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NetBSD 1.6 Released
BSD Forums writes "The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce that release 1.6 of the NetBSD operating system is now available. NetBSD is widely known as the most portable operating system in the world. It currently supports fifty two different system architectures, all from a single source tree, and is always being ported to more. The NetBSD 1.6 release contains complete binary releases for thirty nine different system architectures. The thirteen remaining are not fully supported at this time and are thus not part of the binary distribution."
hubertf adds some important notes: "Many of the FTP Mirrors are now carrying the NetBSD 1.6 distribution.
Please try to use the NetBSD
FTP Mirror Site
closest to you. ... Czech,
German,
French,
Japanese,
Polish,
Portugese
,
Russian,
Spanish and
Swedish
language translations of the NetBSD 1.6 release announcement are
available." The NetBSD packages collection now includes over 3000 pieces of software, including KDE3, OpenOffice and many more of the usual suspects.
Really? Linux 7.3? Did a wormhole open up somewhere in space and spit out a copy of Linux 7.3? Will people PLEASE stop reffering to Redhat (or mandrake, if there is a 7.3) 7.3 as "Linux 7.3"!!!! I'm in #linuxhelp on efnet alot, helping people, and it's driving me nuts that half the people think they have Linux .
/proc/version it should say something like Linux version 2.4.whatever. Dunno what redhat comes with.
The kernel version is the version of Linux you have, 7.3 is your distro version, things like this make me hate redhat, sure it introduces people to linux but it's mostly the wrong people. Also, you don't seriously belive that because this number is 1.6 and you have redhat 7.3 that redhat 7.3 is newer, do you? I really hope you were joking but then again some people are trully clueless. Anyway, if you don't belive me get into a shell and type less
Please, take your time to study how the NetBSD rc system works. It has all the advantages of sysV style init scritps, but none of the disadvantages. Let's say I install apache via the pkgsrc system. Now all I have to do is add apache=YES in my /etc/rc.conf file and the system will automagically start apache at boot time. Of course I can start or stop it manually should I have the need to do so with a simple /etc/rc.d/apache [start|stop]
FWIW, FreeBSD 5.0 will feature this same system, Gordon Tetlow and others are working on a port of NetBSD's script system to FreeBSD.
Not wanting to start a religious war and all that... but although NetBSD lists the Dreamcast as supported. the support is pretty poor: no sound, no lightgun, no rumblepak, no mouse, no X windows, no vmu. All of these are supported in LinuxDC.
OpenBSD is the one that can't do SMP.
FreeBSD is the one Mac users and fags (usually one in the same) flock to.
Heh. NetBSD actually has a surprising number of ports- or 'packages,' as they call both make skeletons for source builds and binary tarballs; I just installed NetBSD (and upgraded today, whee) for my own sick reasons, and was surprised to discover how much software was available; the 'pkgsrc' tree works not only on every NetBSD architecture, but Solaris and Darwin as well- rather surprising, coming from FreeBSD. It also has sane update/upgrade targets, something FreeBSD's only just copied with portupgrade.
/usr/pkg, or a configurable path (/usr/local/pkg would really make more sense), freeing up /usr/local/bin and the like for sysadmin tweaking. FreeBSD users will know what a mess /usr/local/bin becomes with a reasonable load of software, and how annoying it'd be to install a homebuilt binary there and forget about it.
;)
.. 4.7, 4-STABLE) with features getting rolled back and forth between those trees and the development sources; major architectural changes are saved for version jumps, as seen in the huge improvements between 3.x and 4.x, and the introduction of KSE and SMPng for 5.x)
The nice thing is that NetBSD installs package files to
NetBSD also tends to attract features from all-comers, meaning it gets some nifty stuff- USB support, new filesystems, various RAID features first. It also means NetBSD users end up risking stability with these first.
As OpenBSD was forked from NetBSD, neither have SMP just yet. OpenBSD is "the one you install if you want a reasonable guarantee of security for the first hours of configuration." Now that all BSD distros have adopted some of the basic tenets of the OpenBSD mindset- turning off unnecessary services in the base install- it's less of an issue, but even with the recent OpenSSH holes, there's something to be said for the audited kernel and userland. OpenBSD is what you run on your router/NAT/VPN-service box, don't bother with it as a desktop unless you Need To Be L33t. (It does make a good learner's system, given its relative adherence to simplicity, but that's supposed to be NetBSD's department, and it probably would be less painful.)
