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Operating Systems Software BSD

Where Does NetBSD Fit In? 380

Posted by timothy from the just-about-anywhere-apparently dept.
NetBSD Fan writes "KernelTrap offers a fascinating summary of the recent 2004 Annual NetBSD Group Meeting. Included is an introduction by NetBSD foundation president Christos Zoulas discussing NetBSD's relevance in light of competition from well known operating systems such as Linux and Windows which he acknowledges 'both offer more features than we do, and they have behind them the resources of very large commercial organizations.' He also talks about FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris and Darwin, ultimately concluding that they all are facing their own serious challenges, and that plenty of opportunities remain for NetBSD. The NetBSD project recently released NetBSD 2.0."
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Where Does NetBSD Fit In? More

Where Does NetBSD Fit In?

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  • Everyone knows (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 05, 2005 @04:03PM (#11584614)
    FreeBSD is the popular one
    OpenBSD is the secure one
    and NetBSD is the one that'll run on my electric toothbrush

    • Re:Everyone knows (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Elbereth ( 58257 )
      I'm pretty sure that all of them, at one time, had active DEC Alpha ports. Linux was very popular on the Alpha, as well. However, as the Alpha is pronounced dead time after time, Alpha ports fall out of date and eventually stop compiling altogether. I don't think you can even compile OpenBSD on the Multia any more. Pity.

      NetBSD, however, I would trust to keep "obsolete" ports working. Linux is good about this, too, but I wouldn't bet my (theoretical) job on the latest Linux kernels supporting an Alpha
      • If you want, just subsitute your favorite dead platform (Atari, Amiga, 68k Mac, etc) for the Alpha, and I think you'll see that NetBSD will probably never die.

        Never say never. It will die when all the platforms die out completely. That is maybe in 30-50 years, maybe longer, but maybe not. Unless of course OpenBSD hackers embrace new markets stronger than Linux ones. I'm really surprised to see iPod, XBox, Playstation etc running Linux and not NetBSD. Why? 18 platforms isn't all that much...
        • Playstation 2 does run NetBSD, so does the Dreamcast: and there's some thought going towards Gamecube. Doubt Playstation 1 though.

          NetBSD still relies on having an MMU which reduces its processor support capabilities. This is on the roadmap to be 'fixed' within the next major version or two. However, if it comes with Solaris-like SMP the system itself might be in a lot of trouble.

          Why XBox isn't supported is beyond me. NetBSD was ported to AMD64 in a small fraction of the time Linux was, with all the same

    • In a similar vein... (Score:5, Funny)

      by ari_j ( 90255 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @04:41PM (#11584881)
      I know a guy who built a computer into a (non-working, I can only hope, although I only saw pictures) toilet. I don't think it ran NetBSD, but it could have. Oh, and hostname = Jon (he uses Garfield character names for his network naming scheme [namingschemes.com]).
      • Ooh, slashdot is slightly more colorful now!

        Anyway, best name schemes are, of course, memorable, themed, and extendable.

        Of course, those aren't the most fun. ledge,aetus,enthalpy,glitch,jenna,kalamazoo,
        bur r ito,fingertips,anatine,pyromancer,
        erinaceous,ter se,sprinkles,sandradee,trixie,
        jenna,leningrad,au tumn.

        Although my friends have shell accounts on many of these machines, I don't have to worry about them sucking CPU time away from dnetc, because they can't usually remember what the machine they want i
  • Oh well it should hav'em.

  • On the firewall (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 05, 2005 @04:07PM (#11584640)
    NetBSD my firewall OS of choice.
  • I thought it fit "everywhere". I've got the same os on my powerbook as I do on my Jornada.

  • it fits on my old SPARC (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ChipMonk ( 711367 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @04:13PM (#11584683) Journal
    In fact, the latest release of NetBSD fits better, and runs faster, than the Solaris of 4 years ago.

