NetBSD Archive

"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.0, the fourteenth major release of the NetBSD operating system. Changes from the previous release include scalability improvements on multi-core systems, many new and updated device drivers, Xen and MIPS port improvements, and brand new features such as a new packet filter. Some NetBSD 6.0 highlights are: support for thread-local storage (TLS), Logical Volume Manager (LVM) functionality, rewritten disk quota subsystem, new subsystems to handle flash devices and NAND controllers, an experimental CHFS file system designed for flash devices, support for Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) protocol, and more. This release also introduces NetBSD Packet Filter (NPF) - a new packet filter, designed with multi-core systems in mind, which can do TCP/IP traffic filtering, stateful inspection, and network address translation (NAT)."

A month ago Microsoft released a NetBSD port for their eMIPS ("Extensible MIPS") platform. Now the port found its way into the NetBSD source tree. "The 'extensible MIPS' is a dynamically extensible processor for general-purpose, multi-user systems. The reconfigurable logic (Extensions) dynamically load/unload application-specific circuits. Extensions add specialized instructions to the processor, security monitors, debuggers, new on-chip peripherals. Extended Instructions dramatically speedup application programs, just by patching their binaries." Besides the eMIPS port, Microsoft also contributed a machine independent framework for hardware accelerator scheduling, a scheduling policy for it, and a secure executable format.

From the NetBSD Blog: "The fourth (failing further faults, final) release candidate of NetBSD 5.1 is now available for download. Those of you who prefer to build from source can continue to follow the netbsd-5 branch, but the netbsd-5-1-RC4 tag is available as well. See src/doc/CHANGES-5.1 for the list of changes from RC3 to RC4."

"The NetBSD Foundation is pleased to announce NPF, a new packet filter by Mindaugas Rasiukevicius. NPF is designed for high performance on multiprocessor machines, and for easy extensibility."

NetBSD 5.1 RC2 has been announced. A complete list of changes between 5.0 and 5.1 is available in diff format here for the more technical individuals. Fire up those VMs and give it a test run.

"Since early 2009 NetBSD and rump has supported execution of stock kernel module binaries in userspace on x86 architectures. Starting in -current as of today, kernel modules will automatically be loaded from the host into the rump kernel. For example, when mounting a file system in a rump kernel, support will be automatically loaded before mounting is attempted."

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 guys and girls behind the NetBSD project have released version 5.0 of their BSD operating system. NetBSD is a highly-portable operating system, the second open-source BSD implementation (after 386BSD). Naturally, version 5.0 comes packed with a whole boatload of improvements.

As noted in Hubert Feyrer's blog, the upcoming Sidekick LX 2009/Blade is rumored to be running NetBSD instead of Microsoft CE, causing Microsoft's recruiters to look for NetBSD engineers.

From the announcement email: "On behalf of the NetBSD Release Engineering team, I am proud to announce that the first release candidate of NetBSD 5.0 is now available for download. Those of you who have been paying close attention will have noticed that RC1 was tagged on Sunday. A few hiccups delayed the availability of binaries, but they can now be downloaded from here."

Alistair Crooks, president of the NetBSD Foundation, announced recently that it "has changed its recommended license to be a 2 clause BSD license". This makes NetBSD more easily available to a number of organisations and individuals who may have been put off by the advertising or endorsement clauses.

"The NetBSD community announced last month the official release of NetBSD 4.0, the latest version of the Unix-like open-source operating system. Version 4.0 includes significant new features like Bluetooth support, version 3 of the Xen virtual machine monitor, new device drivers, and improvements to the Veriexec file integrity subsystem. NetBSD, which is known for its high portability, is capable of running on 54 different system architectures and is suitable for use on a wide range of hardware, including desktops, servers, mobile devices, and even kitchen toasters. To commemorate the NetBSD 4.0 launch, enthusiast Federico Biancuzzi communicated with 21 developers to produce this expansive interview with loads of insightful information about the NetBSD 4.0 development process."

The fifth release candidate for NetBSD 4.0 has been released. "We hope that this release candidate to be the last one before the final release of NetBSD 4.0. Please help us to test it as much as possible to make NetBSD 4.0 a solid release."

NetBSD 4.0 RC3 has been released. "On behalf of the NetBSD Release Engineering team, I am happy to announce the availability of NetBSD 4.0 Release Candidate 3. The list of changes from the 3.0 release is available in the release notes. This release candidate has several bug fixes and other changes since the previous release candidate."