Slashdot Mirror
NetBSD on StrongARM Handhelds
sparcv9 writes "The
NetBSD Team announced today the offical start of the
NetBSD/hpcarm
port of their multi-platform OS. This port runs on
StrongARM-based handheld PCs. So far, the HP
Jornada 720 and the Compaq
iPAQ H3600 are supported. With this port hot on the heels of the
SH3/4-based hpcsh
port and last year's
MIPS-based hpcmips
port, it looks like NetBSD could give Linux a run for its money in the
handheld arena."
http://www.netbsd.org/Goals/portability.html
http://www.netbsd.org/Goals/system.html
To conclude, it's not as much work to add a port as one might think, and except in the (less common) cases of working with MD code, you improve one port and you improve them all.
-bugg
: I just don't understand *BSD*. No part of it.
BSD predates Linux. Why do Linux in the first place? Why didn't people get behind BSD back in its early days? Why dilute the effort? Why let big companies scare people off?
Come on Russ. That's a rather narrow and myopic view of things. Competition between *BSD and Linux has been one of the driving forces that has made both of them better over the years. Linux would be better at Y for a while, then BSD would leap from them and then Linux would leap frog BSD. Back and forth because of competition. I don't think that it would have made as much progress as it has (either of them) if it wasn't for the other's presence.
Not to mention the fact that *BSD predates the well heeled enemies of free software. There's a lot of momentum in the *BSD community and just because MS or other folks want to shut Linux down is not a good reason for *BSD to abandon their systems to rally behind Linux.
Licensing problems. You know that. Why troll?
You know Windoze isn't free. Why troll?
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
: BSD has too many of its own schisms to accuse Linux of being the schism.
Linux has too many schisms to be throwing stones at anybody about schisms. Oh, wait, they use newspeak "distributions" to mask that fact. And arguments that there is only one kernel, like the kernel is the only part of the system that matters.
No explanation why anyone should believe you are correct. Who's the troll here?
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
But the real benefit of using a Real Operating System instead of Yet Another Broken Program Loader With No Memory Protection is that providing decent memory protection lets applications trust that they'll be safe from other applications, instead of getting their memory scribbled. This means that you don't have to worry about your calendar getting scribbled when you install Clone Wars, and if Foobie App crashes and dies horribly, you don't need to worry about your machine rebooting - you just garbage-collect the dead app and everything else is fine.
It's not like a Real Operating System requires huge amounts of resources - Unix ran just fine on a PDP-11, and a Palm Pilot looks suspiciously like a Sun-1 with a smaller screen and no disk, or like an early Macintosh. The real issue is whether you want something like a file system, in which case Unix is a fine choice, or whether you want an OS that's built out of persistent objects like some of the Psion or Newton OSs.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
BSD has too many of its own schisms to accuse Linux of being the schism.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
There was a time when Linus was billing Linux as "probably only ever going to run on x86". With this in mind, why would the BSD developers want to abandon their cross-platform base for something intended to be x86-only? Why would we want them to?
Further, a big advantage of NetBSD (_especially_ on non-x86) is that it's maintained such that commonly shareable parts (eg, device drivers) are coded in a cross-platform manner. Each port has an individual responsible for it, who makes sure that the platform-specific stuff gets into CVS for that port. Once that occurs, future releases of NetBSD have the code already integrated. The alternative with Linux? Maintain a seperate source tree, and get the joy of needing to fold in updates upon each new kernel release. Maybe if your political skills are good enough and you jump through the right hoops, you can get your changes and additions integrated into the upstream release. Maybe not.
The point is - duplication of effort of maintaining a seperate tree of Linux is undertaken for many non-x86 platforms. From what I can tell, there is much less duplication of effort resulting from applying these efforts to a single, unified tree in NetBSD.
In my personal experience (on Alpha), the Linux distribution support was dodgy. NetBSD, on the other hand, is solid. It really shows that the Alpha port is a first-class citizen. Needless to say, I am very pleased with NetBSD's handling of cross-platform releases.
The reaon we need more than one free Unix is that we have different ideas of what's important. Linux wants to focus on x86 (and possibly on transmeta), and being able support every filesystem and PCI card known to man on that platform. FreeBSD aims to be a hardcore x86 server OS (and has succeeded, IMHO). NetBSD wants to run (and run well) on every platform under the sun. OpenBSD wants security w/o compromise. Who gets to decide which group is wrong, and who decides what the One True Way is?
Btw, I'm not knocking Linux - I use Linux Mandrake on my workstation and love it. I use NetBSD, OpenBSD and FreeBSD on servers and love them too. Each has its own strengths, and I am quite happy to have luxury of applying them accordingly.
the messagepad 2000 and 2100 have strongARMs in them, but a port might be a little tough, considering the current OS on these guys is all in ROM that's not flashable, uses undocumented features and dark, mysterious calls to the existing hardware.. the same sort of problems that are causing much cursing and gnashing of teeth for people trying to port/emulate the newton OS on other platforms..
but then, IANAD (i'm not a developer) so i could be completely wrong, in which case, i'd love to see a full-on BSD running in my hand with a half-VGA-sized 4-bit grey screen with two PCMCIA card slots, built-in serial, and sound-in and -out support...