  • runs on old and rare archs (Score:5, Informative)

    by lanc ( 762334 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @04:13PM (#11584684)

    NetBSD runs on 17 [netbsd.org] CPU architectures. Can you count up 17?

    NetBSD will be the OS what you can always use on your old boxes, when you don't get running anything else on them.
    • How do you get 17 out of that?

      arm, mips, alpha, x86-64, m68k, powerpc, sh3, sh5, hppa, i386, ns32k, sparc, and vax... that makes 13.
    • Actually, it runs on 54 architectures. It's one of the most portable operating systems I've ever had the pleasure of using. And it makes me happy to know that I can bounce between a 486, athlon xp, sparcbook, and a g4 without changing my OS.
    • Wow...it runs on almost as many things as Gentoo does. :)

      Maybe that's why there's a Gentoo port to BSD.

      Seriously, though, at this point, Linux can run under other operating systems without a CPU emulation layer, and it can do just as many strange processors. Not that I'm discounting NetBSD; there are plenty of reasons why NetBSD has an edge.

      This just isn't one of them.
    • It's only a matter of time before someone ports it to the Nintendo DS. :)

      It already runs on an ARM so the rest might not be too hard. :)
    • Is there any effort to port netBSD to the Newton? It runs on arm so it isn't that much of a stretch. I want a NetBSD-running emate :)

  • misinformation? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by diegocgteleline.es ( 653730 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @04:17PM (#11584720)
    Linux keeps re-writing major portions of the kernel and has stability issues. It now depends on 3rd party vendors to integrate and make stable releases of the code.

    Linux has always kept rewriting fundamental parts of the kernel true, and it will probably keep it that way. If not how can you explain that linux has gone from crawling in 8-ways to running in 512-cpu SGI boxes? When someone rewrites a part the kernel is for a reason, usually to do something better, and netbsd has also rewritten big parts of the kernel to get where netbsd 2.0. right now some people is rewriting fundamental parts of linux because they want to achieve realtime support. I don't see how this rewrite an be bad.

    And I don't see lot of unstability issues, and I bet lot of people unsing 2.6 here will agree with me that 2.6 has been by far the stablest linux release ever. The fact that IBM has been testing linux in 32-way boxes during the whole development of the kernel has helped a lotfor that and its something BSDs can not benefit from (they don't even _boot_ on these boxes). A 32-way machine finds bugs much, much faster than a single-p4 does, it's as simple as that. That is one of the reasons 2.6 is so stable even with the new development model, people test things in those big machines before merging them in the main tree

    And yes linux "depends" on distros to publish a workable system. This is how linux works, and while some people don't like it, the fact it that this way of doing things has encouraged the spread of linux,specially in the desktop - everyone can find a distro that fits to him. Do you really expect to be able to build a single base OS that 6000 millions of people will like?

    • Re:misinformation? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by antonakis ( 818877 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @04:33PM (#11584828)
      Perhaps linux is somewhat unreliable because of the speed the patches are being integrated? This is not an app, this is a kernel and kernels require rigorous testing and full security audits. Take a look at the kernel changelogs.Things are moving very fast in the linux world, so fast that merges of unstable/unsecure code are frequent.Even the grsec guys were complaining at the bad quality of code which makes its way to the kernel.Nowadays, linux seems to have become a testbed for all the cool new features, while it's left for the distro makers to further stabilize and test the kernel. This job should be done before releasing the kernel.

      • Re:misinformation? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        It reminds me of two famous army generals.

        There was General George Patton. During World War II he raced across Europe, outrunning his own supply lines. He was a lightning warrior who seized every opportunity, and made his own luck. He didn't sit around waiting for the stars to properly align. General Patton is now acclaimed as the one of the most skilled field generals of all time. He was a "can do" guy. He was a winner.

        Then there was was another George, General George McClellan. He was a General for the

      • Perhaps linux is somewhat unreliable because of the speed the patches are being integrated? This is not an app, this is a kernel and kernels require rigorous testing and full security audits. Take a look at the kernel changelogs.Things are moving very fast in the linux world, so fast that merges of unstable/unsecure code are frequent.

