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NetBSD 1.5ZB

Posted by michael on from the zero-bugs?-zebra-bashing? dept.

Dahan writes: "I just saw that the development branch of NetBSD is now at version 1.5ZB. A change log is available for those interested. Note that although the title of the page says it's a list of changes from NetBSD 1.5 to 1.6, NetBSD 1.6 is not out yet--the page lists changes that will be in 1.6 whenever it's released. (And when will that be? "When it's ready," of course.) Standard caution about not running development kernels on mission-critical systems applies, although I've been running 1.5ZA on my DEC^H^H^HCompaq Alpha PC164 web/mail/DNS/whatever server for a few months now, and it's been great. And for those of you used to the Linux version numbering scheme and are wondering what all these letters mean, here's an explanation of NetBSD's version numbering."

3 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. Excuse me?! by Starship+Trooper · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I'm not sure who you are or why you feel yourself qualified to talk about the history and focus of the NetBSD project, but I have a few things to tell you, mister. I have real life experience working with Linux, Solaris and all three *BSD flavours, and I can tell you that NetBSD is by far my favourite environment. It's not just portability or adaptability that make the platform special, it's the homogeneity of it.

    When moving between Linux distributions or Free/OpenBSD architectures, there is always an adjustment period where you must learn the intricacies of the new environment. Not so with NetBSD.

    • NetBSD works exactly the same, whether you run it on an old Atari ST or a 2GHz Pentium 4.
    • Linux works slightly differently on every platform, because the core operating system tools aren't perfectly portable from architecture to architecture. There is also a different set of distros available for each platform, which adds to the confusion of moving from, say, an old PPro workhorse to an IBM RS4000 workstation.
    • FreeBSD is not portable at all, and the two platforms it does support (x86 and alpha) are so horribly different in so many ways that FreeBSD/x86 and FreeBSD/alpha may as well be different operating systems.
    • OpenBSD may be nearly as portable as NetBSD, but it's nowhere near as comfortable. The anal-retentive "security first" philosophy forces the user to jump through an incessant number of hoops to get anything done. The only reason OpenBSD is secure is because you can't do anything with it. I have no idea what the authors were thinking when they wrote it.
    I bet you're just another whining Slashdot teenage kiddy, and that you've never had a real job in your life. You talk about OpenBSD and NetBSD as if you wrote them! I hope for your sake you're not this full of yourself in real life.
    --
    Loneliness is a power that we possess to give or take away forever
  2. Re:NetBSD stopped being useful once I forked OpenB by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    My company uses several Unices... SCO serves up our accounting soft. We use
    Linux+Samba as a fileserver. We use OpenBSD as our Internet Firewall & mail
    server. Each choice was made for a particular reason, and we chose OpenBSD
    for its task because of its dedication to security. This choice was made
    after a NetBSD system was cracked. (at the time, 1.4 release)

    I'm sure that a lot of people will give this reason and that reason why
    NetBSD is just as secure as OpenBSD, or why OpenBSD is more secure than
    NetBSD. While this can probably be argued back and forth until the end of
    time, I can tell you that Theo DeRaadt, head of development for OpenBSD, was
    very responsive to my questions, and also explained to me how our NetBSD
    system was cracked. (which it would be stupid to repeat in a public forum,
    to those who don't know)

    Overall, OpenBSD is a useable product, as evidenced by the numerous
    commercial products that have it integrated. NetBSD, on the other hand,
    lives in a dreamworld somewhere between theory and practice. I'll stick to
    OpenBSD for any practical, mission critical purposes

    -Anonymous for obvious reasons

  3. rc system by Fweeky · · Score: 4, Interesting

    NetBSD's got a very nice rc (startup) system; as opposed to the monolithic (Open|Free)BSD approach, NetBSD's is a highly modular dependancy based model; no more giving scripts esoteric names like "000.wibble" to try to get it executed before "001.wobble"; just add a dependency in wobble on wibble and the rc system will make sure wibble is executed first.

    There's an interesting PDF paper on the design and implimentation, some conciderably more terse and less interesting official documentation and a Daemon News article, and for those uber geeks, the CVS repository where you can compare with the other BSD's.

    You'll note FreeBSD -CURRENT is looking at adopting it, while Open sticks with the tried and tested BSD4.4-type setup