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
paid for an AT&T source license
So why is {Free,Net,Open,Foobar}BSD able to use the same code for free? Is it somehow not free software? Obviously not. If BSDi paid for a license, then they did so for business reasons, not because the code wasn't free.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Linux has 150+ seperate distros.
Linux has 'the embedded people' the 'ppc people' the 'alpha people' and IBM's 'big iron people' all with seperate kernals, because they can't get their changes blessed by one man, Linus.
Linux has developers wanting to stop Linus being the controller of the changes to the kernel to prevent long delays and so they can introduce CVS control of the kernel.
Thoes are the few that pop to the TOP of my head. Now, care to provide more than a one line claim that "BSD has too many of its own schisims"? Care to document what *YOU* see as a schism?
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
So, if you have a palmtop running a Unix variant, what do you use it for?
"things like server-class stability are largely irrelevant"
:).
You couldn't be more wrong. Nobody wants to reset their palm PC and lose all their data. Typically the software on this type of machines is running continually. The machine is suspended rather than turned off. Because of this, stability is a very strong requirement.
Another important requirement that is also associated with BSD is security. Consider the following scenario: I walk into the office of my companies largest competitor. I'm carrying a PDA containing very sensitive data. The PDA is equiped with a bluetooth chip (high bandwidth) and I turn the thing on to make notes in my agenda. Tell me security is not important here
All I'm trying to say here is that some of the qualities that make BSD so suitable for servers are also required in a PDA.
Of course there are some limitations as well (memory, speed), but then pda's are generally equiped with faster processors and more memory than some PC's still running BSD in many offices.
As for world domination of the OS. That is an old centralistic view of world. In the modern view a hetrogenous network of all sorts of devices and services replaces it. The OS kernel is pretty much irrelevant as long as the programs running on top of it behave well and follow industry standards. I don't care whether slashdot runs on IIS or Apache, as long as I get the content in a reasonable time I'm happy.
Jilles
We could make Linux a stronger choice
How about making OPEN SOURCE OSes a better choice? That way BSD, GNU/Linux and others *ALL* benefit?
So, it's a good thing to split the developer community? To divide already thin resources?
If you develop under a BSD license *EVERYONE*, be they GPL or BSDed OSes can benefit. Picking the GPL is exclusionary of BSD. The GPL is the divider, the BSD license is the unifier.
As Bruce Perens said at TheBazzar "The great thing with the new 2 clause BSD license is you can put the GPL on it and protect the code"
I just don't understand *BSD*. No part of it. Well, okay, I understand BSDi. Everybody wants to make money off free software.
No, you do *NOT* understand BSDi.
BSDi's unmerged older self paid for an AT&T source license so they could market BSD/OS.
If the goal of selling a closed-source version for BSD-BSD/OS using Open Source code, then why did they buy the AT&T license? I look forward to your answer to this question Mr. Nelson.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Further, it will allow the Linux / NetBSD ports to compare against each other leading to innovation and performance tuning.
Are you kidding? You're talking about open source software here. Microsoft syas it wil stifle innovation and it's bad for the software industry, and I believe them.
Several other people probably got excited (as I did) when I read the headline, but too bad it excludes the 820. Slashdot has covered it before: http://slashdot.org/askslashdot/00/12/08/2354210.s html. Hopefully it's coming soon.
Daniel
I'd love a Unix PDA, but I don't want it to be such a struggle. Hopefully someone will come up with a 'chipped' PDA that is 100% unix-friendly.
If you don't know the answer to this Mr. Nelson, it shows you are unaware of the history. Or, you are using a restrictive definition of 'free software' where the only thing that qualifies is GPLed code.
Free/Net/Open are now based off the 4.4BSD Lite release. This was the release that Novell agreed to stop the litigation on.
BSD/OS has roots to 4.3BSD Net/2. For BSDI to have sold BSD based Unix, they had to pay for it.
Now you have been educated. (and I'm sure if I have a detail wrong, someone will point out where I'm wrong with a link or 2.)
Your use of the words free software, are you using the definition of RMS, Bruce Perens, or some special 'Russ' version? If you are using the RMS definition, no code is 'free' until a GPL has been slapped on it. In such a 'free == GPL' world, all you are doing is trolling here because BSD based systems do not have a GPL license and are therefore not 'free'. "we" can't discuss this until YOU define your words.
I do note that you did not respond to my point about Open Source and the use of a BSD license does not cause the divide you so bitterly complain about. (As you stated "To divide already thin resources") Why is that? I've offered up a simple solution to 'healing' the 'divide'...a place where code can benefit both the BSD and Linux projects. Are you in agreement then, and you now understand what you did not understand before about BSD? Can the community, newly healed with the revelation about how the BSD license conserves effort you so badly want conserved, look forward to you re-licensing all your code under a BSD-style license?