        If there are indeed any stability and security issues caused by rapid development, they might be caused by the fundamental design decisions rather than the size of the

    • This is not a troll, and I am not interested in fanboy reactions. I really am curious.

      He says about Linux, same quote as the parent ...

      Linux keeps re-writing major portions of the kernel and has stability issues. It now depends on 3rd party vendors to integrate and make stable releases of the code.

      which sounds worse than reality, so I wonder how much these other quotes similarly exaggerate ...

      FreeBSD took over the huge task to implement fine grain SMP and after two years of effort they still don't h
      • I don't think the comment about Linux is exaggerated at all, and would point to the wild changes and re-changes to the VM in 2.4 as an example. There have been quite a few kernel releases that went backwards.

        If you want a stable, fully tested kernel you use a patched kernel release from a distribution. There's nothing wrong with that -- it's how Linux works -- but the original comment is not, IMO, out of line.

        Regarding Darwin: I think the issue is that there simply isn't that much demand for it. It doesn't

    • Do you really expect to be able to build a single base OS that 6000 millions of people will like?
      6 billion people? It'd be great if that many people even had a chance to see a computer.

      Perhaps you meant 6 million?
    • "And I don't see lot of unstability issues, and I bet lot of people unsing 2.6 here will agree with me that 2.6 has been by far the stablest linux release ever."

      If by "stable" you mean "lack of crashes", maybe. I've never seen Linux crash without bad hardware on any kernel so I don't know.

      If by "stable" you mean "it's safe to update to the new release of the kernel", then not a chance. Support for my hardware has been broken thrice since the release of 2.6.0 (once with that burner memory leak, once when D
      • Well, what can i say. If we'e going to tal about personal issues I've been using linux since 2.5.37 and I've had very few crashes. 0 since 2.6 was released.

        oh yes some hardware is better supported than others. Ask your hardware vendor to give you open source drivers, I happen to run hardware that is well supported.
        • "oh yes some hardware is better supported than others. Ask your hardware vendor to give you open source drivers, I happen to run hardware that is well supported."

          The hardware is all fully supported by fully open source drivers in Linux 2.6. The problem is that the kernel developers break things all by themselves.
      • If by "stable" you mean "lack of crashes", maybe. I've never seen Linux crash without bad hardware on any kernel so I don't know.

        Which of these apply:

        • you haven't been using linux very long
        • you don't use linux very much, or not for long periods of time
        • you're extremely lucky
        • you're full of shit

        ?

        • "you haven't been using linux very long"

          Since 2002. Not that long.

          "you don't use linux very much, or not for long periods of time"

          I use it as my main desktop OS, but I don't subject it to much punishment. Most of the important stuff happens on my server, which is OpenBSD. I've also never seen it crash, but I'm not very nice to it at all.

          "you're extremely lucky"

          Reread my post. I'm not lucky. Just because I haven't had a crash on a running system with working hardware doesn't mean I haven't had problems.

  • NetBSD stands to gain share (Score:5, Insightful)

    by idiotnot ( 302133 ) <sean@757.org> on Saturday February 05, 2005 @04:17PM (#11584729) Homepage Journal
    Why? Because it now doesn't trail in performance, and the quality seems to be better than the FreeBSD 5.x releases. (i.e. *all* of PF works, not just parts.....pf doesn't work on bridge interfaces under FreeBSD. Nor does it play very nicely with vlan support)

    If you haven't tried NetBSD 2.0, you ought to. If you're looking at the now-looming death of FreeBSD 4.x and need a replacement, look at NetBSD. Also, if you have older hardware, NetBSD is probably a better choice than Linux. Glibc is very large these days, while NetBSD's libc is still pretty tight. I've been using an RC version of NetBSD 2.0 on a SS10MP machine for a few months now...zero problems, and the MP support works fine. It's also feels snappier than Solaris 9.

