NetBSD 7.1 Released (netbsd.org)

New submitter fisted writes: The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 7.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 7 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Some highlights of the 7.1 release are:

-Support for Raspberry Pi Zero.
-Initial DRM/KMS support for NVIDIA graphics cards via nouveau (Disabled by default. Uncomment nouveau and nouveaufb in your kernel config to test).
The addition of vioscsi, a driver for the Google Compute Engine disk.
-Linux compatibility improvements, allowing, e.g., the use of Adobe Flash Player 24.
-wm(4): C2000 KX and 2.5G support; Wake On Lan support; 82575 and newer SERDES based systems now work.
-ODROID-C1 Ethernet now works.
-Numerous bug fixes and stability improvements.

NetBSD is free. All of the code is under non-restrictive licenses, and may be used without paying royalties to anyone. Free support services are available via our mailing lists and website. Commercial support is available from a variety of sources. More extensive information on NetBSD is available from http://www.NetBSD.org. You can download NetBSD 7.1 from one of these mirror sites.

Comments

yea

[Osgeld]

but does it run linux?

Re:yea

[aliquis]

BSD confirms it:
Netcraft is dead. .. or well. _I_ never use it nowadays at-least ;)

Re:yea

[Kjella]

-Linux compatibility improvements, allowing, e.g., the use of Adobe Flash Player 24.

No, but they ported the good parts. If you're into BSD(m) you must enjoy the pain.

Re:yea

[jandersen]

I'm Linux user too, but I think it's great news. Linux needs competition to keep us on our toeas, so we don't get smug and lazy.

Re:yea

[Anonymous Coward]

Competition from BSD? Let alone NetBSD? You're joking, right? There is no competition, there never will be. Hell, DOS has more chance to be used than BSD. In fact, all the computers preinstalled with FreeDOS prove me right.

BSD is doomed because of the license. It's preferred by large companies who then have large teams to develop it (and close it) as they want. The millions of open source devs prefer GPL and not to be ripped off by greedy corporations that don't contribute back.

Proof is in the pudding.

Re:yea

[Anonymous Coward]

I need Cygwin to run all my useful commands, but there is NO Linux or BSD support for this critical application. How could this oversight be left uncorrected?

Re:yea

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

wm(4)

[Anonymous Coward]

That's nothing to brag about. All of those ethernet cards are over 10 years old.

Re:wm(4)

[Anonymous Coward]

And they still work!

Yes, NetBSD can run some Linux binaries.

[Anonymous Coward]

This renders your joke irrelevant, but NetBSD can run some Linux binaries.

Read about it here: https://wiki.netbsd.org/guide/linux/

The NetBSD port for i386, amd64, mac68k, macppc, and many others can execute a great number of native Linux programs, using the Linux emulation layer. Generally, when you think about emulation you imagine something slow and inefficient because, often, emulations must reproduce hardware instructions and even architectures (usually from old machines) in software. In the case of the Linux emulation, this is radically different: it is only a thin software layer, mostly for system calls which are already very similar between the two systems. The application code itself is processed at the full speed of your CPU, so you don't get a degraded performance with the Linux emulation and the feeling is exactly the same as for native NetBSD applications.

FreeBSD has similar functionality.

This is one of the reasons why so many former Linux users have moved to FreeBSD or NetBSD after being driven away from Linux by systemd, PulseAudio, GNOME 3, and other problematic software like that. Most Linux programs worth using compile just fine on the *BSDs, but if there are legacy, closed-source Linux applications that must be used there is at least some chance that they may work on FreeBSD or NetBSD. This makes for a very easy transition path away from Linux, or more correctly, away from systemd (it isn't the Linux kernel itself that most people have problems with, of course).

Re:Yes, NetBSD can run some Linux binaries.

[Anonymous Coward]

away from systemd (it isn't the Linux kernel itself that most people have problems with, of course).

It's not really systemd either.
To some extent it could be tolerable, at least for those it doesn't cause too much trouble for.
PulseAudio and GNOME 3 are more of a deterrent since they have a larger impact when you actually get down to the part where you use the computer.

Re:Yes, NetBSD can run some Linux binaries.

[Anonymous Coward]

"So many".... how many? Got any verifiable stats? You don't. I do. Judging by the amount of newcomers in FreeBSD forums, IRC and mailing list, nobody has moved AND stayed. A few interested people might've come in, but were driven back to Linux by the huge overhead in maintaining their systems and lack of hardware compatibility, once they learned their YEARS old broadwell laptops couldn't run FreeBSD, because FreeBSD doesn't support anything past haswell and even that is flaky.

Re:Yes, NetBSD can run some Linux binaries.

[Anonymous Coward]

away from systemd (it isn't the Linux kernel itself that most people have problems with, of course).

