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NetBSD 11.0

blog.netbsd.org

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Re: NetBSD 11.0

#101

Post by brynet »

PuercoPop wrote: post #66
microtonal wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It is not a good explanation because that is not the reason. That reason is for Mac OS. I don't know the details, but BSDs normally modify the GCC version they use. IIRC OpenBSD used to use GCC 2.95 for years. Porting NetBSD base to compile with a newer GCC version is not as simple as a version bump. My guess is that they haven't prioritized that work yet. Patches welcome!

> IIRC OpenBSD used to use GCC 2.95 for years.

2.95.3 and 3.3.6, both have now been retired in favour of gcc4. The majority use clang now, though.

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#102

Post by smashed »

irusensei wrote: post #90

> Improved support for vintage and misc. hardware: alpha evbppc hp300 hppa m68k mac68k macppc mips x68k It is interesting to see that as Linux drops support for legacy computers NetBSD still welcomes them. This is a NetBSD thing as it's not so much for FreeBSD. As of now NetBSD is probably the go-to operating system for vintage hardware.

Afaik it has always been that way. I remember 20 years ago as I was dabbling with various bsds, OpenBSD was known for security, FreeBSD for features and netbsd for small, ultra portable kernel.

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#103

Post by losthalo »

mvanveen wrote: post #81
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?

One of NetBSD’s strengths and emphases is portability. They have a motto- “of course it runs NetBSD.” IIRC NetBSD was ported to Apple Silicon slightly before Asahi Linux succeeded. Another cool corollary to this ethos is the portability of their portage, pkgsrc. I’ve personally used it as the basis of my user space packaging system on a Linux From Scratch distribution I made during the pandemic and the results were a…

I'm using pkgsrc on illumos (Tribblix). So, "of course it runs pkgsrc", also.

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#104

Post by jballanc »

When I was in graduate school, I was doing a lot of molecular dynamics simulations, but I did not have access to a lot of high-performance hardware. The math department had a 4-node Cray that was impossible to reserve time on, and the CS department had a 16-node Dell cluster that ran SGE and was decently reliable. When those resources ended up not being enough for my crazy array of tasks, I got resourceful and started gathering every single outdated CPU anyone anywhere on campus was getting rid of or had no use for, and built my own cluster in our lab. Before finishing my Ph.D. I had 12 SGI Indys, 8 PowerMac G3 6300s, 10 PowerMac G3 7600s, and 20+ Dell P3 towers in my "cluster".

NetBSD is the only thing that made that possible.

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#105

Post by seabrookmx »

ranger_danger wrote: post #96
washbear wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the reason. We created this branch in July 2025 (GCC 12.5 was released on 11 July, 2025) and spent a year stabilizing it. A new system compiler is considered far too much of a risky, incompatible change to backport. Especially since lots of C code no longer compiles with GCC 14+ without significant changes. Each time we upgrade the system compiler, it requires extensive work to keep all of our supported a…

Why would the C code no longer compile if it conforms to the spec?

"The spec" is loose in places and is full of undefined behavior which can change from compiler to compiler. Very low level code tends to hit these types of issues much more than application code would. But these types of issues are even common in large userspace codebases.

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#106

Post by JdeBP »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #61
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 often wonder what the current status is of the BSDs (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD). DragonFly BSD ([1], [2]): "Am I a joke to you? :-(" ;-) By the way: If you look for a BSD-based desktop OS, have a look at GhostBSD ([3], [4]) (based on FreeBSD) and/or MidnightBSD ([5], [6]) (forked from FreeBSD). Both are under active development. --- [1] https://www.dragonflybsd.org/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DragonFly_BSD…

MirOS BSD is still around, too.

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#107

Post by stonogo »

ranger_danger wrote: post #96
washbear wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the reason. We created this branch in July 2025 (GCC 12.5 was released on 11 July, 2025) and spent a year stabilizing it. A new system compiler is considered far too much of a risky, incompatible change to backport. Especially since lots of C code no longer compiles with GCC 14+ without significant changes. Each time we upgrade the system compiler, it requires extensive work to keep all of our supported a…

Why would the C code no longer compile if it conforms to the spec?

There is more than one C specification, and with each new release of GCC several things that used to emit warnings are newly treated as errors.

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#108

Post by Narishma »

ranger_danger wrote: post #95
ksec wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait What? Atom is relatively new but Linux dropped support for it? Why is that?

They said Linux distros , not the kernel itself. Many distros have or are about to drop x86 support.

Yes, I think the only somewhat big distro that still has x86 support is Gentoo.

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#109

Post by wasting_time »

ranger_danger wrote: post #96
washbear wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the reason. We created this branch in July 2025 (GCC 12.5 was released on 11 July, 2025) and spent a year stabilizing it. A new system compiler is considered far too much of a risky, incompatible change to backport. Especially since lots of C code no longer compiles with GCC 14+ without significant changes. Each time we upgrade the system compiler, it requires extensive work to keep all of our supported a…

Why would the C code no longer compile if it conforms to the spec?

You sort of answered your own question.

Another reason is compiling with -Werror and hitting new warnings.

Also, the version of the spec changes with almost every major release.

Re: NetBSD 11.0

#110

Post by ninjin »

clort wrote: post #24
guerrilla wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

NetBSD has had Bluetooth for 20 years?

Yes, and it is in fact the NetBSD Bluetooth stack [1] that OpenBSD had ported from the 4.2 release until it was ripped out in 5.6 [2]. Not to mention that the NetBSD Bluetooth stack is based on code from FreeBSD.

[1]: https://man.netbsd.org/NetBSD-11.x-BRANCH/bluetooth.3

[2]: https://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-5.5/bluetooth.4

There is a lot of sharing going on between the BSDs. Most commonly drivers being handed back and forth.

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