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NetBSD 8.0 released

netbsd.org

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Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#91

Post by mkirschner »

8bitsrule wrote: post #86

A podcast I recently heard - hosted by long-experienced Linux hands - reported that installing BSD was a nightmare. Some discussion of which distros avoid that nightmare might be helpful.

I started playing with OpenBSD 6.3 as a desktop (actually laptop) OS a couple of months ago. Installation was very straightforward. In my case I used the whole disk, no dual boot.

Here's a tribute/introduction written by Derek Sivers:

https://sivers.org/openbsd

As for my own experience, I don't know if I'm ready to give up Debian as my primary desktop OS, but I really like OpenBSD on my coding-or-surfing-on-the-couch laptop.

On the server side, I also use both (as VPS) for personal projects.

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#92

Post by yellowapple »

Keyframe wrote: post #84
davegauer wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Now, that's a name I haven't heard of in years, decades even! I'll check them out!

I've been using Slackware as my main desktop OS for a few years now (on my main personal and work laptops, plus my primary desktop; most of my other machines run OpenBSD, with the notable exceptions of one running Haiku and one currently running 9front). So far I've been overwhelmingly happy with it.

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#93

Post by PeCaN »

cpeterso wrote: post #53
PeCaN wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the machines NetBSD runs on don't have USB 3 ports.

But is that a cause or effect of NetBSD not supporting USB3?

A lot of NetBSD platforms predate USB3, so presumably not an effect. Keep in mind it runs on very old stuff like the Dreamcast and OMRON LUNA and very small stuff like tiny ARM boards and MIPS routers.

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#94

Post by nbsd4life »

aaronmdjones wrote: post #90

Am I the only one feeling a little bit disappointed with some of the software versions listed there? I don't use NetBSD, so perhaps I'm not in "the loop", and please forgive me if so, but; - GCC 5.5 is only one major version higher than the oldest supported version; 6 or 7 would have been a better choice while you're banging out a whole new operating system release, 6 is still fully supported, 8 was released early th…

NetBSD 8.0 took longer to release than intended.

The comparison to "oldest clang/gcc you can get in a linux distro" is not right, you can get a lot of different versions as packages. this refers to the base compiler which is used to build everything. GCC 8.1 is available as a package for example.

As for the base GCC versions, NetBSD is a little conservative when updating, but keep in mind that it's doing this on a lot of architectures and problems arise. a complete transition to GCC 5.x was held back somewhat by a tricky mipseb-softfloat bug, GCC 6.x (in -current) was held back by a VAX ICE. Newer GCC kills ARMv4-nonthumb support.

If that is OpenSSL 1.0.2k it probably should be updated, yeah.

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#95

Post by rnd0 »

krylon wrote: post #21

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.

I just now installed 8.0-release in vmware, with two drives, and used zpool to create a new zfs filesystem.

I can't vouch for how optimized it is; but zfs is definitely there. https://gyazo.com/0f6261cf415b85010fcaa92557d783b4

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#96

Post by microtonal »

davegauer wrote: post #62
Keyframe wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Indeed, Slackware, Void, or Arch. Or since the parent poster seems to be somewhat into scientific computing, NixOS could also be interesting. NixOS is like having virtualenvs for everything.

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#97

Post by microtonal »

krylon wrote: post #88
8bitsrule wrote: post #86

A podcast I recently heard - hosted by long-experienced Linux hands - reported that installing BSD was a nightmare. Some discussion of which distros avoid that nightmare might be helpful.

Installing NetBSD is not for the faint of heart, but installing Arch Linux is a lot harder, if that is helpful. I would say it is a little harder than Debian, unless you want to cover exotic scenarios like a diskless workstation.

It depends on whether 'installing' only means the installation or the installation and configuration of hardware. Because once you have installed Arch, configuration is probably easier on the average machine due to wider hardware support.

It's been a while since I installed NetBSD, but the last time, on-board sound wouldn't work without kernel driver patches. And hardware-accelerated OpenGL on a modern GPU was unsupported.

(That said, I used NetBSD as my desktop OS besides Slackware Linux from ~2001-~2005, and it is an exceptionally clean and nice Unix.)

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#98

Post by vasili111 »

floatboth wrote: post #51
Keyframe wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

nvidia makes official drivers for FreeBSD, but last time I checked they did not include CUDA.

Is it possible to work with a CUDA with GPU passthrough?

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#100

Post by weitzj »

somethingsimple wrote: post #10

Does anyone here on HN have experience running NetBSD as their desktop OS?

My experience is kind of old roughly NetBSD 2. Unplugging your PS2 Keyboard halted the machine.

On the server side we had it on some old machine with a weird architecture just as a jump host.

The great thing is pkgsrc for package management. I believe you can use it on OS X by now, which was done by the people who make SmartOS.

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