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NetBSD 6.1 Has Shipped

Posted by timothy on from the more-of-a-workhorse-than-a-showboat dept.

Madwand writes "The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. NetBSD is a free, fast, secure, and highly portable Unix-like Open Source operating system. It is available for a wide range of platforms, from large-scale servers and powerful desktop systems to handheld and embedded devices. Its clean design and advanced features make it excellent for use in both production and research environments, and the source code is freely available under a business-friendly license. NetBSD is developed and supported by a large and vibrant international community. Many applications are readily available through pkgsrc, the NetBSD Packages Collection."

64 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. Why NetBSD? by manu0601 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Why NetBSD?

    • For its excellent backward compatibility: NetBSD 6.1 is still able to run a.out binaries built for NetBSD 1.0
    • For its system-independant build system. Building NetBSD needs a POSIX system with a C compiler, which does not need to be NetBSD. It first builds the tools for the host, including the compiler itself, and then the target NetBSD system, which may be for another CPU.
    • For its machine-independant drivers. Have a fancy platform with an odd CPU? If NetBSD has a driver for a chip, it will work as is, no need to port it
    1. Re:Why NetBSD? by flyingfsck · · Score: 1

      Yup, the little bit I used NetBSD, I liked it, but I like Fedora more.

      --
      Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
    2. Re:Why NetBSD? by armanox · · Score: 1

      The one system I really wanted to run NetBSD on isn't supported (SGI Octane). Ruined the whole "Of course it runs NetBSD" joke for me.

      --
      I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
    3. Re:Why NetBSD? by manu0601 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Have you considered lending the machine to a NetBSD developer? In order to have hardware supported, we need the conjunction of (access to hardware, skills, time). You may lack the second entry of the tuple, but someone else may just lack the first one.

      NetBSD mailing lists (port-sgimips here) are the right place to discuss such an arrangement

    4. Re:Why NetBSD? by armanox · · Score: 1

      Reading the project page, X isn't supported on the Octane. While Gentoo was a pain to install on the Octane and get running (not supported anymore, this was back in 2007-8), it did have basic X support. Newer kernels probably don't work at all on this hardware. I've got two sitting in my room now (not the ones I got working in the LUG years ago), that it looks like IRIX is the only viable choice for.

      --
      I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
    5. Re:Why NetBSD? by armanox · · Score: 3, Informative

      I don't know any NetBSD devs, and especially not any that live in close proximity to me (I'm in Baltimore, MD). It's a heavy machine (~25 Kilos), and I'd rather not pay shipping costs.

      Based on your posts it sounds like you are a NetBSD developer. If there is an interest in making it work, perhaps something can be arranged.

      --
      I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
    6. Re:Why NetBSD? by manu0601 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Please subscribe to the port-sgimips mailing list and tell that you are ready to lend the machine to someone that would pick it up or pay shipping. You will get an answer or not, but at least you will have tried

    7. Re:Why NetBSD? by Achra · · Score: 3, Informative

      Have you considered lending the machine to a NetBSD developer? In order to have hardware supported, we need the conjunction of (access to hardware, skills, time). You may lack the second entry of the tuple, but someone else may just lack the first one.

      NetBSD mailing lists (port-sgimips here) are the right place to discuss such an arrangement

      Eh, lack of availability of those computers isn't the problem. The problem is that the systems have very custom/unique architecture and there isn't a lot of end-user desire. I, too, went through what the GP is talking about. Irix is _still_ commercial and is realistically still the only option if you want to fire up your Octane. I went down all of the roads I possibly could with Linux/mips & NetBSD/mips.. support on both sides of the coin was the same: Terrible. Anything besides Irix on those old mips SGI's is pretty much useless, everything from "Hey, I got a bootloader to work and you can totally telnet into the machine, no framebuffer support" to "framebuffer support, mostly works, but no acceleration of any kind". The SGI Octane is really a conversation piece at this point anyways, I donated my long ago to the local PC-recycler and they turned it into scrap metal. Not old/rare enough to be a museum piece and not new/fast enough for modern use.

