NetBSD 2.0 Released

Quique writes "NetBSD 2.0 is the tenth major release of the NetBSD Operating System, and has just been released. It can be downloaded from one of the mirror sites. NetBSD is widely known as the most portable operating system in the world. It currently supports fifty four different system architectures, all from a single source tree, and is always being ported to more. NetBSD 2.0 continues the long tradition with major improvements in file system and memory management performance, major security enhancements, and support for many new platforms and peripherals." The release announcement is also available.

Comments

Re:Yeah but,

[canadianjoe]

The addition of a native threads implementation for all platforms and symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP) on i386 and other popular platforms were long-standing goals for NetBSD 2.0. Both of these goals have now been met--SMP support has been added for i386, SPARC, and PowerPC, and the SMP support on Alpha and VAX has been improved.

RTFA?

Re:Yeah but,

[little_fluffy_clouds]

Yes.

$ uname -a
NetBSD odyssey 2.0_BETA NetBSD 2.0_BETA (ODYSSEY) #1: Sun Aug 8 19: EST 2004

$ w
10:58AM up 121 days, 9 mins, 1 user, load averages: 0.37, 0.24, 0.26

$ dmesg | grep cpu
cpu0 at mainbus0: apid 0 (boot processor)
cpu0: Intel Pentium III (686-class), 701.63 MHz, id 0x681
cpu0: features 383fbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SE P,MTRR>
cpu0: features 383fbff<PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,MMX>
cpu0: features 383fbff<FXSR,SSE>
cpu0: I-cache 16 KB 32B/line 4-way, D-cache 16 KB 32B/line 4-way
cpu0: L2 cache 256 KB 32B/line 8-way
cpu0: ITLB 32 4 KB entries 4-way, 2 4 MB entries fully associative
cpu0: DTLB 64 4 KB entries 4-way, 8 4 MB entries 4-way
cpu0: calibrating local timer
cpu0: apic clock running at 100 MHz
cpu0: 8 page colors
cpu1 at mainbus0: apid 1 (application processor)
cpu1: starting
cpu1: Intel Pentium III (686-class), 701.59 MHz, id 0x681
cpu1: features 383fbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SE P,MTRR>
cpu1: features 383fbff<PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,MMX>
cpu1: features 383fbff<FXSR,SSE>
cpu1: I-cache 16 KB 32B/line 4-way, D-cache 16 KB 32B/line 4-way
cpu1: L2 cache 256 KB 32B/line 8-way
cpu1: ITLB 32 4 KB entries 4-way, 2 4 MB entries fully associative
cpu1: DTLB 64 4 KB entries 4-way, 8 4 MB entries 4-way
cpu1: CPU 1 running

Wow....

[TheMadRedHatter]

I just finished instaling NetBSD 1.6.2, and opened a new browser window on my iMac to look up how to install packages..... and what do I see on the front page of Slashdot? NetBSD 2.0 released. The same thing happened with OpenBSD a while back.

Maybe I should install Windows XP on one of my computers... Then maybe Longhorn would come out as I opened an IE window to get FireFox :-P.

-- TheMadRedHatter

Ah. Blissful clean architecture.

[pschmied]

NetBSD is _the_ most underrated free OS project.

Do not be distracted by the fact that it can run on most every architecture. This is only a side effect of an uncompromisingly elegant design and clean implementation.

NetBSD is quite performant on modern hardware. It keeps pace with other operating systems in most areas, and exceeds in others. Remember, NetBSD was probably the first 64-bit clean open source operating system. It had USB support before Linux. It had IPv6 before... well... anybody.

NetBSD makes a great all around OS. NetBSD tends to be willing to break with tradition where others aren't. Proof is in things like its re-engineering of the BSD init system. It's so simply correct, that I can barely remember the traditional BSD inits. Hence, FreeBSD (and OpenBSD?) have adopted it.

So, run. Don't walk. Download, install, and enjoy.

-Peter

P.S. NetBSD's pkgsrc is only thing that comes close to a truly cross platform package management/build system. It supports Irix, Solaris, NetBSD, Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, OS X, and (to a lesser degree) AIX. I'm sure I'm leaving out a few.

Torrent

[ethzer0]

Here's a direct link to the torrent for the x86 Binary ISO.

Re:Yeah but,

[flacco]

What were the skies like when you were young?

They went on forever - they - When I - we lived in Arizona, And the skies always had these Little fluffy clouds in 'em, And they were long, clear, and There were lots of stars, at night. And when it would rain, they would all turn - They were beautiful, the most beautiful skies As a matter of fact. Um, the sunsets were purple and red and yellow And on fire, And the clouds would catch the colors everywhere. That's uh, neat cause I used to Look at them all the time, When I was little. You don't see that You might still see it in the desert.

Just installed it...

[BossMC]

I just installed NetBSD 2.0 about 1 hour ago, and I must say, I am quite impressed! Check this out:

$ uptime
8:40PM up 67 days, 1:56, 14 users, load averages: 1.02, 0.42, 0.35

Re:What are NetBSD's strengths?

[ArbitraryConstant]

"It's just as secure as OpenBSD, not more."

No, it's not.

-a great deal less of the privsep stuff
-no propolice
-no W^X

A number of vulnerabilities common to NetBSD and OpenBSD were mitigated by ProPolice on OpenBSD. That was 1.6... but I didn't see anything about propolice on the 2.0 release page.

"I can't think of anything more secure then OpenBSD at the moment though."

There are special cases where other OSes can be more secure, IMO. For example, on a big system where you have to let people in with permissions to do something interesting, rather than a firewall or a server spewing pages, the FreeBSD jail facility can make it more secure in practical terms.

There's usually a better OpenBSD way to do it, but that way is sometimes enough of a PITA that it doesn'thappen. For example, you can give someone root in a FreeBSD jail and just let them do their thing rather than screwing around with systrace on an OpenBSD machine. Jails are a very blunt tool, but they're very effective.

Apart from localized advantages such as that, OpenBSD is the most secure. I just didn't want anyone to think I was a zealot blind to the advantages of other OSes. :)