NetBSD 1.5.2 Released

KiwiSurfer writes "NetBSD 1.5.2 has been released. Check out the release announcement and the changelog from 1.5.1 to 1.5.2. Grab NetBSD 1.5.2 from ftp.netbsd.org or one of their mirrors."

Comments

Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Things only get better, I also believe FreeBSD 4.4 will be released today.

Re:Great!

[Jace of Fuse!]

From the FREEBSD.ORG site...

We will continue to bring you new releases from both our FreeBSD-stable and FreeBSD-current branches, both as developer's snapshots and as regular full releases. The next scheduled release on the -stable branch will be FreeBSD 4.4 on September 15, 2001. The first release on what is now the -current branch will be FreeBSD 5.0, scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2002.

So it looks like FreeBSD 4.4 will be tomorrow... but I suppose a day early is possible.

Re:Great!

[KiwiSurfer]

Either way, I'm still looking foward to 4.4-RELEASE it as it has been quite a while since 4.3-RELEASE.

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, my bad. Jordan had said the FreeBSD 4.4 would be released on September the 7:th, when it wasn't he told me that some coremembers wanted an extra week to insure that no major bugs would be found.
So I assumed he meant the 14:th, either way, I'm happy that both NetBSD and FreeBSD is released now, one for my laptop and the later for my SMP servers.

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always just reinstalled from version to version.

This time I'm considering doing an upgrade. Does anybody have any experience with this?

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, works very well if doing so between major releases, but going from 2.8 to 3.1 was a major pain in the ass.

Read the handbook for more information, and of course the installation and upgrade notes of the actual release.

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

_minor_ releases

(Have not tried since the 2.8 to 3.1 endevours.)

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

kill all sandniggers

Re:Great!

[eMago]

First it was planned to be released on 31th August.
They delayed it several times.
Despite this I'm running 4,4-PRERELEASE
since a month here on this machine.
Great - no problems!
So if you want it : CVSup, make world, make buildkernel.

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you killed a towelhead for Jesus today?

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey you :) What the hell happened to govteen?

I hHeard you fuck dogs

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard you fuck dogs

I heard you fuck frogs

I heard you open up machines

So you can fuck cogs

I heard you fuck camels

And other large mammals

I heard you fuck dogs.

THIRD!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

ACs RULE!!!

suck it up!

Cool

[rjamestaylor]

I loved NetBSD on my Workpad z50 and look forward to trying this new version on the Thinkpad 750 (486 DX with 8BM RAM and 350 MB HD) I just got from eBay. It's great to turn these "out of date" machines into powerful multiuser network servers.

Refreshing news.

"Rapid bug-fix"

[heyetv]

From the changelog:
"...Update versions to 1.5.2, leaving some references to 1.5.1 (as 1.5.2 is released as a rapid bug-fix release relative to 1.5.1)"

Rapid bug-fix... that pretty much sums it up. Lots of bug-fixes you shoulda already taken care of (telnet, sendmail, etc...) and the usual round of fixes.

Always nice to see the work on the BSDs continue...

Re:"Rapid bug-fix"

[Anonymous Coward]

*grumble*

About those Telnet and Sendmail bugfixes...

*grumble*

I leave one system almost totally wide opened but protected by a firewall. For a short time I left the firewall wide opened while I was dinking around... I figured? Whose going to find my box, and whose going to care enough to get in, right? Blah.

...some s'kid rooted the box.

Lame.

What OS?

[Captain Bonzo]

At the risk of starting a flamewar or being modded as OT or redundant, can anyone point me to a site where the relative merits of the various *BSD OSes are discussed. I've seen this sort of thing for Linux distros...

Re:What OS?

[Brilldon]

This is a good comparison of all of the common *BSDs. I hope this helps.
http://www.daemonnews.org/200104/bsd_family.html

Re:What OS?

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

In a nutshell:

FreeBSD - Balls out performance on x86

NetBSD - Ported to everything with 32 bits.

OpenBSD - Best on default security.

There are other differences obviously such as ported software and the like, but at a high level, these are the major diffs.

