NetBSD 5.0 Released 129
kl76 writes "The NetBSD Project have announced the release of NetBSD 5.0 after two years of development. Highlights of the seven million new lines of code in 5.0 include a new threads implementation, kernel preemption, a new scheduler, POSIX real-time scheduling, message queues and asynchronous I/O, WAPBL metadata journaling for FFS filesystems, improved ACPI support, UDF write support, X.Org instead of XFree86 (on some platforms — at last!) and lots of driver updates. Binary distributions for 53 different platforms are provided."
Excellent (Score:3, Informative)
Also don't forget Debian! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Bring Out Yer Dead (Score:2, Informative)
Replying to eliminate incorrect moderation.
Re:7 million new lines of code? (Score:5, Informative)
1.5.2 completely destroyed my gentoo X a few months ago when I tried installing kde-4.2. Apparently fglrx didn't support 1.5.x yet?! I was cast into DPI hell and my font sizes are still a barely noticeable few pixels off. grumble grumble
Re:7 million new lines of code? (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Excellent (Score:1, Informative)
Actually, FreeBSD 7.2RC2 is out.. ;)
(As of April 24th, 2009)
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/2009-April/049591.html
Re:Uptime (Score:4, Informative)
Why do some Operating Systems never show uptimes above 497 days ?
The method that Netcraft uses to determine the uptime of a server is bounded by an upper limit of 497 days for some Operating Systems (see above). It is therefore not possible to see uptimes for these systems that go beyond this upper limit. Although we could in theory attempt to compute the true uptime for OS's with this upper limit by monitoring for restarts at the expected time, we prefer not to do this as it can be inaccurate and error prone.
Why does my uptime go back to 0 after 198 days ?
The Linux TCP stack uses the low 32 bits from the system uptime timer, and this timer, in recent kernel releases, runs at 250Hz. This means that the timer value wraps around to 0 after roughly 198 days. Although we could in theory attempt to compute the true uptime for OS's with this upper limit by monitoring for restarts at the expected time, we prefer not to do this as it can be error prone.
Why do you not report uptimes for Linux 2.6 or FreeBSD 6 ?
We only report uptimes for systems where the operating system's timer runs at 100Hz or less. Because the TCP code only uses the low 32 bits of the timer, if the timer runs at say 1000Hz, the value wraps around every 49.7 days (whereas at 100Hz it wraps after 497 days). As there are large numbers of systems which have a higher uptime than this, it is not possible to report accurate uptimes for these systems.
The Linux kernel switched to a higher internal timer rate at kernel version 2.5.26. Linux 2.4 used a rate of 100Hz. Linux 2.6 used a timer at 1000Hz (some architectures were using 1000Hz before this), until the default was changed back to 250Hz in May 2006. (An explanation of the HZ setting in Linux.)
FreeBSD versions 4 and 5 used a 100Hz timer, but FreeBSD 6 has moved to a customisable timer with a default setting of 1000Hz.
So unfortunately this means that we cannot give reliable uptime figures for many Linux and FreeBSD servers.
meh...
Re:So where is it used? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:7 million new lines of code? (Score:4, Informative)
xorg-server-1.5.3 isn't really stable yet, especially for NetBSD, but we're on the cusp of the migration. If NetBSD is including 1.3 then all the fixing and configuring admins will have to do will be wasted when 1.5.3 breaks everything again.
I've got no idea about NetBSD, but xorg server 1.6 has worked great on my system for months on FreeBSD 7.1 and 7-stable. 1.5.x was fine too except for a few conf changes.
midco# pkg_info | grep xorg-server
xorg-server-1.6.0,1 X.Org X server and related programs
Why NetBSD? (Score:5, Informative)
I believe NetBSD 5.0 is a major turn of tide. Compared to 4.0, this is definitely a new chapter. In a way Mr. Hannum did a favour in his infamous rant: practically all aspects he identified have been addressed.
We here at $DAYJOB have made extensive evaluation of the NetBSD 5.0 pre-releases and it is looking very good indeed. Our internal benchmarks show that for our typical workload, performance of NetBSD is now comparable to that of Linux and FreeBSD. (Numbers and methodology may not be representative nor even correct, but we have to base our decisions to something.) It is very likely that we will be rolling the next big-iron production line solely with NetBSD again. The recent happenings with Sun and the uncertainty surrounding Solaris have warmed also the management section upstairs.
Besides performance and SMP, other things that account high in our book:
Some drawbacks:
At $HOME perhaps the most exciting feature is the new power management framework. This has taken huge leap forward in NetBSD 5.0. While there is still much work to be done, the direction is right. I believe that like SMP on the other end, power management will be one of the dominant factors in consumer-grade computing at the other end of the spectrum.
Other things that I like generally in NetBSD:
Re:Also don't forget Debian! (Score:2, Informative)
No I am talking about netbsd in the context of debian. You can upgrade a debian system entirely with dpkg. You can not upgrade a netbsd system entirely with pkg tools. I am suggesting that netbsd make it possible to do that. All the tools exist, its just a matter of how they are used.
pkgtools are for installing and maintaining third-party software packages, and not the "base" system.
Traditionally BSD has done an upgrade-via-source way of doing things, but some FreeBSD people have been experimenting with binary updates:
http://www.daemonology.net/freebsd-update/
Of course you don't have to compile the source on every system. The build process can be centralized on one host, and then you can mount it into the local /usr/src and just do a "make install".
Re:So where is it used? (Score:2, Informative)
This is at least a start:
http://www.netbsd.org/gallery/sites.html [netbsd.org]
A list of sites using NetBSD...
Re:Oh mighty masters of xBSD help please (Score:4, Informative)
Seems strange that the amd64 iso is only 247Mb
That's because it only includes what would be called a "base" install by the standards of most Linux distros. You'll get all the command line utilities, developer tools and an X Window install if you choose to install all the packages from the CD. What you wont get is things like a GNOME or KDE environment - those can be added after installing from CD by using the package tools. With these tools you can download pre-compiled packages from the NetBSD FTP server or (preferably) a mirror close to you.
Re:Why NetBSD? (Score:2, Informative)
Here is a short presentation with some purty graphs comparing NetBSD 4.0, NetBSD 5.0, Linux and FreeBSD 7.1.
http://www.netbsd.org/~ad/50/img0.html [netbsd.org]
Done by Andrew Doran, one of the most prolific NetBSD developers.