  • Where does it fit in? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 05, 2005 @04:18PM (#11584730)
    NetBSD is the BSD for people who don't like change, and I'm one of them. Although the system has gained many new features and has matured significantly over the past few years, the base system has largely retained the same design and layout that it has for years. Nearly every NetBSD version looks the same and behaves the same, which means you almost always know what to expect.

    One of my favorite things that's come out of the NetBSD Project in the past few years is the Pkgsrc collection. Pkgsrc has been gradually evolving from a NetBSD-only 'ports' system, to a very robust cross-platform package management system. It really cuts down on a lot of work to be able to manage a handful of different Unix systems, but use the same package management scheme on each system, and keep the pkgsrc repository on a single NFS server updated with a nightly cvs cronjob.

    In the BSD world, NetBSD seems to be the least driven by hype and feature creep. This makes it a real joy to use and maintain, because like I said before, you always know what to expect: a cleanly-designed, stable, functional, easy to use Unix system.

  • VERY handy. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SharpFang ( 651121 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @04:20PM (#11584742) Homepage Journal
    We got an old SUN. 200M harddrive, poor CPU, not too much RAM, GREAT monitor, nice keyboard and mouse. A dream machine for an X terminal for our servers. But what to run on it? I tried Linux. It would barely fit. No way to fit X, a desktop manager and enough to comfortably use it. It was still possible to mount a drive over NFS and pull some binaries from there, but it was way too slow. In short, Linux sucked for it. I looked what else would work on that architecture. NetBSD? Let's give it a shot. I installed it, installed X, some basic software so it could work as a standalone workstation, not just terminal, then found enough spare diskspace, that I set up root directory and all demons necessary to run YET another SUN, a diskless workstation with equally great monitor from it (even with SWAP memory accessible over NFS, swapfile on that small drive...) So, two very nice terminals on exotic architecture, all off a 200M harddrive.

  • su-per-portly (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @04:41PM (#11584876) Homepage Journal
    Not only is NetBSD ported to many architectures (17, 54, by any count, the most of any comparable OS), but it is the most portable. Desktops have gradually settled on x86 as the only CPU on which new OS'es (from revisions to totally new ones) are required to be released; though PPC remains significant (and growing), it doesn't really force "porting pressure" as just the only real alternative. But desktops are not where the OS innovation lies - at most, they're where the GUI layer is maturing. Clustered servers and personal devices are where new OS features are being hashed out. And they're the sectors where all the different CPU architectures are found. With cheaper, more productive EDA tools, we'll see more and more specialized CPUs requiring OS'es to serve their niche. And increasingly fabric-organized internetworks will make clustering demand heterogenous CPU architectures with consistent OS'es much more compelling, even necessary. NetBSD is very well suited to running on all these ported versions, both technically, and because the community has so much architecture porting experience. If the community gets drained enough by giving up hope of relevance, it will perish. And uCLinux is a threat, even in those natural NetBSD niches. But NetBSD is both stable and portable enough to survive best in a new environment defined by rapidly changing CPU architecture landscapes.

  • netbsd is relevent cause its has a niche (Score:4, Interesting)

    by geiseri ( 12114 ) <geiseri@m[ ].edu ['soe' in gap]> on Saturday February 05, 2005 @04:42PM (#11584888)
    One awesome thing about netbsd is that it runs on some of my old hardware that never would otherwise be useful. DECstation 5000 with a sexy 21" monitor would be a paper weight without NetBSD. I can run it as an X terminal just fine. It even is nice for small stuff like my Macintosh SE/30. System 6 can only do so much, barely even run an old version of nutscrape. I have an old copy of MacX but it sucked. NetBSD, got a nice little Xterm, ssh client, etc. Fits in the server room, and bang. I have a xterm smaller than most of our VT510s ;)

    NetBSD fills a need no-one else will, and because of that its relevant.