It's not really systemd either.
To some extent it could be tolerable, at least for those it doesn't cause too much trouble for.
PulseAudio and GNOME 3 are more of a deterrent since they have a larger impact when you actually get down to the part where you use the computer.

I haven't had any pulseaudio issues for years. Besides you can still install a linux system without pulseaudio or remove it. Pulseaudio is also available on netbsd.

AFAIK no linux distro forces anyone to use Gnome 3. It's not like switching desktop environment was difficult on linux based system. I fail to understand how it could drive anyone to use an OS with at best less DE alternatives.

Re:Yes, NetBSD can run some Linux binaries.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is one of the reasons why so many former Linux users have moved to FreeBSD or NetBSD

Please define "so many" and show us the data.

Re:Yes, NetBSD can run some Linux binaries.

[paulatz]

This is one of the reasons why so many former Linux users have moved to FreeBSD or NetBSD after being driven away from Linux by systemd, PulseAudio, GNOME 3, and other problematic software like that. Most Linux programs worth using compile just fine on the *BSDs, but if there are legacy, closed-source Linux applications that must be used there is at least some chance that they may work on FreeBSD or NetBSD. This makes for a very easy transition path away from Linux, or more correctly, away from systemd (it isn't the Linux kernel itself that most people have problems with, of course).

Do you think that switching to a *BSD is easier than just installing a distribution without systemd?

I'm not even going to comment about the obvious gnome3 fallacy

Re:Yes, NetBSD can run some Linux binaries.

[Anonymous Coward]

I get the hate for systemd and pulseaudio, but Linux being "legacy"? Please. The fact is that the BSD's are fossils moving at glacial speeds, with the possible exception of DragonflyBSD. They have just about zero mind-share outside their sect-like cults, whose pathetic attempts to rewrite reality - "Linux is legacy! OSX is FreeBSD!" - does them no service, and generally speaking they are understaffed, have packaging system that are clumsy, antiquated and fragile.

I think it's sad, because realistic alternatives to Linux would be a good thing, but when your alternatives feel positively archaic even compared to Debian, package management is a complete joke compared to apt-get, zypper and cnf, and the "community" mostly seem to be a bunch of conceited, smug cunts who makes any Linux-community look warm and fuzzy, you're not going anywhere.

Re:Yes, NetBSD can run some Linux binaries.

[unixisc]

FreeBSD uses jails: is that what NetBSD uses? Also, does NetBSD have a way of supporting Steam?

Also, wonder whether NetBSD borrows any concepts from Minix, such as the reincarnation server, since Minix uses NetBSD userland. Looks like NetBSD can explore microkernel approaches

It would also be nice if NetBSD incorporated Lumina, instead of KDE and others.

Re:Yes, NetBSD can run some Linux binaries.

[ruir]

You can BET it is mainly systemd

Re:Yes, NetBSD can run some Linux binaries.

[Anonymous Coward]

FreeBSD uses jails: is that what NetBSD uses?

Maybe the prison system...

Perhaps it's time to give it a spin

[wjcofkc]

Over two and half decades I have used every *nix out there, both open and commercial. That is except for NetBSD. Perhaps it's time I give it a couple months attention. I have not had a serious nerd fix in awhile. Maybe I will find a good reason to put it to persistent use. Any NetBSD users out there that want to give me a heads up on the low down, I would be much obliged. If any such people wonder what I might use it for, consider anything and everything. I'm universal like that.

Re:Perhaps it's time to give it a spin

[ogdenk]

It's a BSD variant that will run on just about any oddball vintage hardware you have at your disposal..... 68K Macs, Atari TT's, VAX, Alpha, SPARC, UltraSPARC, sgi, DECstations, GE Microwaves, Sharp Can Openers, Compaq iPaq.

Emphasis is on portability but performance isn't bad.

Re:Perhaps it's time to give it a spin

[Ailicec]

I found it nice for playing on SPARC32. The Linux distros have dropped sparc32, with Debian Etch being the last one I know of - if there's another I'd love to know about it. The linux kernel still supports sparc32, if you can find a distro to run it in. The NetBSD way of doing things took some adjusting, but its worth it to run modern software on some really old systems - like Sun2/3!

Re: Perhaps it's time to give it a spin

[Anonymous Coward]

It even runs on my smart dildo!

Re: Perhaps it's time to give it a spin

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a great idea, you obviously don't need any good software or else you would stick with the manufacturer approved Dildows 10.

Re:Perhaps it's time to give it a spin

[Anonymous Coward]

It is unfortunate that even netbsd cannot run on my 386 anymore and it's not oddball vintage.

