NetBSD 8.0 Released (netbsd.org) 215
Slashdot reader fisted quotes NetBSD.org: The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 8.0, the sixteenth major release of the NetBSD operating system.
This release brings stability improvements, hundreds of bug fixes, and many new features. Some highlights of the NetBSD 8.0 release are:
— USB stack rework, USB3 support added.
— In-kernel audio mixer (audio_system(9)).
— Reproducible builds
— PaX MPROTECT (W^X) memory protection enforced by default
— PaX ASLR enabled by default
— Position independent executables by default
[...]
NetBSD is free. All of the code is under non-restrictive licenses, and may be used without paying royalties to anyone.
This release brings stability improvements, hundreds of bug fixes, and many new features. Some highlights of the NetBSD 8.0 release are:
— USB stack rework, USB3 support added.
— In-kernel audio mixer (audio_system(9)).
— Reproducible builds
— PaX MPROTECT (W^X) memory protection enforced by default
— PaX ASLR enabled by default
— Position independent executables by default
[...]
NetBSD is free. All of the code is under non-restrictive licenses, and may be used without paying royalties to anyone.
Those Were the Days (Score:2)
Can you imagine... (Score:2, Interesting)
...a Beowulf cluster of NetBSD 8.0s running?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I used FreeBSD until recently when they went full on libtard with their new social contract. NetBSD doesn't act that way and neither does OpenBSD. IT companies/organisations need to stay out of politics as much as possible, as it pollutes their mission. FreeBSD has seemingly jumped on the political bandwagon to their own detriment. NetBSD just quietly does what they do best and it shows.
Re: (Score:1)
I'm neither Republican nor Democrat, not being American, but I tire of technical firms meddling in politics. Everyone just *has to* do the "me, too!" garbage and detract from the mission. NetBSD, OpenBSD, FastMail, and so many other good organisations simply don't involve themselves, and this is the desired stance. No one cares whether an OS company is pro-this or anti-that. Just leave it out, mate... Focus on the tech only.
Re: (Score:1)
How does it detract from the mission? As GP said above:
Was FreeBSD suddenly less efficient or more bug-ridden?
Re:Those Were the Days (Score:4, Interesting)
It doesn't happen overnight. Talent is removed from the contribution pool as eventually everybody makes a mistake and falls out of favour with the social justice crowd, and is ostracized. Others get sick of walking on eggshells all the time, worried they might offend somebody, and just say "fuck it", taking their skills elsewhere.
It's a culture of fear cloaked in good intentions. Comply or the howler monkeys start flinging shit.
Re: (Score:2)
Adults should not be bothered by stupid insults. There's a lot of good technical talent out there that's socially rough, or at least resists ideological conformity, and it's foolish to forgo it over something like that. It's adult-children who insist on idiotic CCs, and they step well beyond addressing the occasional insult. They are rife with implied assumptions and delusional thinking not unlike conspiracy theories: a fertile ground for powergrabbing witchhunts. The ones pushing for this are the dead weig
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
No, but it will be soon enough. Cancerous politics consume organizations from the inside out, distracting them from their original goals. Eventually, the organization will be consumed with identity politics, and software development will take a back seat to 'inclusivity' along with the other ideological shibboleths that typically accompany it.
Choosing developers out of some misguided attempt at 'equality' along irrelevant attributes will eventually cause those with talent to leave. If the conduct code force
Re: (Score:1)
I used FreeBSD until recently when they went full on libtard with their new social contract. NetBSD doesn't act that way and neither does OpenBSD. IT companies/organisations need to stay out of politics as much as possible, as it pollutes their mission. FreeBSD has seemingly jumped on the political bandwagon to their own detriment. NetBSD just quietly does what they do best and it shows.
Was FreeBSD suddenly less efficient or more bug-ridden? No? Your "full on libtard" characterization makes it fairly obvious. So, you too made a politically based decision rather than technical.
I understand completely. I no longer use Koch brothers products. I strongly disagree with the Koch brothers using corporate money to push their "con" agenda in our elections and public institutions. Besides other people's paper products are just as good.
Great OS (Score:4, Interesting)
Nothing at all wrong with NetBSD. Runs on about everything. Been using it off and on since 1998. I prefer OpenBSD because it works better on laptops generally and has pf as a native program, but NetBSD is outstanding for embedded work and actually ran and runs some stuff for the space program. A phenomenal OS for small stuff.
Agreed (Score:4, Informative)
I ran it forever in the 1990s and into the late 2000s. Super stable and it's so nice having a bare OS adding in only the things you need.
Re: (Score:2)
ESR, Linus Himself, etc. were there and I had the chance to talk with Linus at the end of the talks and we discussed this very issue.
I posited that the GPL license, which "forces" changes to be available vs the BSD license which "allows" changes to be available, would - ultimately - cause the Linux ecosystem to grow more rapidly than the BSD side
Re: (Score:1)
What does USB3 have to do with gaming?
A real commitment to multiplatform support (Score:4, Insightful)
I continue to be impressed by NetBSD's multiplatform support. Even as Linux has retreated from older architectures, NetBSD keeps support alive.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep..too bad Oracle got ahold of them. Of course, Sunâ(TM)s âoegive Java, NFS, ZFS, and Solaris x64 away, but make money on ultra-reliable-but-low-performance hardwareâ strategy wasnâ(TM)t really a winner, either.
