Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

NetBSD 5.0 RC1 Released

Posted by kdawson on from the while-it's-hot dept.

jschauma writes "The first release candidate of NetBSD 5.0 is now available for download from the NetBSD FTP site. Here is the Release Engineering status of 5.0."

4 of 158 comments (clear)

  1. So, why should I care? by AuMatar · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What advantage does NetBSD give me over Linux? Other than avoiding monoculture, of course. People must obviously think it brings some set of advantages if they continue working on it and using it, I'd like to hear what they are.

    --
    I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
    1. Re:So, why should I care? by langelgjm · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If you have old or somewhat unusual hardware, NetBSD does quite well.

      I have a Sun Ultra 1, circa 1995, that I pulled out of the closet for fun recently. Debian installs on it, but 1) is sluggish, and 2) doesn't support certain hardware. My machine has a PCMCIA adapter in it, and I have an old 802.11b PCMCIA card, so I thought I'd be able to use wireless on this machine.

      Turns out no Linux drivers exist for the PCMCIA adapter, whereas in NetBSD they do. After a kernel recompilation, the Ultra 1 is up and running on the wireless network.

      --
      "Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
    2. Re:So, why should I care? by CAIMLAS · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Here are some reasons:

      1) Linus "Testing is for someone else" Torvalds isn't running the show, and therefore you're more likely to get a properly tested kernel.
      2) You can download an official kernel and expect for it to not only build using your old configuration, but to not have a previously-working driver not work any longer.
      3) It has nice tools for doing #2, whereas in Linux, 'make oldconfig' has been seemingly abandoned in the name of progress and "let the distros handle it"
      4) Slower, more thorough release cycle which is still aware of "development" and "stable" branches
      5) You can still run a usable system on top of old hardware that only has 64Mb of RAM (or 32Mb, as I did recently with netbsd 4 - and yes, 32Mb is 'just barely' functional)

      --
      ~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
  2. NetBSD is awesome by wandazulu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have a lot of hardware that would have been relegated to scrap if it hadn't been for NetBSD. Hmm...can I still do anything useful with that Mac SE/30? Sure, I'll run a small mail server for internal use so I can learn how Postfix and Sendmail work. And the multitude of bots trying to hack my Internet-facing machine wouldn't know what to do with a Vax-based NetBSD machine even if they got in.

    That said, of course these machines are outrageously slow by today's standards; the Vax alone has been relegated to the basement 'cause it's so freaking loud. But hey, I happened to have the hardware, and since of course it runs NetBSD, it's a learning experience if nothing else.