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NetBSD 11.0

blog.netbsd.org

41–50 of 172 posts

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it have Bluetooth, because OpenBSD still doesn't.

OpenBSD removed the Bluetooth support they had due to security reasons.

Specifically, their old bluetooth code was crap so they chose to get rid of it. If someone wants to have OpenBSD bluetooth, they'll gladly accept patches if the code meets their very strict standards

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#42
From the linked release announcement:

> Improvements to the npf(7) firewall, including layer 2 and user/group filtering

That's a valuable, useful feature

> New MICROVM kernel for x86... it can boot in about 10 ms

That could open some doors, nice

There are some good hardware improvements too.

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#43

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?

OpenBSD is the most security hardened OS out there, and the project maintains many pieces of software people take for granted, like pf, openssh, and libressl. FreeBSD is definitely the most robust, and is a very good server OS. NetBSDs niche is how many platforms can run it. If it's supported by GCC, theres a decent chance NetBSD will run on it

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#45

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?

The fediverse has a very vocal group of BSD users. Many of them hang out here: https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/public/local

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#46

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?

OpenBSD is the most security hardened OS out there, and the project maintains many pieces of software people take for granted, like pf, openssh, and libressl. FreeBSD is definitely the most robust, and is a very good server OS. NetBSDs niche is how many platforms can run it. If it's supported by GCC, theres a decent chance NetBSD will run on it

OpenBSD is the most security hardened OS out there,

I think this requires a lot of additional qualifications. For instance, AOSP and Android are much more hardened when it comes to isolation between GUI applications.

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#47

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 use NetBSD on several systems as a small server platform. I find it easier to understand and customize, and it keeps a lot of this stuff out of the landfill.

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

But the licensing didn't change between gcc 12 and gcc 16, so that doesn't seem like a good explanation?

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

wasn't that around gcc4 or something era? gcc12 is pretty new

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#50

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 wouldn't be surprised if some of the BSDs got an increase in users purely due to AI models making it far more accessible / easier to hack on.

i.e. your PC is unsupported for some specific driver, such as bluetooth? stick AI on the problem.

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