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."

Comments

7 million new lines of code?

[gzipped_tar]

That's $28 million/month in total!!!!!!

Bring Out Yer Dead

[chill]

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.

Re:But the real question...

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Of course it will. Toasting multiple toasts simultaneously is now supported, as well as suspending and resuming the toasting process. If toasting fails, the toasts will now be rolled back into the original raw state.

Re:BSD is compelling

[afabbro]

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.

OpenBSD is - not BSD in general.

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.

You name three things that one would expect to be different, even without installing OpenBSD:

• BSD does not use the RedHat Package Manager. Now there's a shock.
• rc.X-style init vs. BSD init is one of the archetypal differences between BSD and SysV systems...so what did you expect?
• GNU vs. non-GNU utilities have different arguments. Again...why the surprise? I suppose if Linux is the only Unix you've ever used, then perhaps you think the whole world works in a GNUish way. AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, and dozens of others have long had their quirks.

I guess I don't see why your experience surprised you so much. If you're going to switch Unices, particularly from a (mostly) SysV-based system like Linux to a near-purely BSD-based system like OpenBSD, you should expect that some things are going to be different. It's one thing to say "hey, I tried OpenBSD, found that security is indeed the inverse of convenience, and decided I liked Linux better because it was more familiar to me". But saying that you were surprised to find that RPM didn't work leaves you vulnerable to "well, duh" comments. Like this one ;-)

Why NetBSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

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:

1. Long support cycles and backward compatibility. This has always been one of the greatest strengths of NetBSD.
2. Stability. When evaluating an operating system for servers that should be online to the late next decade, it is of crucial importance that stability is guaranteed. In this item there is a question mark for Linux in our list.
3. Security. We believe that reducing the amount of code running is the first step to a more secure environment. In the Linux world the trend has been exactly the opposite even with so-called enterprise distributions. From NetBSD 5.0 we look forward to ASLR and security features inspired by PaX, the technology which we believe in with our Linux systems. This is one area where there is a big minus sign for FreeBSD.
4. Xen. Not only does it run on NetBSD, but does it better (stability-wise) with NetBSD. Contradicts with all previous points, but is probably going to be employed in some parts of our farm, even if it is just to please management.
5. Journaling support. While ZFS is the clear winner here, no doubt about it, the so-called WAPBL has looked promising in our tests. Roughly speaking, our conclusion has been that ext3 and FFS+WAPBL are quite comparable in their performance and stability. To rephrase this: both suck equally bad. Our Solaris-fileservers are not going anywhere for at least five years.
6. Cleanroom implementations and central source for code. Since we have a relatively large in-house software stack, this, combined with (1) and (2), is very important to us. We are an open-minded shop with technically competent people who can replace non-optimal or bad parts of the system with internal designs. Avery dangerous thing to do with Linux due lack of coherency, but our previous experiences have shown that this is not so much of a problem with NetBSD.
7. Documentation. Add to the end of (6). A big minus sign for Linux.

Some drawbacks:

1. The package system. A huddle of shell scripts without a strict API. Can be forgiven since nothing essential depends on it. A big plus sign for Linux.
2. Lack of binary updates. A blessing and a curse. Can be forgiven in our case, but would be a pain in more heterogeneous environment. Again a plus sign and a parrot sticker for Linux.
3. Java. Practically a complete lack of enterprise-like support for this nasty piece of software rules out NetBSD in many of our servers. Linux and Solaris are the only options to consider.

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:

1. UNIX legacy. I have always liked the history of computing and it is a fresh breeze of air to find a system in which you can still feel the good-old days instead of the GU

Re:Why NetBSD?

[CraigParticle]

Folks with mod points should bump this (AC) parent up; it's pretty much spot-on.

Here are a few extra data points...

I've been following the NetBSD 5.0 branch since it turned -RC on sparc, i386 and ARM. It's a significant step forward in a lot of ways. For example, on my EEE PC 900, everything works... something not every Linux distro has managed to do.

In NetBSD, there seems to be a stronger realization that developer time is precious. For example, NetBSD suffers a lot less from 'superfluous redesign' than Linux. Many years ago, I wrote a few Linux 2.0 device drivers for a few ISA and PCI data acquisition boards I was using. I had to make fairly significant changes for kernel 2.2, then 2.4, then 2.6. And since then... don't get me started. I've had to fix inane code breakages in the 2.6 series several times. In NetBSD, my driver code didn't need to evolve a tenth as much. Code interfaces are just more stable.

Just the build system alone is a huge time saver on embedded systems. You don't have to go searching around for cross-compilers, toolchains and all the other things that can be painful in Linux (unless your vendor spent a lot of time to assemble them for you). In NetBSD, this stuff is all built right into the base system to begin with.

Admittedly, on the desktop, NetBSD is still more work than it should be, even compared to typical Linux distros. It's about like the other BSDs, and not so different from a basic Debian install, for example. There's a growing realization in the NetBSD community that 'making it easier' to get a functional modern desktop environment running is worthwhile. Hopefully this gains traction.

NetBSD is a really nice system, which undeservedly gets overlooked a lot. It's definitely worth a look.