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NetBSD 11.0

blog.netbsd.org

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Re: NetBSD 11.0

#31

Post by cosmic_cheese »

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?

Flash storage can’t sit on the shelf without bitrot as long as CD-R and DVD-R can, even though writable optical media itself isn’t the best for durability.

CD-RW/DVD+RW on the other hand are also even worse than flash in that regard and decay very quickly in my experience.

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#32

Post by Narishma »

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?

NetBSD even supports installing from floppies on old systems if you don´t have a CD-ROM drive.

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#33

Post by cosmic_cheese »

sellmesoap wrote: post #21
imoverclocked wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I’m in favor of repurposing old machines, but for a lot of the use cases they serve would be more than adequately filled by those little mobile CPU mini-PCs and Mac Mini’s which can go as low as 2-15W and top out somewhere around 60-110W.

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#34

Post by Narishma »

imoverclocked wrote: post #10
bitwize wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blit the iso to a usb stick and boot it. If your PC is recent (made in the past 15-20 years or so), it'll understand it just fine.

> If you are using flash-based media (e.g. a USB drive), please use the .img files rather than the .iso images. I have done that in the past but there are already .img files specifically for USB. Seems redundant.

Both are needed for different use cases. That they overlap for some use cases doesn't make them redundant.

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#36

Post by thisislife2 »

alt227 wrote: post #23
thisislife2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :(

Yeah, learnt the hard way to have backups in multiple medias and that you have to refresh / re-copy your backups every 4-5 years. Wish we had consumer tape drives so that it could be once every 10 years or so.

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#37

Post by ciupicri »

Narishma wrote: post #30
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.

486 CPU?

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#39

Post by mghackerlady »

Narishma wrote: post #26
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.

They don't like GPLv3. The other BSDs used similarly old versions until they moved to clang, but netbsd is pretty tied to the gnu toolchain and aims to be as portable as possible, so they kinda have to stick to gcc

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#40

Post by skydhash »

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 OpenBSD as a daily desktop. The main motivation is that it’s a complete system instead of several projects. So you got simpler userland tools as the kernel interfaces can be easily adjusted.

Also the subsystems are way simpler (packet filtering, sound, network management). Linux is full choke of abstraction which aim to serve a huge range of devices. And I truly believe that there should have been a bifurcation somewhere.

Most software are easy to port around, but there are some that relies on linuxisms (udev) and some on glibc-isms, which can require some patching. Some of the pains I encountered are about device files (usb) and the fact that openbsd relies on root a bit more (mounting with fuse).

You can read the “Absolute OpenBSD, 2ed” book, published 13 years ago and almost everything still holds. You can even read the “Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD” and still have a good understanding of the OpenBSD design. Linux is chaotic land compared to that.

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