      --
      Each processor would proceed sequentially as if it had been better for them not to rise against Saul.
    8. Re:Why NetBSD? by manu0601 · · Score: 1

      Wheres Fedora excels both as a server and as a desktop hence NetBSD is not really relevant.

      IMO NetBSD is much better than Fedora as a server, but YMMV. This is what is nice with your troll-ish sentence: it works with any OS instead of Fedora and NetBSD.

    9. Re:Why NetBSD? by manu0601 · · Score: 1

      Maybe you could just hook this machine to your DSL router plus some sort of KVM switch ? I am to privy to the details of KVM stuff, but there should not be a general reason it cannot work.

      Then you could make this machine available to a guy in Norway or maybe even Morocco.

      For kernel developement, a remote-controlled power socket is also required, as the machine will probably crash a lot

    10. Re:Why NetBSD? by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Why NetBSD?

      • For its machine-independant drivers. Have a fancy platform with an odd CPU? If NetBSD has a driver for a chip, it will work as is, no need to port it

      Last I checked, Itanium was not supported - it is supported on FreeBSD. Does NetBSD support it now, or have they abandoned plans of supporting it? It would certainly puncture their claims of being the most ported Unix around (aside from Linux)

      That aside, it's nice to see some OSs, such as NetBSD, still strive for compatibility w/ different platforms. I'm disappointed that more recent versions of distros such as Red Hat have dropped support not just for Itanium, but for SPARC as well, while OpenIndiana & Bitrig - the LLVM/Clang based fork of OpenBSD - are both Intel-only OSs.

    11. Re:Why NetBSD? by manu0601 · · Score: 1

      Last I checked, Itanium was not supported - it is supported on FreeBSD. Does NetBSD support it now, or have they abandoned plans of supporting it?

      There is a work in progress port, but no formal release. I do not know how usable it is

    12. Re:Why NetBSD? by zipn00b · · Score: 1

      A few years prior to that (probably around 2003 or so) Gentoo was a pain to install on a Mac but it was SOOOOO cool to see the penguin on the screen once I got it going.

    13. Re:Why NetBSD? by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      OpenBSD runs on Octane supporting Octane 2 or ImpactSR graphics cards but no audio.....but it's one thing to run a server which is the main target of BSD, but quite another to make a desktop. There is GNU/Linux for Octane too such as Debian

    14. Re:Why NetBSD? by armanox · · Score: 1

      Debian doesn't run on Octane (least not last time I checked). Gentoo was the only option when I was playing with it several years ago.

      --
      I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
  2. Re:Has Netcraft confirmed it? by BrokenHalo · · Score: 1

    If he hadn't explained, we would see a chorus of complaints that not every species of nerd is conversant with what BSD is. I recall a time when any /. user would slash his wrists before admitting that he was so utterly clueless, but now that time seems to belong to the same domain as the tooth fairy.

  3. Re:Gnome 3 by BrokenHalo · · Score: 1

    No.

  4. Re:Shipped? by ducomputergeek · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not sure about shops, but you can buy discs from several online vendors if you don't have the bandwidth to download: http://www.netbsd.org/sites/cdroms.html

    Furthermore, I don't really see the difference between delivery via streaming packets vs delivery via post of a physical item from a logical viewpoint.

    --
    "The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
  5. Re:Just use Linux by Nutria · · Score: 1

    Old stuff doesn't get tossed out just because new stuff becomes available.

    And NetBSD is small -- which is useful in some circumstances -- and some dislike the viral nature of the GPL.

    --
    "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
  6. Re:Not open source by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    You, sir, are a complete moron. Or perhaps it's m'am, but I doubt it, as no woman would be as stupid as you.

    Just because something A that is open source also provides packages B that are not open source, doesn't mean that A suddenly stops being open source.

    FFS, the education system sure has gone downhill in recent years. Or maybe you're just a Microsoft shill and paid to be clueless.

  7. Re:Not open source by LVSlushdat · · Score: 2

    FFS, the education system sure has gone downhill in recent years.