Don't post FTP URLs please

[Matthew Luckie]

Nik is stupid for posting a URL to an FTP server.
I thought slashdot had learnt their lesson on this one.
Can a karma whore please post the changelog so that the ftp server does not get overwhelmed from all the slashbots.
DO NOT DO THIS AGAIN

Re:Don't post FTP URLs please

[KiwiSurfer]

Good point, but the the only changelogs for 1.5.1->1.5.2 I could find were the ones on the FTP servers.

The FTP link was also linked from the release announcement which leads me to beleive that the NetBSD developers intended to have people check out the Changelog via FTP.

Re:Don't post FTP URLs please

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you run that FTP server? No? Then fuck off.

BSD _is_ dying

[Anonymous Coward]

*BSD is dying

Yet nother crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *BSD community when last month IDC confirmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along.
*BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by

failing dead last [sysadminmag.com] in the recent Sys Admin
comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin [amdest.com] to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak
future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because
*BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink
flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400
NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent
article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with
the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead,its corpse turned over to another charnel house.

All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick nd its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to
survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in
time. For ll practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

*BS is dying

Re:BSD _is_ dying

[fluedke]

Things told dead are living longer :)

I think that *BSD will never die, because
I know of many commercial software products
(mostly firewalls) which use some edited
*BSD as a operating system.

I am using linux since 0.9, I've tried
FreeBSD about 2 years ago, but I was not
very happy about it (I used it as a firewall,
but I had lots of problems on desktop with it :).

I've downloaded the 1.5.1 about 2 or 3 months
ago and I think that it is a *lot* faster than
my linux. Besides of that, I am currently
running the 1.5.1 on my second system,
X11 with AfterStep, two mozilla windows,
three terminals and GKrellM and it's only using
61 MB of memory :))

Re:BSD _is_ dying

[Anonymous Coward]

The BSD's and Linux are all extremely useful, vibrant, tremendously exciting, innovative, and lots of fun to boot.

However, I don't think open source os's have a future. This has nothing to do with MS or .NET.
What will finally end them is the SSSCA. Requiring copy protection in the OS is inherently closed-source. SSSCA effectively will make open source os's illegal.

I don't think SSSCA can be stopped. The recording and movie industries will push it through quietly, and one day we'll wake up to sadly find the BSD's are illegal.

Re:BSD _is_ dying

[dadragon]

Not so much. They will probably still be legal in Canada, Europe, Mexico, everywhere else.... The US can't kill it on its own.

Re:BSD _is_ dying

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep asking myself this: when are you going to die?

That's great

[MadCamel]

But will it run on my ti85 calculator yet? :)

Re:That's great

[windi]

No, because the ti85 isn't 32bit and how much RAM/ROM does it have again?
I don't think you can put NetBSD on there, and somehow, I can't imagine bash on a calculator.

Re:That's great

[Anonymous Coward]

BSD doesn't use memory-hogging, lets-make-Microsoft look optimized, coding-standards-say-assume-unlimited-memory-and-a -32-bit-processor GNU software, like bash.

Sorry.

Re:That's great

[jandrese]

I can't imagine bash on a calculator.

But I got ZShell on my TI85.

Re:That's great

[Teferi]

What about on my 89?
:)

Re:That's great

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, heaven forbid they use a nice shell like bash. Nothing like living in the stone ages out of fear of using something "newer".

USA is going to Afghanistan to combat terrorism

[Anonymous Coward]

And we shall not retreat until the terrorists are dead and buried in massgraves, just like what the Russians are doing in Chechnya.

*BSD is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

*BSD is dying

Yet nother crippling bombshell hit th beleaguered *BSD community when last month IDC confirmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of ll servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. NetBSD is the most endangered of them all.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick nd its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For ll practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

*BS is dying

Re:*BSD is dying

[pHDNgell]

Just because you don't hear about it doesn't mean it's not happening. The BSDs have historically been put into place and have just worked.

I've noticed a lot of Linux users care more about the public opinion of their OS than how well it works for them. I've got at least nine heavily active BSD machines working in my house at all times. All of my corporate mail is filtered through two NetBSD machines. We've got NetBSD IDS machines in various places. NetBSD application servers, web servers, DNS servers. It'd take me a while to make an inventory, but I think we should all do our part to keep you better informed at what people are doing with their computers so you won't feel so bad about making a non-technical choice.