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
But I don't understand why we need more than one Unix.
BSD was around before Linux. So using your logic, tell me again why Linux should exist. Why is choice among different operating systems a good thing according to you, yet choice among different Unix operating systems a bad thing? Because it splits development efforts you say. So I guess choices among licenses for developers is bad according to you also? So much for your "...choice is a good thing."
[hypothetical]
I don't understand Ford. No part of it. I don't understand why we need more than one american motor company. Its not like the american motor industry doesn't have enemies. Yes choice is a good thing. People can already choose between Chevrolet and Toyota. We could make Chevrolet a stronger choice, or we could make the two american car companies weaker choices.
[/hypothetical]
Understand now? Probably not. At least understand this: don't dicatate to me which Unix to use or develop for, no matter for whatever noble reason. For you to do so would be no better than Microsoft dictating to me which version of Windows to use. Its the very same mentality, and to see it expressed by open-source advocates saddens me.
Portable platforms have much wider applications than handhelds. The same hardware is quite often used in ATMs, ticket sellers, etc. And there the stability and portability of an enterprise class Unix OS makes sense.
In other words when was the last time you have seen a bluescreened WinCE ATM terminal. I saw one this morning...
And NetBSD on hardware originally designed for WinCE is already giving linux a run for its money more specifically in industrial applications.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
- Ports are relatively easy and mechanical to do
- It opens the platform to a variety of applications
- It generates "cross pollination" of ideas.
- It gives consumer choice
Generally, the big benefit to this will be the broadening of the application base. Further, it will allow the Linux / NetBSD ports to compare against each other leading to innovation and performance tuning.A good thing.
.. if only.
Depending on the current market positioning, it would make sense that you would look at your nearest rivals first, compared to the others in the field.
Even if they happen to be "family"
Of course, there are always other options and other games you could play. But this gets back to the zero-sum game discussions we have had around here over the past few weeks.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
It was a long time in coming. They had to get the standalone floppy (no computer required), circa 1987 Ethernet bridge, Timex Sinclair and ENIAC ports working first. ;-)
> it looks like NetBSD could give Linux a run for its money in the handheld arena."
That's all very well, but giving Linux a run for its money is not really the right aim. You should be aiming to become number one OS, not number 12, but beating some other OS.
The thing here is that NetBSD has no advantages in the handheld arena - things like server-class stability are largely irrelevant, whereas more important things such as suitability for the purpose (one of the custom-built OS), or a familiar interface (as with Windows CE) are key factors.
It seems bizarre to do this - to boast that one version of a server OS (Unix), might beat another (which it won't incidentally, since Linux has considerable marketing advantages) - it's like saying that Sun OS will beat IRIX or WindowsNT in the handheld arena - potentially true, but largely irrelevant - you are just saying that of the two tiny server OSs, one has more; it's true, but the numbers are so small it doesn't matter.
--
Hi!
The interview link to Wind River yesterday phrased the biggest difference best. embedded systems follow a much different model then enterprise systems. Embedded system companies don't want to give the details away of their machines, like the GPL would force them to do. NetBSD from a licensing standpoint is much more favorable.
Cheers,
Tomas
===========
I see many of you saying "we already have Linux, why BSD ?"... Well, I think you're wasting your time on this discussion because it's like the Holy War between GNOME and KDE: take what you like, but please don't say that the other is shit, because that's not true. I think it's good to see BSD spreading as well because in the end everyone gains from this: programs are written in the OpenSource manner, and it does not (really) matter if a program is developed on Linux or BSD, in the end it's UNIX, and _that's_ the point... Ah, and BTW: congrats to the NetBSD folks :-)
The utility of these ports on BSD/Linux I can't really see (yet), given that much of the market is dominated by pretty low powered hardware (a la palm), and there isn't much of a need (imho) to duplicate the amazing job that Palm has done on PalmOS and in contributing to the developer community (Free tools rock, and the app base keeps them dominant). Lots of people would see differently, hey, whatever keeps you entertained!
The real use of these guys is on the HPC units like the HP 620 that have keyboards and large, high-res color screens. I'd love to replace my Sony Vaio with a HPC device from HP (long ago, I had a 100LX, and loved it). The keyboard lets me do more stuff - write code, the screen is big enough for X, etc. Windows CE is crap, though, and I can't (ever) see running it.
Good luck to these guys, and I hope I can get a full-fledged 1lb linux machine to code on soon :). Hoping someone releases a ultra-thin metal cased transmeta based unit a 8.5" x 11" form factor. That'd be sweet. CPU isn't as much as an issue as the ability to code for 6 hours on a charge, and not weigh down my backpack with batteries!
..don't panic
it looks like NetBSD could give Linux a run for its money in the handheld arena.
And may the best code win.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i