Per article page: NetBSD/i386 IBM PCs and PC clones with i486-family processors and up

I can't understand why there isn't emulation for the 3 instructions that are missing. Once I read something about this approach would not safely work for dual 386s and such but THAT would be seriously oddball anyway.

Captcha: pioneers

Re:Perhaps it's time to give it a spin

[Anonymous Coward]

True that. I installed version 6.0 several years ago on a Pentium (non-MMX) notebook with 24 MB RAM, and I was able to run LXDE and the Midori web browser (barely, but still). That was after attempting, and failing, to install FreeBSD and various lightweight Linux distributions. I will also say that having a 3.5" floppy disk drive as the only bootable device was a real drag.

Re:Discount Grenade - .5BTC / ea

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol. I want a discount grenade like I want a discount brain surgeon.

Bad idea brah.

Never tried it

[DaMattster]

I mostly use OpenBSD as my daily driver but I've been curious about NetBSD. Maybe I'll spin up a virtual machine and play around.

Re:Never tried it

[eneville]

Last time I looked OpenBSD was not a great platform to play host to a vm.

Re:Never tried it

[unixisc]

Well, it was a while since OpenBSD forked off NetBSD, so it would be interesting to see how much they diverged (aside from security features)

Improvements?

[TheDarkener]

...allowing, e.g., the use of Adobe Flash Player 24.

Lol.

DRM Support

[nuckfuts]

... Some highlights of the 7.1 release are...
-Initial DRM/KMS support for NVIDIA graphics cards...
All of the code is under non-restrictive licenses, and may be used without paying royalties to anyone.

That NVIDIA bit doesn't sound non-restrictive.

Re:DRM Support

[Anonymous Coward]

it stands for Direct Rendering Manager in this case, not Digital Restrictions Management.

Flash?

[Anonymous Coward]

So the entire world is moving AWAY from flash, but BSD is IMPROVING itself to run Flash? WOW!

vioscsi is virtio-scsi

[Anonymous Coward]

Not used exclusively by Google Compute vds.

Legacy and brand new issues

[unixisc]

I get your point if you were referring to NetBSD, but FreeBSD does have a bit of mindshare, even if dwarfed by Linux. It's the underpinnings of network OSs like Juniper, its NAS is widely used, it's used by pFsense, and its typically the most pioneering of the BSDs. As far as packaging system, PC-BSD/TrueOS has PBI, which takes care of library dependencies - something I'm not aware that .deb or .rpm do.

I do agree that calling Linux legacy is out of place, and that some things, like TrueOS, have stalled since the re-branding. I've tried updating the latest version of TrueOS and have given up - every attempt has choked. (I do plan to buy one more DVD since the update would let me play Steam games). But the comments about the community that you made may be true about just OpenBSD - I've not heard anything about that in the FreeBSD or NetBSD communities

Re:Legacy and brand new issues

[Anonymous Coward]

I did say "just about" zero, not "zero", right? I didn't mean to imply that *BSD in general were useless, I was putting the parent post in perspective.

FreeBSD definitely have it's uses, even though I'm not sold on how they try to sell zfs as the be all, end all file system, and how any of it's shortcomings are just dismissed - with a bit of bile for those who dare to speak ill of it just to make sure. Further it still suffers from all the other problems I mentioned, being understaffed, and lagging behind in hardware support, usability and features. And by this I mean that rebuild world is still a thing, virtualization is just barely more than experimental afaik, and configuring it and many other things are.. not very fun.

I'd like to stress that I get that many of these flaws are a consequence of being short of people, however, it underlines my initial point which was that it does not have anywhere near enough mind-share. It has enough for all these interesting, but fairly marginal projects, but not near enough to keep it up to date with general development.

As I final note, I'd just want to say that PBI is not a solution afaic, it doesn't "solve" the library problem, it acerbates it by baking them in. Now you have to keep a whole bunch of packages up to date, instead of just one. Horses for courses, I guess.

BSD movers & shakers

[unixisc]

License is not what keeps BSD where it is - it's inertia. Linux himself admitted that had something like FreeBSD or NetBSD existed during the time he was looking for an OS, he may have used that and not developed Linux.

If anything, the license is what's encouraged companies to adapt it in preference to the GPL licensed software. It's the reason companies like Juniper, Sony (w/ Busybox) have gone w/ BSD. It's why Android uses a BSDL licensed userland instead of GNU. It's why the consoles have gone w/ BSD based OSs as well, rather than Linux. Yeah, Linux is still acceptable to companies who can live w/ GPL 2, but the GPL is not what's been driving Linux's acceptance. Rather, it's the mindshare as well as the size of the community that sees to it that Linux is well supported.

Re:Discount Grenade - .5BTC / ea

[Anonymous Coward]

I would buy a grenade to shove up your ass. FUCKER