Slashdot Mirror
NetBSD 5.0 Released
kl76 writes "The NetBSD Project have announced the release of NetBSD 5.0 after two years of development. Highlights of the seven million new lines of code in 5.0 include a new threads implementation, kernel preemption, a new scheduler, POSIX real-time scheduling, message queues and asynchronous I/O, WAPBL metadata journaling for FFS filesystems, improved ACPI support, UDF write support, X.Org instead of XFree86 (on some platforms — at last!) and lots of driver updates. Binary distributions for 53 different platforms are provided."
in b4 netcraft
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
That's $28 million/month in total!!!!!!
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
I would've been first, but I was busy downloading NetBSD Hi!
NetBSD 5 is out today & OpenBSD 4.5 is out tomorrow, it's going to be busy weekend for some. :D
NETCRAFT:
Bring out your dead!
[clang]
Bring out your dead!
CUSTOMER:
Here's one.
NETCRAFT:
Ninepence.
NETBSD:
I'm not dead!
NETCRAFT:
What?
CUSTOMER:
Nothing. Here's your ninepence.
NETBSD:
I'm not dead!
NETCRAFT:
'Ere. He says he's not dead!
CUSTOMER:
Yes, he is.
NETBSD: Bring out your dead!
[clang]
Bring out your dead!
[clang]
Bring out your dead!
[clang]
I'm not!
NETCRAFT:
He isn't?
CUSTOMER:
Well, he will be soon. He's very ill.
NETBSD:
I'm getting better!
CUSTOMER:
No, you're not. You'll be stone dead in a moment.
NETCRAFT:
Oh, I can't take him like that. It's against regulations.
NETBSD:
I don't want to go on the cart!
CUSTOMER:
Oh, don't be such a baby.
NETCRAFT:
I can't take him.
NETBSD:
I feel fine!
CUSTOMER:
Well, do us a favour.
NETCRAFT:
I can't.
CUSTOMER:
Well, can you hang around a couple of minutes? He won't be long.
NETCRAFT:
No, I've got to go to FreeBSD. They've lost nine today.
CUSTOMER:
Well, when's your next round?
NETCRAFT:
Thursday.
NETBSD:
I think I'll go for a walk.
CUSTOMER:
You're not fooling anyone, you know. Look. Isn't there something you can do?
NETBSD: [singing]
I feel happy. I feel happy.
[whop]
CUSTOMER:
Ah, thanks very much.
NETCRAFT:
Not at all. See you on Thursday.
CUSTOMER:
Right. All right.
[howl]
[clop clop clop]
Who's that, then?
NETCRAFT:
I dunno. Must be Tux.
CUSTOMER:
Why?
NETCRAFT:
He hasn't got shit all over him.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Kudos to the NetBSD team. I have a NetBSD machine running as a NAS and media server that's so reliable that even my wife likes it. However, I won't be upgrading for a while. That's an incredible amount of new code they've committed, and while I have enormous faith in the skills of the NetBSD developers, there's a good chance that something slipped through the cracks. I think I'll wait for the bugfix release :) BSD Forever!
Confessions of a Recovering Preppie: The Blog
Will it still run on my toaster?
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Time to get out the toaster. I've been rather lax at keeping that thing updated.
Don't forget to use Debian GNU/NetBSD ;-)
I find this very interesting : http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html
There's another one waiting on NedBSD 5.11 for workgroups.
BSDs have a Linux emulation layer and can run binaries compiled for the same architecture.
BSD is one of those things that I've been interested in doing, especially early on. It is arguably more secure than Linux, is definitely older and potentially more secure.
So after using Linux for a year or so, I tried OpenBSD for a full month because of its much-touted security benefits before going back to Linux, and I've never looked back. Why?
1) At the time, getting stuff installed was more of a chore.
2) Although they had similar backgrounds and technologies, the differences were enough that it was almost a complete re-learn. RPM didn't work. Init was totally different. Commands such as ps, at, etc. had different options.
3) Didn't have support for multi-core systems. (at the time, I believe that's long under the bridge now)
Bottom line? I'd started to build a business that continues to this day using Linux as my architecture. In order to move over, I'd have to port over all my administration scripts, and much of my software to an environment that was just different enough to make me *think* I knew the answer when I didn't. Porting would have been somewhat expensive, and the case to make for the switch was marginal.
Linux isn't the best at everything, but it does pretty good at everything. Security is decent, reliability is decent, performance is excellent, hardware support is good-to-excellent, etc. all of these well within the range of "commercially viable". So, I stick with Linux, and my hosted software company has grown from a few clients to over 100 client organizations, some with hundreds of users. We've grown from 1 server to 9. Our uptimes are excellent, best in the business, our software is fast becoming an industry standard, and Linux has basically never disappointed us.
