Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

NetBSD 1.6 Has Been Branched

Posted by Hemos on from the sigmarril dept.

jschauma writes "Following Todd Vierlings announcement to the current-users Mailinglist, the NetBSD 1.6 Release Process has begun. This means not only that 1.6 has been branched off the cvs-tree, but also that daily snapshots will soon be available. Changes from 1.5 to 1.6 are listed here. A brief announcement including a best-case scenario release timetable is available from here. Whooot."

6 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. Excellent by duffbeer703 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Dispite all of the blathering about how BSD is a dying breed of OS, the developers who have dedicated their time to BSD continue to make strides.

    Hats off to the NetBSD team!

    --
    Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
  2. Re:*BSD Trolls are Dying! by Yarn · · Score: 2, Funny

    I've had a funny day, and that was still in the top 5 funny things that has happened, well done :)

    --
    -Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
  3. Mmmm, should be good by LizardKing · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As I understand it, this will be the first release where all architectures are ELF based. No more recompiling the linker to avoid annoying warning messages on the Vax! The compiler will also be brought more upto date, and X will be version 4.2.0. Having followed the NetBSD security mailing list for a while, there will also be some nice little tweaks to the default install.

    I'm a little bit unclear on whether this release will feature native threading support, which is the only API I'm missing from a certain other Unix-like operating system. Anyone reading know the score on threading support in 1.6?

    Chris

  4. Re: Native threading library ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    No native threading yet. There is the nathanw_sa
    branch to -current, which implements scheduler
    activations to come up with a native thread
    implementation. It's worth checking out
    doc/BRANCHES (e.g. cvsweb:
    http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/doc/B RANCHES?r ev=1.38&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup&only_wit h_tag=HEAD) and
    read the pointers nathanw has put in that file
    to understand the difference between this implementation,
    what Linux initially chose, and user threading libs
    like e.g. gnu pth.

    IIrc, there was this question somewhen on current-users ML, too, and ppl have said
    that it's likely there will be a new release (be it 1.7 or 2.0 or whatever) after quite short time
    (compared to previous releases) which will merge
    nathanw_sa and sommerfeld_i386_mp to both get
    i386 MP support into it as well as the native
    thread library.

    Hth

  5. Re:any reason for slow releases by LizardKing · · Score: 4, Informative

    I don't know about FreeBSD, but OpenBSD follows a six monthly release cycle fairly rigidly, giving the developers a target for adding new features and stabilising them. It must also provide a crude way to estimate revenue, as CD sales obviously peak around the time of a release.

    NetBSD has some different goals to the other BSD's. Correctness of the implementation of any new feature is valued highly, leading to a conservative development process. The SMP implementation is a good example - the NetBSD developers want to get it right, by comparison the Linux philosophy calls for early release of potentially buggy code. The Linux principle is that exposure to a wide audience will shake out bugs quickly. NetBSD relies on the fact that the most of the "audience" don't have the skill to fix bugs or even provide meaningful feedback. We could argue about which approach is best until the cows come home, but that's the way it is.

    So in conclusion, NetBSD is released at a leisurely pace but this shouldn't be taken as a relection of how much development is going on.

    Chris

  6. Re:Why *BSD is dying - an insider's view by Selmo · · Score: 3, Interesting
    OpenBSD has a focus. FeeBSD has lost its focus and is spread too thin over the map. One time they had a good OS for the ia32. But now that focus is lost. FreeBSD is way behind. NetBSD diverts too many resources to avenues of no return (thinking Atari, Amiga, 68K, and other marginal platforms). Long term, probably only OpenBSD will survive.

    Did you know that NetBSD's ports collection is actually slightly larger than OpenBSD's? Everyone knows that FreeBSD is a cornucopia of packages....possibly even more than Debian, depending on how you count.

    Personally, I think if FreeBSD wants become more sucessful it needs to place the highest emphasis on porting to a few more architectures. Start with PPC and sparc64 since they're already fielded and widely used, then work on ia64 and x86-64 after that. I say this because x86 won't be around forever....look at all the consolidation and standardization among consumer PC's already...the trend is toward 'set top boxes' but I think it's been slowed with the tech economy's depression. Intel's insane price cuts on CPU's can only be hastening this devastation of profit margins.

    With a commerical advocate in Wasabi Systems, NetBSD is poised to make a big splash in the growing embedded/wireless business and might well be the OS for anyone interested in wireless applications to focus on.