NetBSD Now Supports Dual Power PC Processors

djcdplaya writes: "DaemonNews is reporting that the good guys over at NetBSD have gotten dual PowerPC processors working on dual-G4 Apples. The NetBSD mailing can be found here."

Comments

To all the ppl saying BSD is dead

[t0qer]

I see like 12 or so totally offtopic comments saying BSD is dead. Here is what I have to say about it.

In the last month, as a hobbyist i've set up 3 BSD systems.

I like BSD, the install isn't bloated, the system boots up REALLY fast, and it really is a better place to start than Linux if you want to learn UNIX standards.

This message is coming to you through a transparent squid proxy :)

Now for some on topic stuff.

SMP on PPC? Cool beans!

--toq

Re:To all the ppl saying BSD is dead

[BitGeek]

How can BSD be dead when Apple ships more BSD systems every year than Linux has in its entire history??

Really, though, these comparitive unix arguments are just silly.

Above the kernel, everyone has vi, emacs, gcc, curl, et al. Inside the kernel everyone has access to the open source kernels and so anything competitively advantageous will eventually make it to the other kernels.

Sure, there's a difference in the kernels, some being better than others at some tasks-- but really, to users, its unix, unix, unix, unix.

*UNIX* in all its flavors, is taking over the world... one Mac, one PC, one Workstation, one Server at a time.

When microsoft is the alternative, why squabble over kernel flavors?

Re:To all the ppl saying BSD is dead

[CoolVibe]

When microsoft is the alternative, why squabble over kernel flavors?

Just ignore the trolls, this is exactly what they want.

I am running Linux- and Windowsless too, I like BSD, there's nothing wrong with it. It's just a UNIX flavour indeed. Just like Solaris (and SunOS, which was BSD based too)

And for the poor people that actually believe the "BSD is dead" trolls, well, I hope they happen on a BSD system one day and see the beauty of it.

Everything I have runs on BSD, and it hasn't let me down once (well, not counting my FreeBSD CURRENT box, but hey, that's bleeding edge for ya).

Oh, and even the allmighty Redmondian Giant uses BSD. Check out hotmail mail headers, you might see a Qmail MTA in there somewhere. Microsoft still uses FreeBSD at HotMail for the backend. Apparently the Win2k machines can't keep up :)

Re:To all the ppl saying BSD is dead

[CoolVibe]

Oh you poor misguided individual...

Windows is the only alternative? Wake-up call... Mac OS X (which is also BSD based) had been released for quite some time now. You should try it and switch if you like it. I'm using it now too. This post was written in Chimera onder OSX 10.1.5. It's very speedy and it beats the crap out of MSIE (even under OSX).

Please take of your windows colored glasses and see what else is out there. Not the whole world runs on IA32. My G4 rocks my world!

Re:To all the ppl saying BSD is dead

[Skuto]

>You have this backwards. Because the GPL requires
>all code it associates with to also become GPL'ed,
>you can't simply take code from BSD.

*Completely* wrong. BSD is compatible with the GPL, so you can integerate BSD code into a GPL project without problems.

The reverse is not possible, because the GPL has additional restrictions over BSD code.

--
GCP

Re:Glad you asked

['The '.$L3mm1ng]

Which is totally irrelevant if you read The FAQ:

Operating systems we can usually work out uptimes for are:

BSD/OS
FreeBSD [but not the default configuration in versions 3 to 4.3]
HP-UX [recent versions]
IRIX
Linux 2.1 kernel and later, except on Alpha processor based systems
MacOSX
NetBSD/OpenBSD [recent versions]
Solaris 2.6 and later
Windows 2000
Windows .NET
Windows XP
Operating systems that do not provide uptime information include;

AIX
AS/400
Compaq Tru64
DG/UX
MacOS
NetWare
NT3/Windows 95
NT4/Windows 98
OS/2
OS/390
SCO UNIX
Sony NEWS-OS
SunOS 4
VM

Additionally HP-UX, Linux, Solaris and recent releases of FreeBSD cycle back to zero after 497 days, exactly as if the machine had been rebooted at that precise point. Thus it is not possible to see a HP-UX, Linux or Solaris system with an uptime measurement above 497 days.

Re:MOTOROLA-Power PC is a deprecated Processor.

[BitGeek]

Interesting that you didn't provide any benchmarks.

The "video editing" benchmark compares very different products on the two platforms-- one not supported at all by the maker, one highly optimized.