Did you consider that the reason you don't see as much usenet activity for things like NetBSD as you do for things like Linux is that NetBSD is very clearly documented and pretty much always Just Works? That's been the case in my usage, anyway. I've had nearly no trouble with the OS in the six or so years I've been using it (would've been around 1994 or 1995). When I have had a problem, a web search or usenet search would turn up the answer usually. Outside of that, there are the mailing lists. Did you look at those for activity?

Well, anyway. It's alive as long as one person wants to use it. Even if that's just me.

Re:*BSD is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

No problems with the penguin here pud..why don't you go play with the heifers elsewhere?

CHANGES-1.5.2

[Daeron]

Apparently SlashDot can't handle posts that provide NetBSD-Changelogs ... because of their stupid (doesn't work anyway) Lameness Filter.

It won't allow me to post the contents of the CHANGES-1.5.1 file that contains the changes from 1.5.2 compared to the 1.5.1 Release.

Re:CHANGES-1.5.2

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you still trying to post actual information slashdot ? Lamer.

Re:CHANGES-1.5.2

[Anonymous Coward]

I like your ass lucky..nothing personal..since
i'm up it right now rootkitboy.

Death to Muslim Pigs. Destroy Islam. Kill Arabs.

[Anonymous Coward]

The dead scream out for vengeance:

1. Kill all Arabs.
2. Kill all Muslims.
3. Kill all Mohammedans.
4. Kill all Towel Heads.
5. Kill all Camel Jockeys
6. Kill all Islam.
7. Nuke their countries to hell.
8. Nuke them again.
9. Death to Islam.

I piss on Mecca. I wipe my ass with the Koran. I spit upon Mohammed.

Why so many "ports"

[Tet]

One of the things I've always wondered about NetBSD is why they have so many ports. Not that NetBSD supports so many machines, but why it's structured the way it is? For example, when the first 68k port was in place, why did the next one start a new port, rather than integrate into the existing one? As it stands, we have mvme68k, news68k, next68, amiga, atari etc., when I suspect the community would be better served by having a single NetBSD/68k port. The same goes for MIPS (cobalt, hpcmips, pmax) and other architectures. Having separate trees just opens the door to disparity between ports. If a change is made in the amiga tree, for example, my guess is that it's not automatically picked up by the other 68k ports.

That said, with the Linux port apparently stalled, NetBSD is currently the closest I have to getting a free Unix on my NeXT black hardware. It doens't work yet, because mine are the Turbo model, but it's the closest of the bunch...

Re:Why so many "ports"

[drazi]

If a change is made in the amiga tree, for example, my guess is that it's not automatically picked up by the other 68k ports.

Your guess is wrong. There is only one source tree. The different ports are all built from the same codebase. It is typical in NetBSD that the addition of a device driver adds support for that hardware to *all* the ports.

Re:Why so many "ports"

[bluGill]

Yeah, what the other guy said. :)

The different ports are becuse the hardware is different enough that the same port can't be used for all versions. Efforts are constantly made to restructure the ports to make them more intigraded, but the only code that isn't the same between ports is code that doesn't apply to anything but the one platform.

Re:Why so many "ports"

[gr]

If a change is made in the amiga tree, for example, my guess is that it's not automatically picked up by the other 68k ports.

Fortunately, that's utterly false. The majority of port-specific stuff is Makefiles and things that really are specific to a given platform. (The booter on mac68k is wildly different from that on amiga, for instance... and don't even get me started on various vendors' proprietary hardware buses.) The vast majority of the code works fine, especially as regards peripheral support. (If a "mac-only" Firewire card gets supported, it gets supported on everything with a PCI bus.)

That said, with the Linux port apparently stalled, NetBSD is currently the closest I have to getting a free Unix on my NeXT black hardware. It doens't work yet, because mine are the Turbo model, but it's the closest of the bunch...

I have that same motherboard in a cube, and I hope to be hacking on it within a few months. Drop me a line at gr at eclipsed dot net if you'd like to help (or just subscribe to port-next68k@netbsd.org and contribute).

Re:Why so many "ports"

[benedict]

Because there's more to an architecture than the CPU. Busses, booting strategies, chipsets, etc.

Not that anyone uses this ... but there are CPUs that can run in little-endian or big-endian mode. So you could conceivably have two architectures with the same CPU that don't even have the same endianness.