    WHAT "Education" system? What passes for the public "education system" now has become an "indoctrination system".. Instill "political correctness" in EVERYthing, make sure the children are molded into obedient little consumers, and NEVER question the state/powers-that-be.. My wife and I must have seen this coming when we got married in 1985, as we both decided to skip having children. I guarantee if we were younger and having children in today's screwed up world, they WOULD be home-schooled, no matter what sacrifices we needed to make to do that...

    --
    THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
  8. "UNIX-like"??? by gweihir · · Score: 5, Informative

    AFAIK NetBSD is derived from the original UNIX-Sources as any BSD is. That makes NetBSD not "UNIX_Like", but a proper UNIX, or at the very least a "UNIX derivative". Linux, on the other hand, was implemented from scratch and not derived from the original UNIX sources (and even the scum at SCO has admitted that by now), and hence is only "UNIX-like".

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    1. Re:"UNIX-like"??? by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 4, Informative

      The Linux _kernel_ was new. The Linux _operating system_ was primarily GNU tool based, using precisely that GPL licensing model that has been so effective in fostering open development. And even the GNU toolchains were not entirely from scratch: key tools like gcc and glibc were written with new code, but clearly written to emulate the behavior of the existing tools from BSD UNIX.

      It's always seemed unfortunate to me that the core toolchains, such as C compilers and critical system tools like "make" and "cp" have different behavior in the different UNIX and Linux environments. It makes cross-platform suppoprt much more awkward. It's also helped pay my salary as my colleagues and I resolve such diffeences, but there are more interesting tasks we'd prefer to spend our time on in almost every project.

      The main reason that Linux is considered "UNIX-like" isn't the software history. It's that getting certified as "UNIX" is expensive, and the stndards can be quite difficult to follow after a dozen years of free software and open source evolution. The standards are described at "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_UNIX_Specification".

    2. Re:"UNIX-like"??? by tomxor · · Score: 5, Informative

      AFAIK NetBSD is derived from the original UNIX-Sources as any BSD is. That makes NetBSD not "UNIX_Like", but a proper UNIX, or at the very least a "UNIX derivative"

      Know your BSD history:

      After Net/1, BSD developer Keith Bostic proposed that more non-AT&T sections of the BSD system be released under the same license as Net/1. To this end, he started a project to reimplement most of the standard Unix utilities without using the AT&T code. For example, vi, which had been based on the original Unix version of ed, was rewritten as nvi (new vi). Within eighteen months, all the AT&T utilities had been replaced, and it was determined that only a few AT&T files remained in the kernel. These files were removed, and the result was the June 1991 release of Networking Release 2 (Net/2), a nearly complete operating system that was freely distributable. Net/2 was the basis for two separate ports of BSD to the Intel 80386 architecture: the free 386BSD by William Jolitz and the proprietary BSD/386 (later renamed BSD/OS) by Berkeley Software Design (BSDi). 386BSD itself was short-lived, but became the initial code base of the NetBSD and FreeBSD projects that were started shortly thereafter.

      From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Software_Distribution#Net.2F2_and_legal_troubles

      The whole purpose of this was to make a functionally UNIX type system, but not UNIX (and there for free). This is why for legal reasons it is UNIX-Like, Linux on the other hand is is not as UNIX-like (if you like) because it's not trying to be.

    3. Re:"UNIX-like"??? by Brandybuck · · Score: 1

      On the other hand Darwin certified and blessed as a bona fide official UNIX. And Darwrin is derived from BSD.

      Genetically, the various BSDs are direct descendents of UNIX. The ancestral tree might not be all that clean, but no one outside of a mythical Ozzie and Harriet world can claim the same about their family either. Legally I can't call NetBSD a UNIX, but that doesn't mean it isn't.

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    4. Re:"UNIX-like"??? by tomxor · · Score: 4, Informative

      On the other hand Darwin certified and blessed as a bona fide official UNIX. And Darwrin is derived from BSD.