  • Best option for Sparc32 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Digital Pizza ( 855175 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @04:46PM (#11584909)
    I used to use NetBSD (I forget which version it was at the time, now) on a Sparc IPX; 40Mhz, 64MB RAM, 1GB drive. I had an extra SBUS ethernet card in it and used it as my firewall, DNS, DHCP, and IMAP mail server (in concert with fetchmail).

    Ran great until I started getting flooded with spam. SpamAssassin just couldn't keep up on that box; it'd still be processing the previous batch of mail when fetchmail grabbed the next batch.

    I upgraded to a sparc 10 with dual 60Mhz processors, but had to move to Linux because NetBSD didn't yet support multiprocessor SPARC. It kept up OK, but 2.4 didn't support Sparc32 very well; the ext3 filesystem became corrupted with SMP enabled, so I had to go back to ext2. There seemed to be little remaining interest among the Linux kernel developers for Sparc32 anymore.

    I think Solaris 10 is 64-bit only, so NetBSD may be the only option left to stay up to date on all those old Sparcs!

    • I think Solaris 10 is 64-bit only

      It is. They made the switch about a year ago IIRC, the Solaris Express versions suddenly stopped working on sun4m. :( I can't blame Sun, though. I was actually pretty impressed that the sun4m was supported by Solaris 9. I guess a lot of those are in use in the government.

      Sun supports their software for years, though, so you should be in good shape.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @04:53PM (#11584950)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:License.. (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      BSD doesn't generate hype like Linux does, because it's not about hype at all. It just exist to promote solid standards and engineering. That's it. No taking over the world, etc. When the hype is absent, it's easier to not take notice.
      BTW, you're wrong about corps never giving back code. Many things have been implemented in the various *BSD's only because some company or another was willing to fund that development. And it works out good for the company because they get the benefit of a whole communit
    • That's precisely the problem with BSD licenses.

      Another Slashdotter recently pointed out that BSD is a good license for making example source for new algorithms, etc. because you want them to be freely available to anyone.

      That said, the GPL guarantees that if anyone distributes modified versions of a program you have, you can get those modifications too.

    • Re:License.. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by fsmunoz ( 267297 ) <fsmunoz@m[ ]er.fsf.org ['emb' in gap]> on Saturday February 05, 2005 @05:50PM (#11585366) Homepage
      Let me begin by saying that, although I prefer the GPL to the BSD licence, both are free licences and fine by me. Actually, in a perfect world, the BSD licence should be enough (or even no licence at all...)

      Now, about this "BSD licence is better for business and corporations"... it's IMHO true, but not in every way, and especially not in the way that the BSD's would gain more. From what I have saw the BSD licence is great for corporations when the idea is to *take* new code made freely available and incorporating it. But for a corporation that wants to *give* code away the GPL is, interestingly enough, better. This is so because by making it GPL the business/corporation is assured that any later improvement on the code will be available, and so it doesn't give a competitive edge to rival corporations, it more or less guarantees that from there on every implementation of the code is equal, even if being made or used by another corporation.

      This makes sense; BSD licence "evangelists" are known to bring out the fact that "programmers need to eat" when dismissing the importantance of forcing the availability of the changed code. So it follows that a company will not provice ammo to rivals by allowing them to take their code and keep the changes to themselves. BSD developers are sellfishness, companies aren't.

    • Re:License.. (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The businesses won't give back. That's not true. Wasabi systems is a consulting-type company specializing in NetBSD embedded systems. Any code developed by Wasabi is property of the people who hired them to write it. According to Wasabi, their clients allow them to release code they've developed back to the community. Usually 6 to 12 months after it was originally developed but it gets out there none the less. If so, why don't we see BSD as popular as linux? Linux came out at a time when BSD was tied up

      • Re:License.. (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Mishura ( 744815 )
        Somebody once said to me: "Linux is for people who hate [Microsoft]Windows; BSD is for people who love Unix."

        After lurking slashdot for a time, I can see this quote is quite accurate.