FreeBSD is 'the one everyone uses.' It's a descendent of 386BSD, the first post-AT&T-lawsuit project to take a stab at a free BSD distribution. (NetBSD followed shortly, and the release of new sources brought both to the same underpinnings.) Today, it's a mishmash of features from the other two, but while NetBSD's goal is "Run on Everything, Try out Everything," and OpenBSD's is "Secure by Default," FreeBSD tries (with varying success) to be a sort of stable and predictable platform for the average user. Given the 386BSD history, x86 has always been the platform of choice, and the kernel features some tweaks in that direction which the other BSDs may have missed. It's the One That Supports SMP, and The One That Will Support SMP Much Better with the upcoming release of 5.0.
Each BSD works on a different development cycle, and each's kernel evolves with the distribution, rather than separately. NetBSD goes on a two-year cycle, if I understand correctly, with each release branch frozen immediately (barring security patches, which can occasionally inspire point releases, as seen with 1.5.1, 1.5.2, 1.5.3); OpenBSD sticks to a release every 6 months- 3.0 was just 'what happened after 2.9.' FreeBSD forks on major version numbers, running an evolving -STABLE branch (4.0, 4.1
Darwin is the bastard child maintained by Apple, using a Mach kernel, FreeBSD userland, NetBSD pkgsrc, and whatever else is deemed to best suit OS X. It's 'fun' for a certain class of developer, but the mention of Mach should prove it's best left to the insane. If you'd want Darwin, you may as well buy a Mac and enjoy the benefits of the Quartz graphics system.
I am one, and I hate seeing that mistake over and over again. If you can, please correct that.
Thank you.
BSD flavours tend to use various GNU tools, and GNU/Linux distros similarly have a lot of BSD utilities, so the differences aren't large. If you install the Bash shell, you'll find a very familiar working environment, with just some differences in the filesystem layout and admin tasks that need to be studied.
As for desktop use, it's probably not going to give you anything over Linux on a soopa-doopah Pentium 4 512M monster. NetBSD's goal is portability and simplicity -- a small, solid and useful OS for all sorts of different machines. All platform ports are built from the same tree, so NetBSD on your ancient Atari Falcon will behave virtually identically to it running on a goliath Sun box.
Contrast this to Linux, where a lot of non-i386 ports tend to be maintained as patches from the main tree, and use different distros etc.
Give NetBSD a whirl. It's not fancy but it's very reliable and easy to understand. You'll learn more about UNIX in general.
For Intels, FreeBSD is probably the best choice, speaking of performance.
NetBSD is cool because it runs on almost anything with a decent CPU inside (Sparc, Toaster, Mower...) I plan on using it for my NAT/FW on an almost obsolete SparcStation 5 and for a SSH-only Mailmachine on an even obsoleter (but still cute) Sparc IPX.
Speaking of OpenBSD I still believe that a reasonable admin can achieve as much a secure system with Free- and NetBSD or a Linux as he could with OpenBSD.
Mostly, the choice is of your BSD is rather ideological than technical. As is with choosing a Linux Distribution. (For example, I quite like Slackware because of it's BSDish approach to Linux.)
--- If OS were buildings, then the first woodpecker to come around would erase 95 % of civilization.
I think that NetBSD is possibly the best system for a newbie who really _wants_ to learn Unix, if only because it's so bare-boned that you have to figure out the whole thing to get any work done.
My first experience with it was on an old Quadra 700 Macintosh, which I installed NetBSD 1.4.something on to try and get used to using a command line. Outside of the sun boxen at the college I attended, I hadn't used a shell prompt before, but I wanted to figure out how to get things done before OS X came out.
Well, NetBSD isn't what I'd call "user friendly," especially the installer for the Mac68k port. But I managed to figure it out, and by bothering the hell out of the local Linux and Solaris geeks, I managed to get everything up and running properly.
By the time OS X came out, I wasn't prepared to give up the BSDs I've come to appreciate - so I've got a NetBSD box, one for OpenBSD, and one for FreeBSD on my network. They're all hand-configured to the purposes I need them for. And all that time meant that I have a much better grasp of how my systems fit together than any of the l33t haX0rs at work with their Mandrake installs and their deep fear of the command line.
In short, if you want to learn a particular distros tools, install some flavor of Linux and use the administration stuff that comes with it. But if you want knowledge that bridges between Unix variants, give NetBSD a shot. You'll be pleasantly surprised.
--saint
Actually, Darwin is about half as fast as Linux on the same hardware for basic kernel operations (mmap, open, etc). And its subsystems (especially the VM) aren't anything to brag about in comparison to their counterparts in FreeBSD and NetBSD.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...