8 ms·

What to expect in NetBSD 7

57 points by fcambus 12y ago

jmcneill 12y ago
The article is a few weeks old now. One change since it was written -- Raspberry Pi 2 SMP support has been added to -current and is expected to be part of the 7.0 release.
- feld 12y ago
  Hooray! I now have a use for my Pi2!
leetNightshade 12y ago
I didn't realize NetBSD was playing the catch up game with what other distros have had for some time, like ZFS. That's disappointing.
- feld 12y ago
  What's a "distro" have to do with BSD? The only BSD that has ZFS is FreeBSD.
  - leetNightshade 12y ago
    Well it seems I don't use 'distro' properly. I guess it only concerns Linux, but I personally don't see any reason it can't be used for OS flavors in general. Hell, the website distrowatch includes BSD and everything in between. Is there a similar phrase for BSD variants? And ZFS is on a lot more than just FreeBSD, even if it's not official. ZFS started on OpenSolaris, not on FreeBSD. OS X has a port. Then FreeBSD got it's port. Linux has a stable port. And there are NAS OS's shipping with it like FreeNAS, TrueNAS, and a device called ReadyDATA by Netgear that has it. I was mostly surprised at this: "The good stuff that probably won’t make it to NetBSD 7: Stable ZFS." So you're telling me ZFS isn't considered stable on NetBSD? It seems to be that it's pretty stable on quite a few other platforms, some mentioned above.
    - feld 11y ago
      Linux distros share a kernel -- the Linux kernel. Maybe different versions, maybe a few different patches here and there -- but unquestionably the same kernel. In BSD world they're completely separate OSes. Their kernels have evolved differently. They may have similar ancestry. You can't just copy and paste code from one to another and expect it to work.
bch 12y ago
The accelerated graphics are heaven-sent (thanks @Riastradh). As much as having non-accelerated gfx was frustrating before, NetBSD was too charming to give up as my daily driver. Anybody who's curious to jump in should do it! Exciting times for a rock-steady well-thought-out OS...
- webaholic 12y ago
  Is there anything which might catch the eye of a regular linux user? (FreeBSD users would like to point out ZFS, jails etc., OpenBSD users usually point out pf/security and DragonFlyBSD users point out Hammer FS and an inviting community).
  - bch 12y ago
    That's a thoughtful question. Let me ramble... 1) I'd say the "fit and finish" is remarkable. But everybody probably likes what they've got with their OS, so maybe that's not worth much. 2) If you're into firewalling/networking, it does have the venerable ipf, OpenBSDs pf, and the shiny-new npf for packet filtering -- and the network stack that held the Internet "land speed" record. Twice[0] 3) there is remarkable kernel research that is going on, that research makes the kernel available to YOU[1][2] 4) pkgsrc is topnotch. And others use it too, so like the famously portable OS, the 3rd party software is tested in the realworld on disparate machines.[3][4] 5) The community is small enough, friendly enough, and smart enough that it's simple to get into and has a high signal-to-noise ratio.[5] 6) Other interesting security[6], virtualization[7] 7) Good documentation, good code (forged by years of portability -- getting code running on so many different architectures doesn't happen by accident, and the lessons are carried on. And to be clear, unlike Linux, the NetBSD code that runs on (eg) a Vax is from the same codebase than runs on an 8-way amd64... versus (afaik) Linux where ea. target is pretty much a rewrite.) 8) I could go on... if you have more questions, don't hesitate, or better, drop in on #netbsd IRC channel on Freenode[8]. [0] http://www.netbsd.org/gallery/research.html#internet2-landspeed http://www.netbsd.org/gallery/research.html#internet2-landsp... [1] http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?lua+4+NetBSD-current http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?lua+4+NetBSD-current [2] https://wiki.netbsd.org/rumpkernel/ https://wiki.netbsd.org/rumpkernel/ [3] http://pkgsrc.joyent.com/ http://pkgsrc.joyent.com/ [4] https://github.com/minix3/pkgsrc https://github.com/minix3/pkgsrc [5] https://www.netbsd.org/community/ https://www.netbsd.org/community/ [6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veriexec http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veriexec [7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBSD#Virtualization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBSD#Virtualization [8] irc.freenode.net Edit: Match my parens, s/to/too/, link to freenode.
mintplant 12y ago
http://netbsd-news.me/ http://netbsd-news.me/ seems to be misconfigured. It returns a page from http://www.saveosx.org/ http://www.saveosx.org/.
- yrmt 12y ago
  fixed that, thanks for pointing it out