But don't get me wrong: I have immense respect for BSD, I live and die by SSH, which is foundational to our administration, backups, and cluster replication technology, and if I were starting over today, I would feel perfectly comfortable choosing *BSD.
Long live BSD!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Anyone know of any major projects where NetBSD has been deployed and has been known to provide benefits far and beyond what can be gained from using more "traditional" operating systems?
I believe NetBSD 5.0 is a major turn of tide. Compared to 4.0, this is definitely a new chapter. In a way Mr. Hannum did a favour in his infamous rant: practically all aspects he identified have been addressed.
We here at $DAYJOB have made extensive evaluation of the NetBSD 5.0 pre-releases and it is looking very good indeed. Our internal benchmarks show that for our typical workload, performance of NetBSD is now comparable to that of Linux and FreeBSD. (Numbers and methodology may not be representative nor even correct, but we have to base our decisions to something.) It is very likely that we will be rolling the next big-iron production line solely with NetBSD again. The recent happenings with Sun and the uncertainty surrounding Solaris have warmed also the management section upstairs.
Besides performance and SMP, other things that account high in our book:
Some drawbacks:
At $HOME perhaps the most exciting feature is the new power management framework. This has taken huge leap forward in NetBSD 5.0. While there is still much work to be done, the direction is right. I believe that like SMP on the other end, power management will be one of the dominant factors in consumer-grade computing at the other end of the spectrum.
Other things that I like generally in NetBSD:
Can anybody explain how they got so much better results for the OLTP benchmark (page 14 of the presentation in the story)?
The really short summary: I want to run a 64bit OS on 64 bit hardware, everything to date is choking.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/330866
I haven;t added these comments to the bug:
FreeBSD64 chokes as well at some point.
OpenSolaris CD boots but I couldn't tell if it was running in x64 mode or not. Didn't stay up long enough (Gnome &/or X would bork after about 5 minutes).
Does NetBSD have different (better possibly but at least different) hardware detection and so might boot so i can get usuable diagnostics on x64 type questions that are plaguing the other installs.
I am guessing it is some type of i/o driver (ICH7?) problem but I can't get a useful enough diagnostic to do anything useful.
TIA
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
that is.
Interesting fact: BSD mods have no sense of humour.
See above. All BSD-critical posts, even those tounge-in-cheeck, are modded Troll or Flamebait.
See this older post: http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/11/1754253
Seems strange that the amd64 iso is only 247Mb
ftp://iso.au.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/iso/5.0/
So hopefully will download while I sleep and I will try and remember to report back tomorrow (probably about 24 hours from this post).
I suspect the BIOS may be screwed for anything except Windows and there are no further BIOS updates from Asus. I spent some quality time (it was actually great) on IRC with the coreboot people, but trying the alpha version (of coreboot v3) with no way to restore a working BIOS isn't a good plan.
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
Hey, anything that looks like an Amiga reference props my interest ;-)
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
2009 is the Year of the NetBSD & OpenBSD Desktop!
The Admin and the Engineer
Seems strange that the amd64 iso is only 247Mb
That's because it only includes what would be called a "base" install by the standards of most Linux distros. You'll get all the command line utilities, developer tools and an X Window install if you choose to install all the packages from the CD. What you wont get is things like a GNOME or KDE environment - those can be added after installing from CD by using the package tools. With these tools you can download pre-compiled packages from the NetBSD FTP server or (preferably) a mirror close to you.
OpenBSD has been a desktop OS for years.
OpenOffice has been in ports/packages for about 2 years now. It's a bitch to build from ports. Before that, you could install it using linux_compat, and install the RPM of OO.org.
epdfview for pdf viewing
gimp for picture editing
I use fluxbox for X manager, but we have KDE/gnome if you enjoy the bloat.
I use grip for OGG/FLAC creation
MPlayer/FFMPEG for video conversion
Firefox for browsing, but we have Opera if you absolutely need things like flash for youtube.
We have torrent clients, the most powerful firewall created using PF, we are dropping sendmail in base to use our own maild.
Over 4000 ports/packages.
I've been using it since 3.4, and I love it. The releases are on time, many thanks to our dictator-in-chief, Theo. Free Software does not need a "committee".
It's all damned lies and statistics!! I mean 47% of all people use statistics to back up their arguments.
Seems strange that the amd64 iso is only 247Mb
That's because it only includes what would be called a "base" install by the standards of most Linux distros.
