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NetBSD 1.5.3 Released, 1.6 On The Way
djcdplaya writes: "The highly portable NetBSD has reached a new milestone. OSNews.com is reporting that NetBSD 1.5.3 has been released. 1.5.3 was released correcting some bugs and adding some additional security. It also has improved device driver support." Part of the same announcement: "Please note that a new major release of NetBSD, version 1.6, is
currently in beta test and should be released within a few weeks.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
I have had NetBSD for about 6 months now, and all I can say is that the software is brilliant. I am genuinely stunned by how good this is. And I am genuinely thankful to all the people who made this possible. I know it is a little unfair to mention anyone by name but;
Richard Stallman; I think you are a genius.
Linus; many thanks for making your magnificent kernel available to us all forever via the GPL. If I had ever written anything this good, I would have been reluctant to part with it, but you gave it away. I hope you are soon rich as well as famous.
ESR; what can I say, keep up the good work I guess. Try not to take everything that is said too personally. Like all the others, I don't agree with everything you say, but I think your contribution is overwhelmingly positive. And I think you write well. This is something not all good programmers can do, or want to do.
So far I have NetBSD running on 3 machines. I have the complete home LAN going with IP masquerading and all that. I have never had a crash, but to be honest sometimes I have screwed up my systems so badly the best way to recover was just to reboot and start again. Quicker than reading the manual if you know what I mean, just hit it with a bigger hammer. I have a real talent for screwing up routing tables.
I would guess that Linux has saved me at least USD$5,000-00, and maybe USD$10,000-00. I base this estimate on the software savings (the missing BLOATware), hardware savings and over priced upgrades to both that I can now permanently avoid. My gateway/server box is a P75 for instance, with an 8 gig drive. Intra-LAN pings take 0.5 milliseconds on 100 meg PCI cards with a 10 meg hub. Me, I can wait 0.5 microseconds for a packet. Especially when it puts 10 grand in my pocket.
There was an 'astroturfed?' thread here a while ago about everyone who uses Linux having a ton of books and CD's lying around essentially as papers weights with no useful system to show for it. In my case, I have 4 distributions already, but I also have a very useful system. I will try an explain... I have all these distributions because they are so cheap, and because whenever I want some new component for the system, like StarOffice 5.1 for instance, the download is too big and if you buy it from StarDivision (here in Freemont) they want $39-00. If you go to Fry's (the local electrical store) you can find a complete distribution containing the single thing you want, plus upgrades for all the others for $24-95. I am thinking of Caldera 2.2 here. So why not just take the whole thing? So invariably, I do.
In summary, it is difficult to believe that something this good could be produced in such an unusual way. If I had not seen it with my own eyes I would not have believed it.
My advice to anyone is just try it. You will save a small fortune, learn a lot, have a lot of fun.
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