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NetBSD 2.0 Status Report
Daniel de Kok writes "James Chacon of the NetBSD release engineering team has sent a report covering the status of the NetBSD 2.0 branch to the netbsd-announce mailinglist. The report contains a schedule for the release cycle, and a list of 2.0-specific bugs that need to be closed. This is still a good time to help us making this the best NetBSD release ever, by trying out the latest snapshots, and reporting bugs."
DEAD
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD 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.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: NetBSD is dying
Q: What do you call examining the *BSD CVS tree?
A: An autopsy!!!
BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!
BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!
BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!
deadness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many *BSD. It's like DYING. deadness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many *BSD. It's like DYING.
BRING OUT YOUR DEAD! deadness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many *BSD. It's like DYING. deadness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many *BSD. It's like DYING. deadness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many *BSD. It's like DYING.
BRING OUT YOUR DEAD! deadness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many *BSD. It's like DYING. deadness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many *BSD. It's like DYING. deadness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many *BSD. It's like DYING.
BRING OUT YOUR DEAD! deadness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many *BSD. It's like DYING. deadness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many *BSD. It's like DYING. deadness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many *BSD. It's like DYING.
BRING OUT YOUR DEAD! deadness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many *BSD. It's like DYING. deadness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many *BSD. It's like DYING. deadness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many *BSD. It's like DYING.
BRING OUT YOUR DEAD! deadness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many *BSD. It's like DYING. deadness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many *BSD. It's like DYING. deadness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many *BSD. It's like DYING.
BRING OUT YOUR DEAD! deadness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many *BSD. It's like DYING. deadness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many *BSD. It's like DYING. deadness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many *BSD. It's like DYING.
BRING OUT YOUR DEAD! deadness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many *BSD. It's like DYING. deadness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many *BSD. It's like DYING. deadness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many *BSD. It's like DYING.
BRING OUT YOUR DEAD! deadness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many *BSD. It's like DYING. deadness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many *BSD. It's like DYING. deadness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many *BSD. It's like DYING.
HWO DOSE THIS AFFFETC ME??/
Wow, so far all posts here were trolls. Where's the mods now ? Can't Slashdot create a special filter for the BSD section ?
I've looked at the "release cycle" and it seems suspicious to me, because it's short :
I found it interesting that most of the bugs in the 2.0 branch were with IP Filter.
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...but for the uninitiated, what does the upcoming
2.0 offer?
2.0 has many new stuff, like newer compiler GCC3 (1.6 had GCC2), native threads library, SMP, this is just new stuff, what everybody else has too
I was also hoping to get OpenBSD's packet filter but it's not there :(
Of course, one should not wait but download 2.0_BETA immediately from releng.netbsd.org ;)
That poor, poor, server...it's already sluggish. But then again, CVS isn't much better.
Two days ago I compiled NetBSD 2 on Slackware Linux and created bootable release CD (no X, ~112MB). Then I sucessfully installed it at home on qemu.
Is there any other OS with mobility like this?
If you're finding that the GENERIC kernel is too bloated, then the quick fix is to create a custom kernel usung the adjustkernel script. This parses the output of dmesg, and creates a custom kernel config file with only the devices found on your machine enabled.
On my laptop, I was able to pare the kernel down to 1.8Mb. Not such a big deal on a machine with 512Mb of RAM, but it's useful on something like my Vax which only has 24Mb.
I've always heard that NetBSD has excellent hardware support in addition to running on multiple architectures. However, I think I have to disagree with this out of personal experience.
I tried installing NetBSD on my HP Pavilion XF315 laptop (the Walmart.com xf315, which was actually ze1000 or something) last summer... 1.6.1 I think it was. The installation program froze while making devices, and the partition tool destroyed my partition table. Apparently I'm not the only one to have trouble with MAKEDEV on an hp (see here). I realize now that this was a combination of Mandrakes weird partitioning quirks and NetBSD's inability to understand them, but it *should have just left well enough alone*. I never told it to touch my data partition (FAT32) but I nevertheless had to install RedHat and grep -f /dev/hda to manually search for important data (like some source code and a list of contact info) that wasn't backed up. This was enough to turn me off to NetBSD for good -- or at least until 2.x comes out <grin>.
FreeBSD makes all devices without a hitch. I even have sound working on it! Something I can't say about RedHat or any of the other 'user-friendly' Linux distros.
Is it just my corner of the internet that can't get packets routed through? Or has NetBSD.org been down for over a week now?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
First off, i'd like to say i'm not alluding to NetBSD, or BSD, dying. However, it seems NetBSD's pace is awfully slow compared to OpenBSD and FreeBSD, or even DragonFly. NetBSD 1.6 came out September 14, 2002. Versions 1.6.1 and 1.6.2 were pretty much just security fixes.
Seems like they're being pretty stagnant. PF still won't be in 2.0, that's a shame, imho. They've managed to do a lot of superfluous activities, though; for example, they've achieved Trademark status on NetBSD, and attained 501(c)(3) tax-exemption status.
Although I like NetBSD, and think it's a wonderful project that has superb, portable code... i'd, personally, like to see more development and less superfluous activities, especially considering how expensive activities such as trademark status are. Who do they think is going to steal their title anyway? Although, if I remember correctly from a debian mailing list thread, their trademark status _did_ hinder Debian/NetBSD being released.
Isn't the obituaries page a more appropriate place for this sort of story?