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NetBSD 11.0

blog.netbsd.org

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Re: NetBSD 11.0

#21

Post by sellmesoap »

imoverclocked wrote: post #18
jmclnx wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Are there systems that can boot CD-ROM interfaces that don't have USB boot capability still? Old Systems. I have one such system that will is in line to move to 11.0 from 9.3. To do that I will boot from CDROM. It does not have any USB ports. NetBSD is probably the only UN*X Type OS that can run on many of these 32 bit systems. Plus the NetBSD team is doing their best to support these old systems. That saves me $ an…

> That saves me $ and helps the environment a little bit :) Seems like a tradeoff with power though. Even emulating hardware from that era is more power efficient than actually running it. Of course, if you have custom ISA cards or something then you are likely stuck :)

I don't know about the progression of PSU efficiency, but 32bit desktops were rocking 250-400w PSUs and modern desktops would be hard to find one less then 650w so sure maybe we're more efficient for the amount of compute/W but running flat out will still hit your pocketbook harder on a modern system.

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#22

Post by JdeBP »

roschdal wrote: post #3

NetBSD feels like a high quality, ancient relic from the University of California, Berkeley, from the 1970s, made for munks, secret FBI databases and special military operations.

As someone who has used old BSDs, I can say from direct experience that it does not.

For starters, on the old BSDs there was no Almquist shell, unless you went to Usenet, grabbed the shar, and built it. The TENEX C shell was the hot new thing, as were BIND and Sendmail. And we got genuine Joy+Horton vi.

Whereas modern NetBSD does not have Sendmail any more, has nvi2, and supports access control lists. And of course under the covers has lots of things that the old BSDs didn't have, like UFS for TiB disc volumes and kqueue.

I've heard tell that they're even thinking of finally doing away with BIND in base.

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#23

Post by alt227 »

thisislife2 wrote: post #16
imoverclocked wrote: post #5

> CD-ROM media Wow, I just learned that I can still buy a pack of new CD-RW discs. This is an almost 30 year old format that is still published for! Long live ATAPI! Seriously though, why still publish CD formats when a usb-stick is far more ubiquitous and much easier to actually write. Are there systems that can boot CD-ROM interfaces that don't have USB boot capability still?

I am guessing, but many of us still use CDs / DVDs (/BluRays?) to make backups. It's cheap. Lasts long.

> Lasts long

My CD backups lasted about 10-12 years before the silver started peeling off the discs :(

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#25

Post by Retr0id »

imoverclocked wrote: post #5

> CD-ROM media Wow, I just learned that I can still buy a pack of new CD-RW discs. This is an almost 30 year old format that is still published for! Long live ATAPI! Seriously though, why still publish CD formats when a usb-stick is far more ubiquitous and much easier to actually write. Are there systems that can boot CD-ROM interfaces that don't have USB boot capability still?

One thing ISOs are useful for is installation under a hypervisor, or BMC. You can usually do the exact same thing with USB images, but a lot of the UI/workflows are oriented around .iso files.

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#26

Post by Narishma »

cyberpunk wrote: post #20

The release announcement has better details: https://www.netbsd.org/releases/formal-11/NetBSD-11.0.html

> gcc(1) - updated to 12.5.0.

Anyone know why they are still on such an old version? The latest version is 16.1.

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#27

Post by tosti »

roschdal wrote: post #3

NetBSD feels like a high quality, ancient relic from the University of California, Berkeley, from the 1970s, made for munks, secret FBI databases and special military operations.

What do you mean, it's as modern as a standard portable operating system gets.

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#28

Post by accrual »

bpye wrote: post #11
bilegeek wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are there systems that can boot CD-ROM interfaces that don't have USB boot capability still? New x64 systems? Probably not. But since it still supports x86 and a whole slew of other architectures[1] still that don't always, it probably wouldn't make sense to stop. [1] https://www.netbsd.org/ports/

NetBSD supposedly supports 486, I don't think you're going to have much luck with USB there.

There are some ISA USB cards with custom drivers to support them and present them as normal drives under MS-DOS. Never tried it myself, but they exist and seem to work!

Other commenter is correct, there are some late 486 boards with PCI support that would allow USB 1.0 or even 2.0 cards to be installed and used. Probably slow, but should work.

On the topic of modernizing a 486-class machine, there also exist a few with native PS/2 mouse support, and certain Matrox PCI cards have digital out, so it'd be possible to build a 486-class machine with USB 1.1, DVI/HDMI, and PS/2.

Since some Logitech wireless mice support PS/2, one could connect a 486 rig to a crisp digital LCD, use a wireless mouse, and plug in USB flash drives, sound, 10/100 network, NT 4.0, etc. -- all supported. Can make a fairly "modern" machine out of a pre-Pentium chip.

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#29

Post by haberman »

I often wonder what the current status is of the BSDs (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD). Who uses them, who works on them, what is their motivation for doing so? How do they compare to Linux these days, in terms of size, feature set, security hardening, etc? Is their usage/development happening at a relatively constant level, or is it growing/shrinking?

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#30

Post by Narishma »

haberman wrote: post #29

I often wonder what the current status is of the BSDs (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD). Who uses them, who works on them, what is their motivation for doing so? How do they compare to Linux these days, in terms of size, feature set, security hardening, etc? Is their usage/development happening at a relatively constant level, or is it growing/shrinking?

I´m using NetBSD on a couple of x86 machines now that Linux distros have mostly dropped support for them.
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