      Darwin is POSIX compliance meaning it can use the UNIX name, it is possible to write a completely separate system and gain POSIX compliance, it is merely a certification of compliance to a specification not of an inheritance to UNIX the operating system. Also darwin is derived from a great many things including a large portion of freeBSD and the mach kernel, not that it matters.

      Genetically, the various BSDs are direct descendents of UNIX. The ancestral tree might not be all that clean, but no one outside of a mythical Ozzie and Harriet world can claim the same about their family either. Legally I can't call NetBSD a UNIX, but that doesn't mean it isn't.

      I disagree, if you want to use genetics as the analogy, the source code (genes) are separate, even the way processes are performed is different, the functionality and interfaces are the only thing which is the same, that is a substantial step up from source code... if you look to nature for an analogy of this functional mimicry; the best fit i see is Batesian Mimicry.

      My goal here isn't to strive at pedantism, i'm just pointing out that the inheritance here is functional not litteral, and then the very long evolution of that 386BSD "UNIX clone" to the various systems it has formed today make the word UNIX more of a classification than a litteral inheritance.

    5. Re:"UNIX-like"??? by gweihir · · Score: 2

      Of course I am talking about the Linux Kernel when I am talking about Linux. That the GNU tool-chain is not Linux-specific but available on a range of platforms is well known, no need to state the obvious.

      Actually, the reason that Linux is not UNIX is that it is not derivative. The certification is entirely secondary and nobody cares about it.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    6. Re:"UNIX-like"??? by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Hmm. Interesting! I just learned something.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    7. Re:"UNIX-like"??? by Nimey · · Score: 1

      The correct term is "pedantry". :P

      --
      Hail Eris, full of mischief...

      E pluribus sanguinem
    8. Re:"UNIX-like"??? by louden+obscure · · Score: 1

      i see what you did there...

      --
      Serenity now, insanity later.
    9. Re:"UNIX-like"??? by unixisc · · Score: 1

      It's worth noting that except OS-X and Solaris, none of the current OSs are certified as Unix. Not FreeBSD, not OpenBSD, not NetBSD. So that's not something restricted to Linux. Also, it's useless to argue whether any of the BSDs would have passed more easily than Linux.

      Also, weren't the original Unixes the System V unixes - the ones of which Solaris is the only survivor today? And the BSDs - be it FBSD/NBSD/OBSD - good as they are, are not the original Berkeley Unix - they are its modern successors. Aside from that, I wonder how relevant the single UNIX specification is today, w/ all the mainstream Unixes - Solaris, HP/UX, AIX - pretty stagnant? Linux is pretty much driven by Linux and the Linux Foundation, while the other foundations exist for each of the BSDs.

    10. Re:"UNIX-like"??? by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Tru64 was OSF/1. and since the Open Group was a merged organization of X-Open and OSF, it would have been really strange had the latter's implementation of UNIX not been compliant w/ a standard that it was a party to subsequently defining.

      But it seems that the modern definition of UNIX seems to be anything that is POSIX compliant (which would have included certain OSs such as NT and VMS and their derivatives). Not a tall bar to achieve. But yeah, you are right - any OS that meets the Single UNIX Specification standards qualifies to be called UNIX, whether it's Linux or NetBSD or Minix or whatever. Maybe someone should subject Linux 3.10 to those tests and then tell us whether it qualifies to be called UNIX.

    11. Re: "UNIX-like"??? by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Actually, no. NEXTSTEP 2.6 was based on Mach 2.5, which was NOT a microkernel. Darwin revved up the kernel to Mach 3.0, and put FBSD userland on top. So even though Mach 3.0 itself is a microkernel, the way Apple uses it and architects the OS makes it pretty different from one. In other words, XNU is not a microkernel.

    12. Re:"UNIX-like"??? by zipn00b · · Score: 1

      It's a tangled history with AT&T being greedy pricks over the whole thing. Considering they apparently didn't contribute financially to the project in the early stages that makes it even more interesting. For the most part I always considered the division between BSD and Unix being whether you paid licensing fees to AT&T. It's a very muddy delineation since Unix systems tend to contain BSD code but I guess it keeps the lawyers happy.......

