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NetBSD 8.0 released

netbsd.org

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Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#111

Post by kqr »

pgeorgi wrote: post #36
floatboth wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm fascinated this has worked so well in all operating systems I've used that I've never had reason to acquire this knowledge.

I'm simultaneously disappointed that this is not (as far as I can tell) widely known information. It sounds like the thing that may prevent you from going on goose chase if you ever need to debug it.

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#112

Post by 8bitsrule »

kev009 wrote: post #89
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.

The one BSDish distro with an easy GUI installer and desktop friendly settings was TrueOS which is undergoing a metamorphosis at the moment. For the most part you can just hit enter through the installer for any of them and have a working system. To set up a graphical environment you will need to do a little reading. I would generally say any of the BSDs are easier than Arch and Gentoo to set up but offer similar cap…

To set up a graphical environment you will need to do a little reading.

That was the gist of their complaint. I'm guessing that since these guys (one uses Arch) both worked their way through LF-Scratch last year, they're not up to more reading right now.

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#113

Post by pgeorgi »

kqr wrote: post #111
pgeorgi wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I'm fascinated this has worked so well in all operating systems I've used that I've never had reason to acquire this knowledge. I'm simultaneously disappointed that this is not (as far as I can tell) widely known information. It sounds like the thing that may prevent you from going on goose chase if you ever need to debug it.

As soon as you write an USB controller driver, you'll stumble over that quickly. The EHCI and XHCI specs are freely available and describe this in detail. It's just that only few people need to write such drivers. :-)

As for it working so well, that's mostly on the EE side: they were _very_ careful to provide this hardware based routing with defaults that make sure that old OSes continue to work while new OSes (or new drivers for old OSes) can make use of the new controllers.

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#114

Post by krylon »

microtonal wrote: post #97
krylon wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 unsupp…

By "installing" I meant all the steps until the system boots from the HDD/SSD.

I have only ever used NetBSD as a server system, so I have no idea what the hardware support on desktop systems is like.

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#115

Post by krylon »

rnd0 wrote: post #95
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

Well, what do you know? The command is there indeed. I had only read the release notes, where mention of zfs is conspicuously absent.

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#116

Post by slededit »

nbsd4life wrote: post #94
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 lo…

Some of those architectures really need to be allowed to die. VAX was discontinued in 2000 and was on life support since 1992 when it was superseded by the Alpha.

If it were free it wouldn't matter, but as you say its held up progress on architectures people actually use.

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#118

Post by nucleardog »

keithpeter wrote: post #105
mkirschner wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've just improvised my way through a netBSD install on an old thinkpad X60 with 1Gb ram and a mechanical hard drive, whole disk, defaults mostly. Seems generally quite similar to OpenBSD (which makes sense given OpenBSD is a fork from netBSD). $PKG_PATH is set up but commented out in the .profile for root. I'm going for a light window manager and Seamonkey and a few bits and pieces to see how the land lies.

> (which makes sense given OpenBSD is a fork from netBSD)

... Over 20 years ago. Over almost the exact same time period NeXTSTEP became OSX. Any similarities are probably more coincidental or due to on-going borrowing from each other than to do with the fact that one is forked from the other.

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#119

Post by nbsd4life »

slededit wrote: post #116
nbsd4life wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lo…

Some of those architectures really need to be allowed to die. VAX was discontinued in 2000 and was on life support since 1992 when it was superseded by the Alpha. If it were free it wouldn't matter, but as you say its held up progress on architectures people actually use.

The way netbsd does GCC updates gives a really wide margin for figuring out compiler issues:

- Copy existing compiler into gcc.old

- Add new compiler as "gcc"

- Switch architectures one by one

If one architecture is left behind it's not a big pressing issue, you have until the next GCC update. They're done once 2-3 years hopefully so the GCC VAX issue taking 6 months to resolve wasn't close to being a problem.

As for removing architecture support, as long as it builds without extreme intervention, the non-VAX crowd is going to leave it alone. The VAX code is mostly separate in its own directory so doesn't get in the way.

The people who care about VAX within NetBSD are very knowledgeable and it would be a shame to alienate them without a good reason. They've contributed a lot of non-VAX stuff too.

Re: NetBSD 8.0 released

#120

Post by keithpeter »

rjsw wrote: post #110
keithpeter wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alas, can't install many packages, dependency errors. Example below for texlive-collection-all fmtutil [INFO]: Not selected formats: 29 fmtutil [INFO]: Total formats: 29 fmtutil [INFO]: exiting with status 0 pkg_add: no pkg found for 'tex-pgf-[0-9]*', sorry. pkg_add: Can't install dependency tex-pgf-[0-9]* pkg_add: Can't install dependency tex-pgfplots-[0-9]* pkg_add: Can't install dependency tex-milog-[0-9]* pkg_add…

Building packages can't start until the final release build of the base Operating System has been done, things like LibreOffice depend on a lot of other things. Maybe check again in a couple of days.

Cool, will try again in a bit. Looking very interesting so far.
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