Where Does NetBSD Fit In?

NetBSD Fan writes "KernelTrap offers a fascinating summary of the recent 2004 Annual NetBSD Group Meeting. Included is an introduction by NetBSD foundation president Christos Zoulas discussing NetBSD's relevance in light of competition from well known operating systems such as Linux and Windows which he acknowledges 'both offer more features than we do, and they have behind them the resources of very large commercial organizations.' He also talks about FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris and Darwin, ultimately concluding that they all are facing their own serious challenges, and that plenty of opportunities remain for NetBSD. The NetBSD project recently released NetBSD 2.0."

Comments

On the firewall

[Anonymous Coward]

NetBSD my firewall OS of choice.

runs on old and rare archs

[lanc]

NetBSD runs on 17 CPU architectures. Can you count up 17?

NetBSD will be the OS what you can always use on your old boxes, when you don't get running anything else on them.

Re:runs on old and rare archs

[isugimpy]

Actually, it runs on 54 architectures. It's one of the most portable operating systems I've ever had the pleasure of using. And it makes me happy to know that I can bounce between a 486, athlon xp, sparcbook, and a g4 without changing my OS.

Re:runs on old and rare archs

[lanc]

I counted just like they did:
http://netbsd.org/Ports/#ports-by-cpu

" Machines of the same MACHINE_ARCH share the same userland binaries"

Re:it fits on my old SPARC

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, come on. He's comparing NetBSD (which uses up
maybe 10M memory) to Solaris 7 (which barely runs on
32M memory). If you've ever used Solaris you would know
it is extremely powerful but also requires a lot of
resources to back it up. NetBSD is quite light on
using resources and it runs well on older hardware.
I use a SS4-85 running Solaris (because I like Solaris
and all my apps are for Solaris), but run NetBSD
on a spare IPC I keep next to my sytem. NetBSD runs very well on
that system, much better than Solaris 7 did (the last supported
Solaris for IPC).

Overall, looking at how much system resources get used
up running the different operating systems, its easy
to see why NetBSD would run better on older hardware than
Solaris does.

Re:VERY handy.

[Anonymous Coward]

That must have been one crappy computer. I have Slackware set up with X on my 386 with 16MB RAM and a 50 meg HD. Linux should work just fine.

NetBSD's biggest competitor

[Anonymous Coward]

NetBSD enjoys incredible popularity as an embedded OS due to its basic complement of functionality, ease of adaptability, and of course its free as in beer license.

The big challenge for NetBSD is Microsoft's Embedded XP. I believe a big reason for this is the support an appliance vendor gets from Microsoft as as a partner is becoming more and more attractive (get the gorilla on your side). Also Embedded XP comes with the latest greatest device drivers, while NetBSD continues to lag behind.

Linux as an embedded OS is futureless as the licensing issues are so problematic.

Re:License..

[Anonymous Coward]

BSD doesn't generate hype like Linux does, because it's not about hype at all. It just exist to promote solid standards and engineering. That's it. No taking over the world, etc. When the hype is absent, it's easier to not take notice.
BTW, you're wrong about corps never giving back code. Many things have been implemented in the various *BSD's only because some company or another was willing to fund that development. And it works out good for the company because they get the benefit of a whole community's worth of testing, bug fixing, etc. as well as not having to fork the code internally and constantly merge stuff from the free codebase. Except of course for proprietary stuff they don't want to release, but that's their choice, and it's a lot less scary than the GPL when it comes to that sort of thing.

Re:Read the WHOLE article.

[HyperChicken]

Wrong on so many counts.

NetBSD was the first open source OS to have IPv6 support. Yeah, "way out of date" IP stack.

NetBSD was the first open source OS to have USB support. Yeah, "way out of date" hardware support. Further, NetBSD allows for "Machine Independent" drivers, leading to portability far beyond other operating systems.

Not enough developers? You don't need a lot of developers. Code remains cleaner when only educated people submit features.

