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NetBSD 8.0 released

netbsd.org

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Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#61

Post by davegauer »

bch wrote: post #35
bch wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I love this approach and analogy. You're absolutely right: it's incredibly hard/impossible to _not_ make assumptions when you're part of the herd.

I'd like to think there can be enormous payoffs to this kind of careful thinking, but I suspect it pays out sporadically and sometimes not at all. Such is the fate of any outlier or pioneer.

Either way, traveling "in the ditch" means you get a lot of weird looks from people cruising by on the latest bandwagon. :-)

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#62

Post by davegauer »

Keyframe wrote: post #40
bch wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Forgive me if you've already heard this a lot, but Slackware is often described as being a very "BSD-like" Linux and might be another way to get some of the philosophy you're seeking.

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#64

Post by Fnoord »

vasili111 wrote: post #23

Have you used NetBSD and if yes: 1. Why did you choose it? 2. What are your impressions?

Yeah I have, but that happened 1 or 2 decades ago so take it with a grain of salt.

NetBSD's strength is portability (or "ports" not to be confused with FreeBSD's ports collection). So any software written for it, is going to have portability in high regard. If you don't want to live in a monolithic world (example: the PC world went towards x86-32 in 90s, then shifted away to AMD64. ARM/ARM64 are market leader in embedded industry, though MIPS is also still being used) and if you believe in postmarket options (devices shipped with proprietary firmware/OS) though Linux is also strong in that regard. If you like RISC-V existence, software such as NetBSD helps its existence.

Yes, I had hardware on which of recent software basically only NetBSD ran on, or maybe a (broken/outdated) proprietary OS, or "Linux" (but some vague old port, or requiring patches, blahblah). It could be old/ancient hardware, proprietary firmware, obscure hardware. I ran NetBSD for example on Sharp Zaurus, various SGI MIPS (some of which Linux worked less good or not at all on), DEC Alpha (at least a DS10L), and various Sun hardware. The orig. Sharp Zaurus firmware for that specific Zaurus was in Japanese, and the OpenBSD port I couldn't get to work. So I experimented with a lot of alternative firmware, mostly based on Linux.

Back then the package management was slightly different than the other two popular BSDs. They work together a lot, but there's also fractures. For example, FreeBSD and NetBSD don't have unveil, but they do have PF these days. ZFS has been stable on FreeBSD for ages, yet on OpenBSD it isn't available and on NetBSD its only in -CURRENT. Another difference could be amount of binary packages available, or amount of packages/ports (terminology differs per *BSD).

Another choice could be that the BSD license is more attractive than the more strict Linux-related licenses such as GPLv2 or GPLv3.

So yeah, in short, strong focus points of the 3 major BSDs:

Popularity (amount of software, size of community): FreeBSD Security: OpenBSD Portability: NetBSD DragonFly: I've never used this, ever. Can only speculate. I mean, I'm not sure the orig. focus still matters.

See also Wikipedia [1]

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

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#65

Post by scythe »

cpeterso wrote: post #54
avar wrote: post #2

> 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…

Playing armchair software architect here, I wish NetBSD and FreeBSD would join forces. The NetBSD developers could bring their portable architecture to FreeBSD's more featureful kernel and userland. What other value does NetBSD have over FreeBSD besides portability? IIUC, macOS uses NetBSD's userland though it has FreeBSD bits in its XNU kernel, so there must be benefits to NetBSD beyond its portability that I am jus…

The BSD organizations of today are more about researchers making an operating system for OS research as a field and less hacker idealists trying to bring a free OS to the people. Nearly all of the latter people go to Linux these days.

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#66

Post by ripdog »

scythe wrote: post #65
cpeterso wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Playing armchair software architect here, I wish NetBSD and FreeBSD would join forces. The NetBSD developers could bring their portable architecture to FreeBSD's more featureful kernel and userland. What other value does NetBSD have over FreeBSD besides portability? IIUC, macOS uses NetBSD's userland though it has FreeBSD bits in its XNU kernel, so there must be benefits to NetBSD beyond its portability that I am jus…

The BSD organizations of today are more about researchers making an operating system for OS research as a field and less hacker idealists trying to bring a free OS to the people. Nearly all of the latter people go to Linux these days.

If researchers are working on NetBSD, wouldn't it be receiving more novel improvements? Everything in this changelog looks like stuff other OS's have done before. How is that research?

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#67

Post by dfox »

rjsw wrote: post #56
dfox wrote: post #50

PaX support on pmax? There is only one reaction I have for that: why? (With "because we can" probably being the reason) [Edit: landisk platform are various NAS boxes, so nothing of comparable obsolescence as pmax]

The pmax is supported by several emulators, if you want to develop PaX for MIPS then it is as good a starting point as anything else. The EdgeRouter devices are MIPS and people are still using Loongson laptops.

I somewhat realize that availability of good pmax emulators is the reason. MIPS being far from dead platform is not that much relevant as the announcement explicitly singles out pmax and does not mention platforms like evbmips or sgimips.

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#68

Post by nbsd4life »

rjsw wrote: post #56
dfox wrote: post #50

PaX support on pmax? There is only one reaction I have for that: why? (With "because we can" probably being the reason) [Edit: landisk platform are various NAS boxes, so nothing of comparable obsolescence as pmax]

The pmax is supported by several emulators, if you want to develop PaX for MIPS then it is as good a starting point as anything else. The EdgeRouter devices are MIPS and people are still using Loongson laptops.

it's probably a mistake that it got enabled there, I don't think the architecture has support for it. Even the edgerouter shouldn't, but don't quote me on it.

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#69

Post by [deleted] »

zippie wrote: post #4

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…

[deleted]

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#70

Post by qop »

I remember hearing netbsd had support for using Lua to write network drivers and then never heard anything else.

Is that still a thing? I've had netbsd on my weekend to-do list for years but just have never found enough time or motivation.

What's so great about netbsd?

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