBSD drivers in NetBSD, though.
ATI’s up to the 9200 are fully supported in FreeBSD (read: 2D and 3D, without rotting your kernel with proprietary code). NetBSD’s DRI is work in progress.
All BSDs have pretty good sound card support.
Package management is done with the pkg_* tools. On FreeBSD you should use portupgrade to handle packages, and pkg_chk on NetBSD.
My main interest is running the older games as fast as possible, but the games crawl when running wine (maybe because I use KDE?) I’m going to try out IceWM when I get a chance since it takes up less resources than KDE.
What games are those?
One big question for both Linux and NetBSD is how do I get either of those to use my MMX, 3D-Now, or whatever other features they have? Knoppix is listed as i386 compatible, but doesn’t that mean that it ignores my MMX and 3D-Now features? How would I enable this in NetBSD?
gcc doesn’t magically generate MMX code. The apps have to be crafted specifically to take advantage of it. gcc 3.x can make use of SSE instructions for floating point operations which would make the code faster on p4 cpus IIRC.
Sure NetBSD may run on 50-plus architectures, but many features are lacking on certain architectures, such as sleep, sound on powerpc and a very shitty console driver.
I recently acquired a screaming laptop… Pentium 100 with a whopping 8MB of RAM and no CD/ethernet. I chose to install NetBSD.
I started up with the “TINY” install disk (standard kernel wouldn’t even start) and used disklabel to set aside a 25MB partition for temporary install files. Next, I used tar to move the base.tgz and etc.tgz files over. This only took about 14 floppies and about 30 minutes. I restarted sysinst and told it where to get the sets and the slow hard drive chewed away for a while while it installed. This minimal install was about 60MB, I don’t remember the exact size.
After I had the base system installed, I could link it up to my networked computer with a serial cable and transfer the rest of the install sets at an incredible 9.13KB/s. The final install size, including X and fonts and everything, was about 260MB. Amazing!
I recompiled the kernel to strip out everything non essential: PCMCIA, network interfaces, compatibility options, etc. The TINY_GENERIC kernel that I started with was about 1.6MB, now mine is about 1.0MB. I also used sysctl to change the file cache behavior. Now the kernel won’t reserve space for the file cache. This has improved usability tremendously.
Using this laptop is quite different from my P4 2.8 with 1GB RAM, to say the least 🙂
“It depends on the distribution. An installation of Debian Sarge, without modifying ang package selection/deselection is about 250 MB”
I get the impression that it’s not about the minimum, it’s about the default. The NetBSD way (as with the other BSDs) is to offer the minimum as default, and let the user install on top of that. The Linux way (except Gentoo) is to offer a pre-configured set of packages as default.
You can add or remove anything with any system, but the philosophy of the different approches is summed up by their choice of defaults.