Unlike with other operating systems -- including FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux -- NetBSD holds off on releasing features until they are stable. That's why there are few releases. This is a good thing.

It's one of the most secure operating systems in the world. Compare the NetBSD 1.6.2 security patch list to the OpenBSD 3.5 security patch list.

Re:License..

[Anonymous Coward]

The businesses won't give back. That's not true. Wasabi systems is a consulting-type company specializing in NetBSD embedded systems. Any code developed by Wasabi is property of the people who hired them to write it. According to Wasabi, their clients allow them to release code they've developed back to the community. Usually 6 to 12 months after it was originally developed but it gets out there none the less. If so, why don't we see BSD as popular as linux? Linux came out at a time when BSD was tied up in a lawsuit. It was the perfect time to strike. If there was no BSD lawsuit, the BSDs would have a much larger presence in the computing world. Further, many Linux geeks are Microsoft bashers (It's true, we know it, admit it). They see Linux as possibly killing Microsoft -- which is a false vision but it's what they see none the less. The GPL pervents Microsoft from using Linux if Linux were to ever become popular.

BSD Popularity

[justins]

If so, why don't we see BSD as popular as linux? Sure, you see Apple having incorporated it into its products, but BSD distros remains just where they were -- they won't get much back from apple. And the product will remain just where it was.

Interesting that you should use the phrase "BSD distros." I bet you didn't know that on the server side FreeBSD is more popular than any given linux distro. http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/06/07/nearl y_25_million_active_sites_running_freebsd.html

On the desktop side, if you include OS X as a BSD (and there's no reason not to), BSD owns Linux in terms of popularity, no contest. (if you don't, well, it's obviously not even in the running)

Re:Read the WHOLE article.

[MobyTurbo]

NetBSD isn't as feature rich as more modern kernels such as Linux, or even Free/OpenBSD. Its IP stack is way out of date;

Incorrect: NetBSD's IP stack is more scalable than all others, it broke the internet land speed record (twice).

its filesystem is way out of date

Maybe it doesn't have journaling by default (though a log file system is under development) but FFS and FFS2 in NetBSD have reliability that others could only dream of. Or you've never heard of Reiserfs and XFS loosing data?

its hardware support is out of date

That's laughable. NetBSD has some of the cleanest device driver system in existance. It was the first free OS to include USB, and it's continued porting to various platforms increase its hardware support, because thanks to its device driver infrastructure, if a piece of hardware is available for one platform, it's available to any platform that can run it.

It's not easy to get security updatesWhich is better, having to patch or use cvs a few times a year, or having to download every week new security fixes to keep from getting rooted? You decide.

Re:On my Macintosh PowerBook 3400c

[istewart]

Mac OS X is going to be severely kludged if you try to install it on an OldWorld Mac. If that 3400 isn't upgraded with a G3, then the grandparent poster won't be able to go beyond 10.1. Classic Mac OS is of limited usefulness anymore since it doesn't have up-to-date applications being released for it.

Linux development, oddly enough, has suffered a similar fate. You need to have BootX installed (this may be true for NetBSD as well), which entails a Mac OS partition, even if it is a minimal install. Also, most of the exciting new development is taking place with the newer PPC platforms, trying to bring the latest iMac or G5 into line. (I tried to install Gentoo on a 603-based clone last year and didn't get much beyond stage1.)

NetBSD's "run on everything, even if it is obsolete" philosophy, though, is something of an insurance policy against the devs getting distracted by new shiny stuff. If it breaks, somebody somewhere will pay attention. Apple themselves is only going to guarantee a quality experience with their OS for a minimum level of technology, so a dedicated group of developers like NetBSD is just about the last place to turn.

Re:On my Macintosh PowerBook 3400c

[demon]

Actually you don't have to have BootX; I have a PowerMac 7500 at home (with a dual 604e/180 CPU card in it), and I use quik to boot the system. It can be a bit difficult to set up (unfortunately, since OldWorld OpenFirmware versions are broken in assorted painful ways), but I've not had any reason to boot into MacOS on it, so everything is happy now.