And SPEC is a set of benchmarks, you chose the one where the PowerPC looks worst... ignorign the fact that when it comes to FP operations, or the instruction mix of a modern app, the results would be much different.

The Photoshop comparisons are not unreasonable.

Re:MOTOROLA-Power PC is a deprecated Processor.

[Lars T.]

You don't kow much about human vision, do you?

Re:What for?

[hubertf]

Um, maybe not all PPC hardware is made by Apple?
Look at the list of NetBSD ports that use a PPC:

amigappc bebox macppc mvmeppc ofppc pmppc prep sandpoint walnut

Of these, only 1 runs OSX.
All of them run NetBSD though.

- Hubert

Re:*BSD is dying

[cuba]

Well as a linux fan I have to disagree.
I use OpenBSD for my firewall and I'm quite satisfied. Big telco company in Czech Republic uses FreeBSD for their mail and secondary servers and so on. *BSD is fine and (look for changelogs) not dying.

NetBSD in OS X

[foniksonik]

I thought the point of this was so that the NetBSD portion of OS X's Darwin would finally be capable of utilizing dual CPUs. Am I missing something?

If previously NetBSD in OS X, et al was only cinlge CPU aware then OS X Server has been sub-optimal from it's inception as a server and now should see very nice performance improvements to such things as the TCP/IP stack and many other networking technologies.

I'm definitely curious to see what impact this will have for OS X Server. I assume that it was Apple's engineers that privided the 'last mile' details to get this working... nicde work people.

Maybe we'll be seeing TiVos with Dual G4 PPCs running NetBSD in the future or something too..

BTW, does anyone know if PPC Linux distros are MP aware?

Re:NetBSD in OS X

[LizardKing]

I thought the point of this was so that the NetBSD portion of OS X's Darwin would finally be capable of utilizing dual CPUs

Mac OS X uses portions of FreeBSD (user land bits mostly), but is built on top of the Mach microkernel. Mach began life as the BSD Unix kernel, but was extensively rewritten as an academic attempt at a working microkernel. While on his extended hiatus from Apple, Steve Jobs founded Next, who used this microkernel version of BSD in the NextStep operating system.

Mac OS X is arguably NextStep given a bit of a makeover, hence the continued interest in GNUstep as a free version of OpenStep (and now the newer Apple API's). OpenStep was the user land API's from the NextStep operating system, packaged up to run on many other systems.

The Mach kernel was adapted for multiple processors a long time ago, but I don't think the support was completed until Apple released OS X. So basically, NetBSD SMP support is something independent from Mac OS X's.

Re:NetBSD in OS X

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Mac OS X uses portions of FreeBSD (user land bits mostly), but is built on top of the Mach microkernel.

My understanding of this, is OS X is a hybrid Microkernel, kind of like how NT Microkernel is. In pure MKs, the MK only abstracts the hardware and manages raw hardware resources. Any interpretation is user level. For example, the network adabter driver would be in the kernel, but the TCP/IP stack would be user level. Sometimes it gets kind of slow, because you'd have to pass messages from user level app code through the MK and then to the user level tcp/ip stack, then back though the kernel and back to user-level app. Most MKs in use now are hybrids because of this, thy hybridization is to short circuit the message passing delays. I think Debian on GNU/Hurd is a "pure" MK implementation, using a Debian UNIX "server" to get UNIX APIs and all that under the Hurd.

OS X has a Mach core, but the BSD subsystem is also kernel level. They glue together, it's not just user-level stuff, which has a lot of NeXT thrown in as well. It also started as NetBSD code, I guess for portability reasons, then they realized they liked FreeBSD kernel a bit too, so now the BSD layer is a hybrid NetBSD/FreeBSD 2.x, soon to be FreeBSD 4.x layer.

Take it Tux?

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Hell, I was karma capped for a while, I can live with the negative mods...

Take it tux

This is a joke, I've set up both Linux and FreeBSD, Linux has more apps, FreeBSD is cleaner. I've used Solaris, SCO, Tru64, AIX, HPUX, SunOS, even DG/UX on a Motorla 88K. Pick whatever works best for you and be happy with it.

Re:BSD? Nope...

[The Axe]

It's a Mach microkernel with a FreeBSD kernel modified to run as a daemon. There is also a BSD-like layer (filesystem, some APIs, etc.). 70% of the userspace tools are from NetBSD, and I wouldn't doubt that they have some security code right out of OpenBSD.