        PS: I am a Linux guy who secretly flirts with BSD (but too young to remember Unix) and loathes Windows. ;)

    • Dont give back? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by nurb432 ( 527695 )
      Umm even Apple gives back.. Open Darwin comes to mind.

      The main issue between BSD items and Linux items, is marketing..

      And i wouldnt say that BSD is a flop.. Its just not made it big in the comsumer market like linux has..

      However, look in server rooms around the world and you will lots of BSD stuff.

    • Re:License.. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by cgenman ( 325138 )
      If so, why don't we see BSD as popular as linux?

      Possibly because those people who use BSD code aren't required to disclose it? I've always wondered how much out there was running on BSD and nobody knew it. I'm reminded of the exploit discovered in the BSD TCP-IP stack which effected machines running Windows as well.

      BSD should stand for BSD is Silent but Deadly. Your car, or DVD player, or cable box, or router could be running on BSD, and you would never know.

    • BSD Popularity (Score:3, Informative)

      by justins ( 80659 )

      If so, why don't we see BSD as popular as linux? Sure, you see Apple having incorporated it into its products, but BSD distros remains just where they were -- they won't get much back from apple. And the product will remain just where it was.

      Interesting that you should use the phrase "BSD distros." I bet you didn't know that on the server side FreeBSD is more popular than any given linux distro. http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/06/07/nearl y_25_million_active_sites_running_freebsd.html [netcraft.com]

      On the deskt

    • If so, why don't we see BSD as popular as linux?

      It doesn't matter. The BSDs have withstood the test of time, people like them, and they won't be going away. That's what matters.

  • no brainer - commerial embedded devices (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mqx ( 792882 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @05:03PM (#11585036)

    This is really a no brainer,

    NetBSD is designed to be low footprint, highly portable, and flexible. It's the ideal BSD for embedded systems (whereas FreeBSD is suited to larger size systems and servers, and OpenBSD is unfortunately in the middle as a security oriented system, but not portable nor performance enough as NetBSD).

    Licensing is a key NetBSD selling point. The problem with Linux/GNU is the GNU license which does not favour commercial embedded manufacturers who want to customise the software inside their product and (a) not have to offer the source code, and (b) not have to offer any competitive/IP/commercially-sensitive content in that source code (i.e. algorithms, device driver interfaces, etc). Despite all of the hoo-haa about the GPL, I'm afraid that companies really do like to minimise risk and lower cost by keeping their product internals as secret as possible.

    Portability: NetBSD wins hands down: Linux has been ported to lots of things, but the basic architecture is not as clean. This is been shown time over again, and proven by the supported (not just "happened to be ported to") platforms of NetBSD.

    NetBSD also gets to leverage the work from FreeBSD and OpenBSD, as FreeBSD really has greater commercial support in terms of device drivers and so on than either NetBSD or FreeBSD.

    What NetBSD should be focusing on (in this order)

    1. keeping tight BSD licenses (the kind of Theo style approach being applied to OpenBSD at the moment : to be very strict about licenses of included items) -- commercially friendly for competitive/cost reasons;

    2. keeping high portability and flexibility: making sure that as new processors/platforms/drivers come along, that they can be quickly and easily supported -- commercially friendly for time to market allowing easy leverage of the existing product;

    3. continually rolling in new support for hardware and security features as possible by grafting from FreeBSD and OpenBSD;

    4. continually reworking and streamlining the internals to support all of the above;

    5. improving the build environments (i.e. the cross compile is fantastic now), the ports system (fantastic and incredibly easy to bring third-party components in), and other things such as boot code, embedded/compressed installs, etc;

    6. not getting "lost" on wasted effort for things like graphical installers, or coloured-ls's, etc;

    Basically, NetBSD should continue to :

    - target small/embedded devices;
    - continue/improve commercial friendly;
    - innovate/improve on reducing total effort to realise NetBSD onto a new hardware platform;

    • Portability: NetBSD wins hands down: Linux has been ported to lots of things, but the basic architecture is not as clean.