  9. Re:Has Netcraft confirmed it? by JustOK · · Score: 1

    TOOTHFAIRY.COM is a new WORLD.COM WEBSITE.

    --
    rewriting history since 2109
  10. What's the ARM support like? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I play with lots of different boards that use ARM application processors, but I've always used Linux of various flavors. It's not because of any particular attachment to Linux, but just because Linux runs on most things.

    An alternative would be welcome. just for variety. And I did use BSD4.2 on VAXen a million years ago, so I'd like to deploy a bit of nostalgia too, if NetBSD can do it.

    1. Re:What's the ARM support like? by manu0601 · · Score: 2

      Here is a good starting point.

      There are a lot of kernels built for ARM platforms, but you will probably want to tweak and rebuild your own. This can be cross-built from your favorite Linux box, it is as simple as

      • downloading the source tarballs from ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-6.1/source/sets/
      • unpack
      • run ./build.sh -U -m evbarm tools to build the toolchain (-U for unprivilegied if you are not root, -m for target platform)
      • copy a kernel config file from sys/arch/evbarm/conf, and change whatever you need
      • run ./build.sh -u -U -m evbarm kernel=YOUR_KERNEL_FILE to cross-build your custom kernel (-u for update, it does not rebuild what you already have, which will be useful when you will tweak things)

      Kernel are ELF, so if you already have an ELF bootloader, it should be straightforward

  11. Re:Just use Linux by ruir · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You raise a point I have been mulling about for a while. In the past if did make sense to take advantage of boxes lying around. Nowadays, with virtual machine technologies, I have my doubts it is profitable to keep and maintain old hardware just for the sake of having one more server lying around.

  12. SPoF by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Resting on the sofa on a pleasant Sunday afternoon, you might like to mull around the concept of "Single Point of Failure".

    Virtualization is great, but when your virt box goes down, everything goes down. In contrast, a 2W ARM board will keep running your Linux or BSD system + Internet router for ages while your power is out (CA, I'm looking at you), off just a small UPS.

    Horses for courses. Virtualization provides a home for only one kind of horse. There are other kinds too.

    1. Re:SPoF by ruir · · Score: 1

      I don't discount your point. In a home setting it makes sense, no denial about it. In an enterprise setting where you have multiple virtualisation hosts, a redundant arquitecture, and hundreds of virtualisation servers, it is counter-productive to keep old hardware around just for the sake of having one more machine.Heck, even at home I don't want the hassle of dealing with old hardware, I just fire away a XEN machine remotely when I have to do some tests and destroy it shortly thereafter. And even then, I would prefer to deal with a Raspberry Pi then with an a two-decade old server at home.

  13. That's all? by pentadecagon · · Score: 1

    You dodged the most important question: What is it good for? If I just want to get a job done, is there any kind of "job" beside "having fun setting up a strange OS" where NetBSD would be the appropriate choice?

    1. Re:That's all? by manu0601 · · Score: 1

      NetBSD has unmatched features for embedded: cross-building out of the box and machine-independant drivers help a lot here.

      It is also very good as a server. The backward compatibility seems to be a detail, but when you think of it, that means easy upgrades: reboot with a newer kernel without upgrading userland, it works. Then drop to single user, unpack up-to-date userland without upgrading the packages, return to multiuser, it works. Install a package built for version n-1, it works.

  14. Re:Has Netcraft confirmed it? by Nutria · · Score: 1

    If he hadn't explained, we would see a chorus of complaints ...

    Or... you could go back and looks at the summary again and notice that the explanation is copied directly from the NetBSD announcement page, and that linux.org has a similar "What is Linux?" paragraph.

    --
    "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
  15. Re:Just use Linux by mab · · Score: 1

    I think the Equallogic SAN controllers run it.

  16. Re:Not open source by kthreadd · · Score: 1

    Firmware is not part of the kernel.