Wouldn 't it be cool to Beowulf cluster these?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello, you are very glad to see me.

Re:Wouldn 't it be cool to Beowulf cluster these?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey! Mod this guy up! It's the first time all day that any of the posts have made any sense!

Mirrors are clogged

[saider]

I went to the ISO mirrors and all the sites are either denying access or do not have the 1.5.2 directory set up yet. You may want to give it a couple days before trying.

Perhaps the crew at slashdot can create a temporary mirror site where they cache a site before they post the article. Then they can have an option on the page to either go to the referenced site or to view the cached site. Granted this would take up some space, but they would only need to do it for a couple, maybe three days, then they could retire the cache and refer everyone to the original site. This would keep the slashdot effect to a minimum. Of course I am not sure about the legal ramifications of this.

Re:Mirrors are clogged

[fluedke]

Announcing NetBSD 1.5.2

"CD images (ISOs), bootable on some platforms, will be available as of Sunday, 16 September 2001. Also included are three binary package CD images identical to those distributed for NetBSD 1.5.1."

Oh my...

[zunix]

Is it time for another "which BSD is better" flame-war already?

- "Linux good, M$ crappy!"
"How to Get Modded Up on Slashdot", Chapter 3

Re:Death to Muslim Pigs. Destroy Islam. Kill Arabs

[Anonymous Coward]

i can see why the east hates america and its foreign policys.

Stephen King, author, dead at 54

[Anonymous Coward]

I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Horror/Sci Fi writer Stephen King was found dead in his Maine home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.

Re:Stephen King, author, dead at 54

[Anonymous Coward]

Alan rickman was just rushed to hospital this morning following a mild heart attack too.
Do they always go in 3's?

*BSD is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

*BSDis dying

Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *BSD community when last month IDC confirmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of ll servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost mor market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

*BSD is dying

Re:Death to Muslim Pigs. Destroy Islam. Kill Arabs

[Anonymous Coward]

*yawn*

Really, you're a very pathetic little person.

upgrading.

[saintlupus]

Well, damn, there goes my uptime.

Many thanks to the netbsd developers for such a wonderful product -- as I've said before, I always point friends who want to "learn about Unix" to NetBSD, or occasionally OpenBSD. They've all come back to thank me.

Keep up the good work.

--saint

*linux is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux faces a bleak future. In fact there may be no future at all for Linux because Linux is dying. Things are looking very bad for Linux. As many of us are already aware, Linux continues to lose market share; red ink flows like a river of blood. Slackware Linux is perhaps the most in endangered. Let's look at the numbers.

MandrakeSoft's CEO Henri Poole states that there are 70000 users of Linux-Mandrake. How many users of Debian GNU/Linux are there? Let's see. The number of Linux-Mandrake versus GNU/Linux posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 70000/5 = 14000 GNU/Linux users. Slackware posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of GNU/Linux posts. Therefore there are about 7000 users of Slackware. A recent article put RedHat Linux at about 80 percent of the Linux market. Therefore there are (70000+14000+7000)*4 = 364000 RedHat Linux users. This is consistent with the number of RedHat Linux Usenet posts.

Now Linux companies are consolidating, overhauling their business plans, laying off staff, scaling back expansion plans and pushing back profitability schedules. "It would seem there are too many distributions for the market to bear," said Gartner analyst Tom Henkel. (http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,269 5638,00.html)

Red Hat, Inc., the leader in developing deploying and managing open source linux solutions, announced on a reported basis, a net loss of $24.2 million. (http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-0 3-22-010-20-PS)

Turbolinux, based in Brisbane, Calif., a Linux-based software provider has withdrawn a $60 million initial public offering "in light of current market conditions." (http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/010320/n20215287_2.html) (http://cnnfn.cnn.com/2001/03/20/deals/ipo/)

Clayton-based Linuxgruven.com, a Linux training and service company with 106 employees, laid off 100 employees (http://stlouis.bcentral.com/stlouis/stories/2001/ 03/05/daily41.html)