      I can't speak to its cleanliness but Linux runs on a few architectures without any MMU, which BSD doesn't. You made a big deal about embedded yadda yadda in your post and this kind of hamstrings NetBSD as an embedded platform.

  • Familiarity (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Troy ( 3118 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @05:09PM (#11585092)
    I stick with Net/Free/Open BSD for the sake of sheer familiarity. I understand the BSD way of organizing things. I understand and love pf. I understand how most BSD projects organize their code trees, so using CVS to pull down a stable branch and compile is really second nature. I could devote time to relearning Linux, but I don't have any circumstances that necessitates such an undertaking.

    I'm sure that my circumstances are not unique, and that Linux folks can say the same thing about their flavor of Linux.

    -Troy

  • Real time (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Brandybuck ( 704397 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @05:27PM (#11585214) Homepage Journal
    We need real-time scheduling support, POSIX real-time extensions, and thread-safe libraries.

    That would be AWESOME. NetBSD is already great for embedded, but with the addition of real time we can finally get rid of the hegemony of proprietary RTOS vendors. My company was using an RT Unix, but the royalties were just too great and we had to abandon it for... WinXPe + INtime. Aaargh! NetBSD was actually evaluated for this, but it had to be abandoned due to the lack of RT.
  • While NetBSD runs fine on "old" hardware, it does equally well (if not better :) work on new hardware:

    I guess NetBSD can be counted as the most under-hyped OS. I welcome everyone to actually try NetBSD! :-)

    - Hubert

    • I welcome everyone to actually try NetBSD!

      I tried NetBSD 2.0 on my EPIA 5000 Eden board, but was promptly bitten by kern/26007 [netbsd.org], so no luck here :-(. FreeBSD 5.3 worked like a charm; with disks and later even in a complete diskless setup. So NetBSD doesn't run everywhere, despite the hype.

      • Sorry, it was not kern/26007, but port-i386/26007 [netbsd.org]; though it's a show-stopper nonetheless.

    • This might be a Right Place to mention, NetBSD/sparc64 uses a 64-bit user land but every Linux distro I've seen sticks with a 32-bit one (and says "you won't notice the difference", which is a huge copout). That's one positive example of NetBSD doing something Right (the negative example is lack of SMP on the same arch, from what I hear).

  • Screenshots: see NetBSD in Action (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hubertf ( 124995 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @05:30PM (#11585235) Homepage Journal
    If you've never seen NetBSD going, install it and make your own experiences! For a quick preview, check out the "NetBSD in Action [netbsd.org]" webpage!

    - Hubert

  • Instead of having scattered efforts around 600 versions of Un*x operating systems (Linux distros and BSD) how about unifying that effort and having a sane number of distros that achieve some of the things Unix type operating systems have always been criticized for: Standard utilites/commands and proper portability between the variants.

    At any one time there are one or two current Windows desktop OS's, 1 or 2 for server, 1 or 2 for Mac, but about 1000 very similar but different distributions for the open sou
    • Well, if the BSDs got the same amount of corporate backing as Linux did, you'd find nobody would use Linux: and then the thousands of distributions Linux offers would be irrelevant. You'd have three (DragonFly, Net, Open - and maybe even their advantages over each other would flatten out) BSDs which can do everything, as opposed to a plethora of distributions which can do something or other.

      Or, on the other hand, you could de-fragment the Linux code (as in, all these separate projects have to somehow fit
  • I run NetBSD 2.0 on a SparcStation5 as a webserver.

    I salvaged these sparcs from the trash at my university. They didn't come with any working OS, almost no ram, and tiny hard drives. Any remotely current version of Solaris was out of the question.

    NetBSD was an excellent choice for a current, lightweight, and robust OS that would run well on it. Getting Apache/PHP/MySQL installed through pkgsrc was very easy, and its been doing daily duty as my personal webserver for months.

    Of course Linux does run

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