  17. I want to love BSD by EmperorOfCanada · · Score: 2

    I would love to deploy some BSD machines and see how they fair in a long term A/B test against Linux machines. I hate to use the term but a TCO.

    But with servers there is rarely one killer feature that make an OS way better than the others. Usually it is a bad feature that kills the OS. If you need a certain package and it doesn't exist or isn't well supported with a certain OS then that OS is dead to you regardless of all its other virtues.

    Now I use Mac OS X for my desktop and Linux for my servers. I am impressed with the Bastard BSD underlying Mac OS X in that it doesn't get in my way.

    So my question is: I am using CentOS because it keeps me in my Linux as Unix comfort zone but that NetBSD would be way better and every day I don't switch is a day wasted? Or would NetBSD make me angry that I left the happy easy land of CentOS?

    1. Re:I want to love BSD by ifrag · · Score: 1

      If you need a certain package and it doesn't exist or isn't well supported with a certain OS then that OS is dead to you regardless of all its other virtues.

      If you don't have access to source, all major BSD's have support for running linux binaries. Can be a bit of work to setup but I've used it successfully for a few things.

      --
      Fear is the mind killer.
    2. Re:I want to love BSD by ducomputergeek · · Score: 1

      I still love BSD. 15 years ago FreeBSD in particular had some advantages with its ports system over linux. It was also in that time that FreeBSD often time ran software faster using its linux emulation mode than linux itself back then. We still use FreeBSD to this day running many of our core web servers & PostgreSQL database cluster. The argument could be made today that Linux would be better suited for the task as it's far more common and you can find enterprise support. But frankly, our system ain't broke. It does its job, doesn't get in our way, and we use it in a few area like our network switches & routers are Juniper and we're using FreeNAS for our storage area.

      --
      "The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
    3. Re:I want to love BSD by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      which apps and app platforms do you run on your servers? Any of the BSD do all the usual: apache, nginx, tomcat, php, perl, ruby, python, mysql, postgresql, postfix, qmail, sendmail, bind,

      do you have something that is uniquely Linux-packaged running?

  18. Re:Fatal flaw: Filesystems = 4TB only. by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 4, Informative

    > if they could port ZFS from FreeBSD they'd have a winner on their hands

    What are you talking about?
      * http://wiki.netbsd.org/users/haad/porting_zfs/
      * http://netbsd-soc.sourceforge.net/projects/zfs-port/

    Considering FreeNAS is based on TinyBSD, and ZFS is already available for Linux,
          http://zfsonlinux.org/
    Not sure what issues you are having with NetBSD & ZFS.

    ZFS for Linux was dead easy to get up and running ...
      1. Download spl
      2. Download zfs
      3. ./configure ; make
      4. zpool import /dev/...

    Just pulled in 4x 1.5 TB drives in a 2.3 TB Raid-Z2 pool with ZFSonLinux that had already been setup in FreeNAS.

  19. Re:Not open source by HotNeedleOfInquiry · · Score: 1

    EndOfThread detected.

    --
    "Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
  20. Re:Not open source by HotNeedleOfInquiry · · Score: 1

    Ha. My wife and I had a child in 1988, partly because it looked like the world was finally getting it's shit together. No regrets.

    --
    "Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
  21. Why not Minix? by unixisc · · Score: 1

    For Embedded, why bother w/ NetBSD at all - Minix is smaller, but uses the same NetBSD userland. NetBSD is fine for servers. For desktops, I agree w/ you - they'd need to come up w/ their own equivalent of PC-BSD for a desktop OS. Maybe they could re-do the abandoned Desktop BSD distro to be based on NetBSD, borrow PBI/EasyPBI and build a laptop based distro based on that.

    However, they may not wish to focus on the desktop at all, and instead, may want to focus on tablets. In which case, they should target that w/ Minix, rather than go w/ NetBSD themselves.

    1. Re:Why not Minix? by manu0601 · · Score: 1

      For Embedded, why bother w/ NetBSD at all - Minix is smaller, but uses the same NetBSD userland.

