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OS Review: NetBSD 1.6.2 on SPARC64
JigSaw writes "NetBSD is the king of operating system portability, running on 40+ different hardware platforms, including x86, MIPS, and even the Sega Dreamcast. So it comes as no surprise that among the supported platforms, NetBSD runs on Tony Bourke's Sun Ultra 5. Here is his review."
Guess what - the Dreamcast is deader than Rob Malda's sex life. Stop mentioning it.
Linux runs on SPARC too...
Why are you linking to OS News... SO STUPID... I can feel my brain melting... AGGH!
If NetBSD won't run on my C-64 or VIC-20 then forget it!
I haven't looked recently, but other than NeXTStep, the only OS I ever found that could run on my basic black slab was NetBSD, and even that had to be strapped from a bootserver, with no local disk support. I'm not sure whether it's more a testament to the wacky hardware or how tenacious the NetBSD teams have been that they were able to do this at all...
Get off my launchpad!
BSD is fucking dead on ALL fucking platforms asswipes!
...in the embedded space, that is. I see NetBSD turning up in a lot of devices now, including our new office copier of all things.
:P
Competition is a good thing, mmmmmkay, as some here would say.
I have to wonder what's driving Net's adoption in the embedded space. Is it technical merit, or the the BSD license allowing vendors to keep their changes closed?
I'm just glad to see that Netcraft was wrong
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
If you're going to review an OS on an UltraSparc box, please pick anything other than the u5/10. The u5/10 is basically a PC clone with an ultrasparc processor. It has a pisspoor IDE chipset, a crippled CPU (IIi has far less cache than a II), a crippled PCI backplane, low memory bandwidth and a PC-like chipset. A far better measure of how well an OS has been ported is an Ultra 2.
:) )
(and yes, I do know what I'm talking about, and I have sparc-related code in the Linux kernel to prove it
It is official.
Netcraft confirms: FreeBSD is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered FreeBSD distribution community when IDC confirmed that FreeBSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all Linux distribution versions. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that FreeBSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. FreeBSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by falling dead last in a recent Linux distribution study.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict FreeBSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: FreeBSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for FreeBSD because FreeBSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for FreeBSD. As many of us are already aware, FreeBSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD Live is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
FreeBSD Live project leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of FreeBSD Live. How many users of OpenBSD are there? Let's see. The number of FreeBSD Live versus OpenBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 OpenBSD users. FreeBSD Live posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of OpenBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of FreeBSD Live. A recent article put FreeBSD Live distribution at about 80 percent of the market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD Live users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of half-baked FreeBSD apps, abysmal sales and so on, many development companies is going out of business and will probably be taken over by another company who will sell another troubled product. Now FreeBSD is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that FreeBSD has steadily declined in market share. FreeBSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If FreeBSD is to survive at all it will be among dilettante dabblers. FreeBSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, FreeBSD is dead.
Fact: FreeBSD is dying
For example, I have no idea why you would ever not use pkgsrc (or ports) to build packages whenever possible. The reviewer goes on for half a page about his troubles compiling OpenSSL from source. No kidding? That's why we have pkgsrc and ports - someone else has already solved all the little problems for you!
Likewise, he's incredulous that his locally-built package using uber-elite optimization flags runs faster than the downloadable binary package. Frankly, that's like being amazed that a locally-built Debian package may be faster than the generic i386 package that you can download.
I honestly don't know why they label these diatribes as "reviews", when they should be called "a day spent with a system I don't understand".
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I can't get it to install on my AlphaServer 2100. I actually attempted a NetBSD 1.6.2 install on it a couple nights ago. The kernel appears to detect the DAC960 RAID controller on boot, but then claims there are no disks attached to the system. Fun fun. FreeBSD locks up whilst scanning the PCI bus.
Necrophiliacs, all of em.
A ray of wintery sunlight fell across the classroom, illuminating Lupin's grey hairs and the lines on his young face.
