Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

NetBSD 8.0 released

netbsd.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 120 posts

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#31

Post by bch »

vasili111 wrote: post #24
bch wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has been my primary for ~16 years, and I’ve been running -current (tip of development branch) for nearly 10 years. Base system (which includes tmux[0]), X11 (which is optional, but maintained by NetBSD), dwm[1], Tcl[2] cURL[3], fossil[4] and Firefox and I’m usually on my way... [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tmux [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwm [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tcl [3] https://en.wikipe…

Why have you chosen NetBSD?

Perceived balance of Unix tradition, progressiveness and sane engineeering/community.

The base build system (build.sh)[0] which is essentially Makefiles is absolutely beautiful to work with, ditto for pkgsrc[1]. They’re “progressive” enough to include dtrace[2], work on neat security[3], and kernel models[4][5], but have eschewed modern Linux-isms like ip(1), systemd. Of BSD v Linux, my heart is definitely with the more traditional BSD. Of BSDs, I feel Net is capable enough, simpler than Free, but more feature full than Open. The other interesting BSD would be DragonFly - really interesting, but I’m happy enough w Net that I’m not going to swap it out, and don’t need more (different) systems in my life right now.

[0] https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-build.html

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pkgsrc

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTrace

[3] http://www.netbsd.org/support/security/

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rump_kernel

[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6562611

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#32

Post by wslh »

occamrazor wrote: post #30

What are the distinguishing features of NetBSD in comparison to OpenBSD and FreeBSD? From the respective home pages, FreeBSD targets high performance, OpenBSD security, but it is not so clear to me what is the focus of NetBSD.

NetBSD supports many platforms: https://www.netbsd.org/ports/

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#33

Post by nbsd4life »

monochromatic wrote: post #26
nbsd4life wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do, I'm using dwm, firefox and urxvt. I've got a lot of netbsd running machines. The one I use now is a Haswell CPU with nvidia graphics, and everything works well on it (even nvidia graphics!). Not all machines are so good. I have a too new Dell XPS. It doesn't have graphical acceleration. But it was very cool to have the touchscreen working already (although with rough edges).

Why?

it's a nice OS, friendly community.

It's very easy to build and modify everything, it doesn't hide errors under a rug (syslog messages are legible, coredumps not disabled by default and so on), so I feel like I can tackle any problem I encounter on it.

Also, if you're the type that carries their long .xinitrc/.Xresources/.profile around, it's more comfortable than the friendly linuxes which require you to re-do everything but in dconf.

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#34

Post by fierarul »

rjsw wrote: post #13
emgee_1 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate a bit? What kind of DE? Openbsd user here:-)

What do you count as a DE ? Right now I'm running mwm, emacs, Firefox, NetBeans, a couple of PDF viewers and lots of xterms.

So, you also have a functioning OpenJDK 8 or so to run NetBeans?

I assume this means an x86 machine, correct?

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#35

Post by bch »

bch wrote: post #31
vasili111 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why have you chosen NetBSD?

Perceived balance of Unix tradition, progressiveness and sane engineeering/community. The base build system (build.sh)[0] which is essentially Makefiles is absolutely beautiful to work with, ditto for pkgsrc[1]. They’re “progressive” enough to include dtrace[2], work on neat security[3], and kernel models[4][5], but have eschewed modern Linux-isms like ip(1), systemd. Of BSD v Linux, my heart is definitely with the m…

Additionally, it’s not windows, not MacOS, and not Linux. It’s difficult to escape those in day-to-day computing, so my daily driver (thinkpad laptop) is slightly different on purpose, the idea being that, to a degree, everything I do is necessarily very “conscious”. What I mean is that nothing works automatically because I’m part of a vast majority. Where I run into friction, I try to take note and keep this in mind with the rest of my relationship with the world, whether it’s developing software, or making assumptions about the way people use computers.

I often cite Neil Young to describe my “ditch”[0] computing.

[0] http://www.thrasherswheat.org/tnfy/ditch.htm

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#36

Post by pgeorgi »

floatboth wrote: post #20
hnarn wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, isn't 3.0 fully backward compatible with 2.0? I imagine this would affect how critical people would classify support to be developed, if everything already works, just slower.

It's backwards compatible on the device side (you can plug a 3.0 device into a 2.0 port and work at lower speed). But I really doubt that you can use an xHCI controller through EHCI drivers.

> But I really doubt that you can use an xHCI controller through EHCI drivers.

Indeed, you can't. xHCI subsumes all USB operation and doesn't need companion controllers, but presents a _very_ different interface. That's different from the USB1/2 transition where USB2 was a separate controller that could take over the ports from a USB1 controller, giving them back if a USB1 device is attached.

Some boards/chipsets do that with EHCI and xHCI to support operating systems without xhci drivers, but that's getting rarer.

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#37

Post by kev009 »

NetBSD was my first BSD and OS development experience in my teens. I'm fairly entrenched in the FreeBSD camp for commercial reasons now after a very long run as a Linux user, but there is some nice security stuff in here and happy to see NetBSD chugging along! Congrats!

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#38

Post by rjsw »

fierarul wrote: post #34
rjsw wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you count as a DE ? Right now I'm running mwm, emacs, Firefox, NetBeans, a couple of PDF viewers and lots of xterms.

So, you also have a functioning OpenJDK 8 or so to run NetBeans? I assume this means an x86 machine, correct?

Yes this is on NetBSD/amd64, with a native OpenJDK 8.

OpenJDK 8 will build for arm as well but it doesn't have a JIT.

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#40

Post by Keyframe »

bch wrote: post #31
vasili111 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why have you chosen NetBSD?

Perceived balance of Unix tradition, progressiveness and sane engineeering/community. The base build system (build.sh)[0] which is essentially Makefiles is absolutely beautiful to work with, ditto for pkgsrc[1]. They’re “progressive” enough to include dtrace[2], work on neat security[3], and kernel models[4][5], but have eschewed modern Linux-isms like ip(1), systemd. Of BSD v Linux, my heart is definitely with the m…

Can you go a bit more in detail why Net vs Free? I would LOVE to replace Linux (Fedora) with one of the BSD's. It's philosophy and everything basically suits me far more than anything else, but I need CUDA, I need Nvidia drivers, I like to play with ML, I need few more things like that which makes it a no go as far as I'm aware.
Post reply on HN