      Right, but what about kernel support for embedded CPUs? You have ARM, but you could want SH3, SH5, MIPS, PowerPC...

    2. Re:Why not Minix? by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Minix 2 used to support SPARC in addition to x86. But you're right - right now, Tannenbaum ain't interested in any platform other than ARM, so for people looking at MIPS or PowerPC or SH3/5, it's either Linux or NetBSD or even Windows CE. Incidentally, does Hitachi still do the SuperH CPUs?

  22. Re:Gnome 3 by unixisc · · Score: 1

    GNOME3 is one of the options w/ OpenBSD, so that does bust the myth that it wouldn't work w/ the BSDs. Although GhostBSD will be moving from GNOME2 to MATE, and OBSD Is the only one that supports GNOME3.

  23. Re:Not open source by unixisc · · Score: 1

    Open Source does not preclude binary blobs. Liberated Software does. Besides, the BSD licenses don't ban a mix & match w/ closed source items (I'm not sure about the ISC license that OpenBSD uses), so you are accusing them of not doing something that they don't claim to do in the first place.

  24. Re:Shipped? by unixisc · · Score: 1

    I believe that a Frys or a MicroCenter would be a good place to look.

  25. Re:Just use Linux by unixisc · · Score: 1

    The GPL is the last reason that commercial entities would avoid using the software for in the first place. More likely, it would be that Linux is more widespread in terms of support, and has some viable companies backing it, such as Red Hat.

    Otherwise, the BSD license is a good selling point - in fact, Minix touts that as one reason to prefer them instead of Linux, since copyleft doesn't apply there.

  26. I didn't say microkernel :P by tomxor · · Score: 1

    Assuming you intended to reply to my post which mentions mach...

    I just wrote "mach kernel" not "microkernel", i probably should have said XNU. I know that XNU is derived from a version of mach prior to mach's full microkernel implementation which turned out to be very slow. However XNU is still a microkernel in some useful ways, the big way that it doesn't operate as a microkernel is it's monolithic treatment of device drivers... but Darwin mainly being used for the basis of MacOS, this turned out to not be too much of a big deal given the small number of supported devices theoretically allowing for the production of higher quality device drivers, theoretically being the key word having experienced the result of a few Mac OS kext bugs myself, but device drivers are never perfect. The only thing we have to look forward to for solving this is Minix 3 which appears to have a reasonable performance sacrifice and some pretty awesome concepts for surviving with horribly buggy device drivers.

    1. Re:I didn't say microkernel :P by unixisc · · Score: 1
      I was responding to AC, who wrote

      Darwin is derived from the Mach which is not BSD (it's a micro kernel). Next welded chucks onto it from Bsd (iokit) to make it act as a monolithic kernel.

      So I pointed out that NEXTSTEP was based on Mach before it became a microkernel, and so obviously, the microkernel nature of Mach 3.0 was irrelevant as far as Darwin went.

    2. Re:I didn't say microkernel :P by tomxor · · Score: 1

      My mistake... still i always find it a bit odd when people pick out that detail... I mean the most accurate description would be a hybrid microkernel. I know apparently windows used or uses a microkernel scaffold in a completely monolithic way, but my understanding was that although XNU doesn't do the fancy device driver servers that it still acts like a microkernel in other ways which end up being useful for security, memory management comes to mind, maybe someone more knowledgable of XNU can enlighten us of what is and isn't a microkernel in the functionality of XNU as apposed to the structure.

  27. :P by tomxor · · Score: 1

    You should get 5 points for that, i had that coming :D

  28. BSD-Like ? by tomxor · · Score: 1

    Just to be annoying and argue both sides :D I recall that there are many places in the complex inheritance tree where the UNIX System integrates source from various BSDs' along the way after the 386BSD separation. Taking that into consideration it would be more accurate to call the UNIX Systems' a source descendant of BSD :P but essentially the descendants of 386BSD do have source code that is in UNIX Systems, the difference is however that UNIX inherited it from the BSDs' not the other way around... I don't want to suggest an analogy for that in nature O_o