'BSD users are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth. They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope and happiness out of the air around them. Even Muggles feel their presence, though they can't see them. Get too near a BSD user and every good feeling, every happy memory, will be sucked out of you.If it can, the BSD user will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself - soulless and evil. You'll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life. And the worst that has happened to you, Harry, is enough to make anyone fall off their broom. You have nothing to feel ashamed of.'
'When they get near me -' Harry stared at Lupin's desk, his throat tight, 'I can hear Voldemort murdering my mum.'
Me too, Harry. Me too.
I have an Ultra5 here at home that I test things out with from time to time. At one stage I envisionged being able to use it as a server running Open/Net/FreeBSD.
NetBSD (1.6.1) had the crashing issues with installer, and once I finally got it installed I too had issues with packages compiling.
So I decided to skip instead ot OpenBSD 3.4. Got that installed, only to discover that the applications it supports in its ports tree is smaller and not up to date.
I then looked into FreeBSD. Now I have an external monitor I use with my Ultra5, and both recently (5.2) and a while back (5.1 or 5.0) I simply couldn't navigate past the initial boot screen to complete the install. The problem with FreeBSD on sparc is that it retains its curses-based install GUI, which renders in some horrible way (term is fucked up) when using a monitor. There are 4 options you can try when using installing, and none of them worked to give me a readable screen. To date I haven't tried installing via console, which could be the key.
Either way, OpenBSD has proved to be the easiest and most stable for installing on Ultrasparc to date, so that's what I'm recommending at present to people at work (have it on a few Ultra 5's and E220's).
Man watching 6 MSCE's around a sun box, looks alot like the opening scene's of 2001:space odyssey...
I've often wondered why some companies choose to use Linux when they are unwilling to show their source code. It clearly has not been to the advantage of the companies involved to be exposed as not complying with the GPL. It is risky business decision to choose to ignore license issues.
Perhaps more attention will be given to the *BSD family with it's technically very good OS and a free license.
EVERY TIME I see a thread here about a company pushing a Linux-based product, I ask the same question: Is there ANY compiler/linker/library product I can purchase that is guaranteed by its manufacturer to be UN-contaminated by the GPL?
Does the Intel C/C++ "compiler" for Linux make such a claim?
Does the Metrowerks C/C++ "compiler" make such a claim?
Novell/Mono/Ximian/C#/.NET???
ANYONE??????????
what these processors are known for. Benchmarks show that. That's not to say it's a bad processor, and maybe the Efficeon will turn out a little sweeter. Meanwhile, there isn't a whole lot about Transmeta's stuff that stands out. Except the wacky design.
How long do you predict it will be before all rights to fair use are vanquished from the Internet?
This one. The researchers here appear to be putting an academic imprimateur on the model discussed in 2000.
can be found here.
This is Slashdot, where any sufficiently advanced opinion is indistinguishable from fact.
<This is intended to taunt NetBSDers into supporting these crazy boxes!>
If so, you have failed.
411 1337 h4x0r5 u53 BSD!!!
even on exotic hardware like Sparc64, Gentoo and Debian are better than NetBSD, because the kernel is and userland are 64bit, and you don't have to deal with BSD ports braindamage, and the security fiascos of BSD, like the one last year.
you have 30 seconds to prove otherwise..
Sure, they all are.
But I'm still hoping for TenDRA to become the default compiler for BSD.
Honestly, there is nothing special about those machines, beyond that they are just weird PC boxes.
However, it would be nice if open-source OSes did support SGI's real MIPS-based machines a bit better. All the ports I've seen so far do not provide very good support for the hardware beyond the basics. And frankly, if they can't support the graphics hardware, what is even the point of running something other than IRIX?
Another platform I'd like to see support for would be the older microchannel-based non-CHRP IBM RS/6000 machines. They are frankly quite nice boxes, but the only OS they'll run is AIX. (which isn't bad, but tends to confuse hobbyists who aren't multi-platform savvy)