Yes, but this still allows you to test a misbehaving machine, such as the one of the original commenter.
In that respect, OpenBSD 4.5 may be a slightly better choice, since the i386 CD also include some basic package.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
(While I can't see the point in defending Windows, I do agree wholeheartedly with your signature :-)
you had me at #!
At least, it was WIN around version 1.x...
you had me at #!
My remaining 68k macs are too old for NetBSD! (An original Mac, a backlit MacPortable, and a Classic). None have the memory management needed in hardware.
Now, my Powerbook 180 *could* run NetBSD, if I managed to find it and fix it, but afaik, they never did get the keyboard & mouse working (and so, long ago, I turned down $400 for the broken thing, expecting it to be usable "soon" with MacBSD).
hawk, off to chase the kids from his grass
Native Java on i386 and soon on amd64 http://www.netbsd.org/~ad/50/img8.html Anybody knows more about this?
OK so I didn't read the documentation before I booted the LiveCd, all that follows is my fault however much i rant.
1) CD detected, boots and fairly simple options to start with. /dev/sda (the unused 19.5 Gb one - the one I cleared and wiped formatting from) to use, kept having a hissy fit about not having an active partition
2) partitioning - think I picked the right partition on
3) the mistake I think - selected NetBSD boot loader option (Yes rather than No)
4) install completes and says is ready to go, looked good ran reasonably clean, no bizarre error messages
5) reboot - garbage flies by on the screen
6) thru 9) fiddle with NetBSD install /dev/sda - barely - Puppy linux found all the partitions (and then some), OpenSolaris found the first 4 or 5 partions, Ubuntu Live CD x386/x686 9.04 says /dev/sda unpartitioned (using GParted).
Diagnostic on 5) bootname parameter not recognised and unusable columns(1):(3) or screen after reboot that should show bootname options keeps scrolling with same set of heiroglyphics in in col 1 and bootname options in col 3
10) boot Puppy and do job application I almost forgot about
11) try to reset grub - no dice
12) try to reinstall grub - no dice
13) try to access files on
OpenSolaris also chose to choke at 3% on the install (formatting the partition).
SystemrescueCd has hissy fit over trying to access drive and I can't pull anything back cleanly without risking major loss.
In none of these was there any sign of the NetBSD install - systemrescuecd testdisk lets you list files in the partitions it finds - none of them look liked a NetBSD install, my guess when the partition table failed the NEtBSD files went with them but why 4) look OK?
14) reboot Puppy linux, delete GB's of stuff on /dev/sdb (mostly movies recorded from TV) and copy what puppy lets me access from /dev/sda over to /dev/sdb
Final diagnostic - when NetBSD was setting the bootloader it may have overwritten something in /dev/sda's partition table/MBR and screwed the pooch, the stuff is all there - except my Ubuntu 8.10 system install (/home is on another partition to it).
So am busy cleaning up - amazing how much crap you accumulate in a few years.
I admit has been mostly the same file system & partitions since 2006 on /dev/sda and has had some heavy abuse and that may have tipped the balance.
So am wiping /dev/sda after rescuing everything I can - and I had recorded but not exported FanFan La Tulipe (2003) 4 or 5 days ago so it's gone. My choppy socky movies are safe on my IPod.
About to Burn U9.04 i386 release to CD after I finish cleaning up (wipe all files and dir's, delete all partitions) and installing clean (using U9.04 to repartition).
Will try NetBSD5 x64 after I have reinstalled and have read the doco so I don't have another accident. Looks like it wanted to work but the harddisk partition table failed at exactly the wrong moment.
Summary - NetBSD5.0 install failed due to a malfunction in the install disk partition table cause unknown, but apparently all hardware (no acpi problems noted or logged to console).
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
This post seems suspect. There is nothing in NetBSD called /dev/sda...
I never got to boot NetBSD to see what the first ide hardisk is called by NetBSD
linux knows it as /dev/sda
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
I think the desktop-thing is overestimated. There is nobody who really needs more than a well configured fvwm -- well, you have to do the configuration first. But from my experience it's better to get rid of the bloat for the price to have to configure once according to needs, and leave it alone for the time remaining till the hardware dies. And: configuring the thing is a job for me ;-) -- i love NetBSD!
Ok, needs change, but modern desktop ways to handle this (provide it all) lead to clutter, not to a stable and fast system -- better pay me than install kde (gnome is really better in that respect).
If u're used to it, a xterm is better than every menu one can think of, it's just a matter of teaching -- another job for me! And i agree with the statement that it is a big plus for NetBSD to get going with the acpi-wireness, brave coders, thank you!
Stefan