57 points by fcambus 12y ago

The article is a few weeks old now. One change since it was written -- Raspberry Pi 2 SMP support has been added to -current and is expected to be part of the 7.0 release.

feld 12y ago
Hooray! I now have a use for my Pi2!

leetNightshade 12y ago

I didn't realize NetBSD was playing the catch up game with what other distros have had for some time, like ZFS. That's disappointing.

feld 12y ago
What's a "distro" have to do with BSD? The only BSD that has ZFS is FreeBSD.
- leetNightshade 12y ago
  Well it seems I don't use 'distro' properly. I guess it only concerns Linux, but I personally don't see any reason it can't be used for OS flavors in general. Hell, the website distrowatch includes BSD and everything in between. Is there a similar phrase for BSD variants? And ZFS is on a lot more than just FreeBSD, even if it's not official. ZFS started on OpenSolaris, not on FreeBSD. OS X has a port. Then FreeBSD got it's port. Linux has a stable port. And there are NAS OS's shipping with it like FreeNAS, TrueNAS, and a device called ReadyDATA by Netgear that has it. I was mostly surprised at this: "The good stuff that probably won’t make it to NetBSD 7: Stable ZFS." So you're telling me ZFS isn't considered stable on NetBSD? It seems to be that it's pretty stable on quite a few other platforms, some mentioned above.
  - feld 11y ago
    Linux distros share a kernel -- the Linux kernel. Maybe different versions, maybe a few different patches here and there -- but unquestionably the same kernel. In BSD world they're completely separate OSes. Their kernels have evolved differently. They may have similar ancestry. You can't just copy and paste code from one to another and expect it to work.

bch 12y ago

The accelerated graphics are heaven-sent (thanks @Riastradh). As much as having non-accelerated gfx was frustrating before, NetBSD was too charming to give up as my daily driver. Anybody who's curious to jump in should do it! Exciting times for a rock-steady well-thought-out OS...

webaholic 12y ago
Is there anything which might catch the eye of a regular linux user? (FreeBSD users would like to point out ZFS, jails etc., OpenBSD users usually point out pf/security and DragonFlyBSD users point out Hammer FS and an inviting community).
- bch 12y ago
  That's a thoughtful question. Let me ramble... 1) I'd say the "fit and finish" is remarkable. But everybody probably likes what they've got with their OS, so maybe that's not worth much. 2) If you're into firewalling/networking, it does have the venerable ipf, OpenBSDs pf, and the shiny-new npf for packet filtering -- and the network stack that held the Internet "land speed" record. Twice[0] 3) there is remarkable kernel research that is going on, that research makes the kernel available to YOU[1][2] 4) pkgsrc is topnotch. And others use it too, so like the famously portable OS, the 3rd party software is tested in the realworld on disparate machines.[3][4] 5) The community is small enough, friendly enough, and smart enough that it's simple to get into and has a high signal-to-noise ratio.[5] 6) Other interesting security[6], virtualization[7] 7) Good documentation, good code (forged by years of portability -- getting code running on so many different architectures doesn't happen by accident, and the lessons are carried on. And to be clear, unlike Linux, the NetBSD code that runs on (eg) a Vax is from the same codebase than runs on an 8-way amd64... versus (afaik) Linux where ea. target is pretty much a rewrite.) 8) I could go on... if you have more questions, don't hesitate, or better, drop in on #netbsd IRC channel on Freenode[8]. [0] http://www.netbsd.org/gallery/research.html#internet2-landspeed http://www.netbsd.org/gallery/research.html#internet2-landsp... [1] http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?lua+4+NetBSD-current http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?lua+4+NetBSD-current [2] https://wiki.netbsd.org/rumpkernel/ https://wiki.netbsd.org/rumpkernel/ [3] http://pkgsrc.joyent.com/ http://pkgsrc.joyent.com/ [4] https://github.com/minix3/pkgsrc https://github.com/minix3/pkgsrc [5] https://www.netbsd.org/community/ https://www.netbsd.org/community/ [6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veriexec http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veriexec [7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBSD#Virtualization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBSD#Virtualization [8] irc.freenode.net Edit: Match my parens, s/to/too/, link to freenode.

mintplant 12y ago

http://netbsd-news.me/ http://netbsd-news.me/ seems to be misconfigured. It returns a page from http://www.saveosx.org/ http://www.saveosx.org/.

yrmt 12y ago
fixed that, thanks for pointing it out