Lineo withdrew its initial public offering in January. Caldera Systems delayed the acquisition of Santa Cruz Operations' Unix software by a quarter. Linuxcare laid off dozens in February, with Linuxcare co-founders Dave Sifry and Dave LaDuke are among those departing. VA Linux Systems cut 114 people in February and delayed its expected profitability by nine months. (http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,269 5638,00.html)

Due to the troubles of Corel, abysmal sales and so on, Corel Linux is going out of business and was nearly taken over by Microsoft who sell another troubled OS. Owing to the GPL, SuSE is laying off almost all of its US staff. Major marketing surveys show that Linux has steadily declined in market share. Even LinuxWorld.com shut down "because of the economy and everything else" (http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=01/03/13/ 1720254&mode=nocomment)

Linux is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Linux is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyists (i.e. those who dabble with Minix, Xinu, etc). Linux continues to falter. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Linux is dead.

DOS, er Slashdot thier FTP Server?

[rsimmons]

Why on earth would you post links to their main ftp server here on slashdot. Wasn't linking to their list of mirrors enough? Their ftp servers are pretty much unreachable.

Bin Laden

[Anonymous Coward]

I just saw a new report that says the Bin Laden uses *BSD to run his network servers.

So blow it up! *BSD has aided and abetted terrorists! Destroy this project!

(It's true... he still uses an Arabic version of windows for workstation machines)

NetBSD and IBM Z50

[bball99]

- one of my greatest pleasures is wiping out CE and booting NetBSD on this great little laptop..

- i've put up a quick mini-howto w/screenshots of the Z50 in action at:

http://www.tux.org/~bball/z50

- i use an Adaptec SCSI PCMCIA adapter and an external CD-ROM attached to the Z50 to install NetBSD onto a 1GB microdrive... (a 340MB microdrive, going for about $170 on ebay, is perfect, and will leave 110MB user space, even with a full NetBSD install!)

- the z50 is the most inexpensive wireless X11 terminal with a full keyboard and 640x480 (1280x960 if you use tvtwm!)... my favorite accessories:

D-Link DWL-650 wireless card
IBM microdrive(s)
Xircom CF Ethernet
Targus CF WWF card (serial i/o for my Moto StarTAC, so i can use the z50 for net access nearly anywhere in the U.S.)
Adaptec 1260D PCMCIA & Yamaha CDRW drive
192MB CF flash

i also keep a Linux distro on a 128MB CF card... unfortunately, while Linux supports the trackpoint, X, and audio, it will only use 16MB of RAM, even if 48MB is installed (4MB is a video hole)... on the other hand, the hpcmips port of NetBSD supports all installed memory (minus the hole), has trackpoint support, but no audio... right now, NetBSD is the best choice for this unit...

NetBSD now supports the TrackPoint pointer! use greg hughe's kernel at:

http://www.student.math.uwaterloo.ca/~gl2hughe/h pc mips/

(get the Aug. 17 kernel)

where else can you get a laptop with UNIX, wireless Internet connectivity that runs for 16 hours? (i use the extended battery; the 1GB microdrive actually seems to use *less* power)

Linux/BSD fans would be well advised to snap up one of these jewels before they're GONE!

The Toad Enlightenment Program (Re:BSD _is_ dying)

[bXTr]

Time again for the Toad Enlightment Program

*BSD is dying
So is Linux. It's just a fucking kernel. BSD is a real OS. Deal with it!

Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *BSD community when last month IDC confirmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers.
If IDC told you to jump off a cliff for your precious Linux kernel, would you do it? Please say yes, then follow through.

Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along.
If Netcraft told you to fly an airplane into a skyscraper, would you do it?

*BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last [sysadminmag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
Oooh. Sys Admin magazine. I'm so impressed. The word is 'Tuning'; look it up!

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future.
And you don't have to be Islamic to be a terrorist. Your point?

The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying.
Then so is GNU/Linux and every other Open Source, Free, WTFE (what the fuck ever) OS out there.

Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
Speaking of blood, have you spilled yours yet?

FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all. Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
You're kidding, right?

OpenBSD leader Theo (blah, blah, blah, yackety, schmakety, ...)
BORING! Can't you do better than parrot the typical bullshit on Usenet? Get a fucking life, please?

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI
BZZT! FreeBSD is not a business.

who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead,its corpse turned over to another charnel house.
BZZT! Non-sequitor. Your facts (sic) are uncoordinated.

