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NetBSD Celebrates Its 10th Anniversary

Posted by timothy on from the chooses-energizer-bunny-as-new-logo dept.

jschauma writes "This week marks the tenth anniversary of the beginning of development of the NetBSD Operating System. The very first commit to the NetBSD source tree (src/Makefile) was by Chris Demetriou on Friday 21 March, 1993. Parties are being held in various cities around the world, see the press release for more details. Happy 10th Birthday, NetBSD!"

6 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. Birthday sale at linuxjewellery.com by HeroicAutobot · · Score: 5, Informative
    I'm not affiliated with them in any way (I swear!), but I noticed that the Linux Jewellery Store is having a BSD Birthday Sale.

    If you're looking for Beastie to add to you (non-virtual) desktop, this is probably the time to get one.

    --
    I'm looking for a HEPA media filter for my TV. I'm alergic to reality shows.
  2. Re:Which is older by shamilton · · Score: 3, Informative

    NetBSD is slightly older. FreeBSD 1.0 was released in November of 1993.

    I'm told Linux was comparable back then, too.

    --
    "[A] high IQ is like a Jeep; you will still get stuck, just farther from help!" --Just d' FAQs, c.g.a
  3. Re:I have a question by Jungle+guy · · Score: 5, Informative
    When NetBSD started, back in 1992/1993, there was a huge lawsuit against a company called BSDI (that used the BSD code to develop a proprietary operating system and called it Unix). They were sued by USL, a spun-off company formed by AT&T that had rights over Unix. To make a setlement, professors from University of California developed what they called 4BSD - an operating system without the files that were proprerty of USL. FreeBSD an NetBSD had to resynchronize their trees with 4BSD to avoid lawsuits.

    The project lost precious time in its early infancy, while Linux progressed at warp speed (people say that Linus was REALY active those days). Linux was also seen as a haven for possible lawsuits as it was writen from scratch, even tough it was technically inferior in the early days. But, as the community around it grew faster, soon it gained momentum and critical mass. Its use of GNU software was also important. The whole story is in the book Open Sources.

  4. Re:I have a question by trb · · Score: 2, Informative
    To make a setlement, professors from University of California developed what they called 4BSD - an operating system without the files that were proprerty of USL

    You're confusing 4BSD with 4.4BSD. 4BSD came out in 1980 and was the original paging UNIX for VAX. 4.4 was the post-lawsuit one, and came out in 1994.

  5. Still the most portable by Dr.+Manhattan · · Score: 3, Informative
    "Of course it runs NetBSD."

    Really true. I just started playing with it a few weeks ago, sticking it on an old Mac SE/30. It's now a very capable webserver, more than able to saturate my pathetic DSL upload bandwidth. (Watch, now the poor thing melts from a Slashdotting.)

    Linux support for Mac68K seems to have stagnated; the 2.4 kernel still doesn't compile for 68K Macs. Sure, they're not common anymore, but Linux is supposed to scale.

    It may not have every whiz-bang feature that Linux has, but portability is important, too. Almost any random hardware with an MMU runs NetBSD, and runs it well. I love Linux, and I run it on my PCs and at work, but NetBSD made way more sense for this project. It was very easy to set up, too. Configuration is... different from Linux, but I can't say it's worse. I'm not finding it too hard to learn.

    Congrats to them, and best wishes for the future. They do good work.

    --
    PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
    1. Re:Still the most portable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      I have it running on a Sparc 2 pizza box as my firewall. IMHO ipf is alot easier to install, configure, and maintain than ipchains. (Yes, I know ipf runs on Linux as well)

      I have it running on a DEC 3000/ with sendmail for my mail server. It puts it's pants on every day and delivers the mail without a hiccup. I did a single OS install and I've never had to do an upgrade or patch.

      I used to have it running on a pmax (one of those old Ultrix boxen) for a workstation and it had quite acceptable performance but there just wasn't enuff software available. I agree that Linux makes a more pleasant working environment for a desktop.

      My #1 reason for running NetBSD on these servers is that I know absolutely everything that is going on on them. When I do a 'ps ax' on my firewall I get about 15 processes and I know exactly what they're doing and why they're there. I also know that most of the executables on the disk are there for a good reason and are going to be useful. On Linux I'm constantly wasting tens of dollars worth of disk space on things that I'll never use :-)

      -- Les