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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/
> USB stack rework, USB3 support added. I didn't realize NetBSD was that far behind on some basic features like USB support. "The Linux kernel mainline contains support for USB 3.0 since version 2.6.31, which was released in September 2009"[1]. "FreeBSD supports USB 3.0 since version 8.2, which was released in February 2011.". So they're getting USB 3.0 almost 10 years after it was released for Linux. 1. https://en.w…
It was added to other operating systems as the hardware became more readily available, understandably it took some time. USB 3.0 is not simple to implement.
Wasn't NetBSD 8 supposed to have zfs? Last time I read something about it, it sounded like it was practically finished. But the release notes do not mention it at all.
No those changes are in -current, and still a bit rough around the edges but much better.
This release of NetBSD disables eagerfpu on vulnerable FPU’s. Often overlooked while discussing performance impact of context switching; context switching also applies to the FPU. There are two modes in which the OS performs FPU context switching: lazy and eager. “lazy” FPU context switching leaves the previous context on the FPU until a different context gives it a set of instructions. This saves an unload on the FP…
>This release of NetBSD disables eagerfpu. Actually this release enables eagerfpu on all Intel CPUs, because of CVE-2018-3665 (lazyfpu side channel attack).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
NetBSD supports many platforms: https://www.netbsd.org/ports/
I always thought it was peculiar that the “net” one was not the security focused one.
> Why the name?
> The “BSD” in our name is an obvious recognition of our heritage as a derivative of 4.4BSD and 386BSD.
> Our contributors communicate primarily via email and Internet-based chat systems; many of us have never met each other in person. We also use a remote source code management system called CVS which enables a large number of developers to do independent work on the same source tree easily. We believe that the Internet was an enabling technology that made NetBSD possible. The “Net” in our name was thus chosen as a tribute to the Internet.
Also, just as an aside, NetBSD was released in 1993, long before network security had anywhere near the attention it has today.
Have you used NetBSD and if yes: 1. Why did you choose it? 2. What are your impressions?
Why did I choose it? Because at the time, I was still living with my parents and needed to get Internet access working via dial-on-demand ISDN-card. The only OS I found a tutorial for how to do that was NetBSD.
What were my impressions? Compared to, say, Debian, NetBSD takes more effort on the side of the user/sysadmin. But once something was in place, it stayed in place. I also liked the clear distinction between the base system and third-party software installed via pkgsrc (which ends up in /usr/pkg). These days, NetBSD has binary packages for the most mainstream architectures, so it less of a problem.
I liked the system - it was simple enough to get a realistic idea of what is going on under the hood, even for a Unix-newbie, but also powerful enough that it did not stop there. Also when a friend of mine got me a Sun SparcStation he had salvaged from his university's garbage pile, NetBSD was the only system I could get to boot on that machine.
[Edit: landisk platform are various NAS boxes, so nothing of comparable obsolescence as pmax]