All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share.
I can get anyone to kiss my ass and tell the world how sweet it is. So what?

*BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim.
So is Linux.

If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers.
So is Linux.

*BSD continues to decay.
So does Linux.

Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time.
I use it and will continue to use it, therefore I AM GOD!

For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
For all practical purposes, you are still a braindead, fucking toad.

*BSD is dying
And so are you. Enough of your rattling, toadie boy. Your words are tiresome, your arguments are weak, and your relevance in this discussion is nonexistant. AWAY WITH YOU! BE GONE!

Re:Death to Muslim Pigs. Destroy Islam. Kill Arabs

[dadragon]

If you really believe that, why don't you post it like a man, as a non-AC? Right now you sound like a racist white american. (Note the non-capatalised "american". It's a sign of disrespect of this incdividual, non all Americans)

Good point, reminds me of Linux.

[Penguinoflight]

It seems that some people have been saying that Linux is dieing for quite some time. BSD didn't take long to catch up. Fact is, they wouldn't be so insistant on it if it was true, who cares if it's dieing if it really wasn't any threat in the first place?

Your point on NetCraft was good. Though *BSD isn't used on Webservers much (all that netcraft can determine), I have friends who use BSD for routing quite a lot, and due to the good ipv6 support I might use it for routing also if I had a spare box. Mostly I just don't have time to fool around with getting stuff working "desktop-like" on my machine, and my mom wouldn't appreciate it. :-)

Re:Good point, reminds me of Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

Though *BSD isn't used on Webservers much

Yet, BSD is tops of the top 50 uptime on web servers.

Yet, BSD is the OS of choice of the #2 maker of PC OSes (Apple)

Yet, BSD is what built SUN.

When Linux build a company that has staying power, is SO much better than the OS they used to use the compant moved, and makes the most used OS list on continous uptime, let me know, K?

Re:Good point, reminds me of Linux.

[Penguinoflight]

I was not intending to downsize BSD.
much of what you say is true, though Apple is also based on Mach os.

My point was that Linux really started taking off after it was declared "dead", and so did the slackware distribution.

I'll use BSD once it can compete with Linux in the workstation department, or when I get a hold of a extra server.
btw, it's kinda hard to look you up when you post ac.

Why?

[Cro Magnon]

Is there any reason to use NetBSD on a i386? I'm not asking this to troll, I just heard that FreeBSD is better on that platform and I wondered if that was true.

Re:Why?

[bugg]

This is a debated topic. If you don't need SMP and you don't need high-end SCSI performance (from FreeBSD's cam) NetBSD is a choice you should at least consider.

The biggest hamper that keeps most of the "mainstream x86 BSD" users on FreeBSD is ports versus pkgsrc- pkgsrc is engineered well, but has fewer packages. Hopefully openpackages will change this.

hey asshole...

[NiGGeRZ_R_SMeLLy]

*bsd is FUCKED. i first started runnning it back in july 1995, 2.0.5. i'll tell you right now, *IT'S SHIT*. what this guy is saying is true, but you bsd lewsers refuse to admit it. i shit in your mouth, fucker.

Re:hey asshole...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your mom sucks bad.

I had to knock her teeth out to keep her from biting.

Re:The Toad Enlightenment Program

[wabb1t]

YHBT. YL. HAND.

(You Have Been Trolled. You Lose. Have A Nice Day.)

Please do not feed the trolls! Thank you.

Ho, hum... (Re:hey asshole...)

[bXTr]

*bsd is FUCKED.
Same bullshit, different hole

i first started runnning it back in july 1995, 2.0.5. i'll tell you right now, *IT'S SHIT*.
You were six then, right? I suppose the first Leeeeeeeeeeeeenux kernels were "SHIT" too.

what this guy is saying is true, but you bsd lewsers refuse to admit it.
The only thing I'll admit to is that I can't tell which of you the bigger retard.

(Remainder of post snipped 'cause it's sofa king lame)

Trolling for wabbits

[bXTr]

Kill the wabbit,
kill the wabbit,
kill the wabbit,
kill the wabbit

-- performed to the music of Ride of the Valkyries by Richard Wagner

BSD is D - E - A - D

[Anonymous Coward]

It's dead, Jim.

Deal with it. Grieve. Move on.