Well the good news is FreeBSD got it before the sale to Oracle and has a license and contributed code. It is released under BSD so NetBSD can use it and port it. BUt and a big but ... after the shit Oracle pulled with Java saying we own all clean room implementations I could see them going awoll on them.
I think porting USB 3 is much easier than porting dtrace or ZFS so there may not be enough developers and a budget to port these from FreeBSD. In general those who need performance and a Unix like OS have sw
Re: A real commitment to multiplatform support (Score:1)
I remember running NetBSD on my Dreamcast like it was 1999, oh wait, I think it actually was 1999.
Re: (Score:3)
I get the feeling that the legacy code in the BSDs was of a much higher quality, whereas the old Linux code was likely a steaming pile that no one really knew what it did, or wanted to touch.
Academic vs Hobby.
"Reproducible builds"? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
The issue is having the same source tree always build an identical cdrom.
Reproducible builds are hugely important in industry, but I think that producing an identical cdrom is the least of the benefits. The biggest benefit is build and test time. Imagine if a complete build of the entirety of Windows (all different platforms, all different versions) took 20+ hours on the build servers. But if each build step is a pure function from inputs to outputs, and you're 100% sure that ephemera mentioned in the article like timestamps, timezones, build order, paths on disk are absent, th
Re: (Score:2)
fyi, debian has a reproducible builds project as well
https://wiki.debian.org/Reprod... [debian.org]
USB 3.0 support just now? (Score:4, Interesting)
NetBSD just received USB 3.0 support just now?
I had to check that. FreeBSD has had it since 2011.
Re: (Score:1)
NetBSD largely caters to older hardware and tiny, embedded systems, so it's not been a real push. It's nice to see it in there now, but for people running Sparc or SGI machines, it's not an issue. You probably know this, but NetBSD has a huge focus on the embedded market, where it shines very well. Some truly stellar stuff runs NetBSD.
Re: (Score:1)
Some truly stellar stuff runs NetBSD.
So stellar that you couldn't even name a single example!
Re: (Score:1)
NetBSD was used in NASA's SAMS-II Project of measuring the microgravity environment on the International Space Station, and for investigations of TCP for use in satellite networks.
Re: (Score:2)
NetBSD largely caters to older hardware and tiny, embedded systems, so it's not been a real push.
Back when netbsd supported many more architectures than Linux, it had a reason to exist. Now that it supports only a small fraction of what Linux does, it's time to let it die.
Re: (Score:1)
The fact that just about every Linux distro is infected with systemd these days is even more reason for the BSDs to stick around. No reason to bloat up your embedded project with that.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm going to say "just" four more times: just, just, just, just.
Re: (Score:2)
NetBSD just received USB 3.0 support just now?
I had to check that. FreeBSD has had it since 2011.
And even that was 3 years after it came out! I'm all for stability but did it literally take 10 years for this incredibly common and widely useful interface to be supported?
Re: (Score:2)
Ironic since the BSDs were the first free x86 UN*X distributions to support USB.
Re: (Score:2)
Moreso that NetBSD is known as the OS that'll run on anything ... as long as it's not installed on a USB 3.0 drive that is :)
But can it run systemd? (Score:1)
Nobody needs an Unix-like system without systemd anymore.
Re: (Score:3)
FACT:: BSD Is Dying (Score:1, Interesting)
It is official; Netcraft confirms: NetBSD is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already bleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recen
Topic (Score:2)
Reproducible builds? (Score:1)
Reproducible builds is a highlight? OMG. That really worries me that at this stage in the game that's a highlight. RedHat was doing that with Linux over two decades ago. Hell, even Microsoft has been doing that for years.
Re: (Score:1)
Stop posting spam about your software. Your post has nothing to do with the topic of this article, which is the release of NetBSD 8.0. You deserve to be modded down. Spam like this is a big part of why you have so many problems with other users of this site. Also, I don't see any reason why you couldn't already run your software on NetBSD and FreeBSD, since they have Linux binary compatibility. OpenBSD used to as well, though I don't believe it does any longer. Also, if you really want your software t
Re: (Score:1)
Rather than actually addressing the issues I raised in my post, you've turned to personal attacks almost instantly. Part of your post is pretty damn incomprehensible. However, I can honestly say I've never moderated any of your posts, either up or down. Your post is offtopic and it is spam, so I feel no sympathy for you that it will probably be modded to -1.
However, I'm going to focus on the technical issues.
1) You've bragged that you have the second largest hosts file in existence, blocking every ad ser
Re: (Score:1)
True, but APK is losing his fucking mind right now.
I've noticed in the past week that quite a few folks have taken the time to write him meaningful replies, possibly because no-one wants blood on their hands when the guy goes completely over the edge and jumps off a bridge.
Re: (Score:1)
Yes APK, everyone of these posts that is critical of you is from the same fucking person. Different styles, different wording, different grammar, different posting pattern. But every fucking one is from the same person. Actually it seems more likely that you are the one who is fucking nuts and paranoid. Just because you spend every waking hour trying to spam slashdot with your bullshit engine as much a possible doesn't mean everyone else does. Maybe you can tell us all about your zuckerberg theories instead