On February 7th, The NetBSD Foundation held it’s annual meeting, during which the developers discussed, among other things, how NetBSD progressed over the last year and what things are planned for the coming year.The Annual NetBSD Status Report summarizes this meeting and provides an overview of past, present and future of the NetBSD Project, the NetBSD operating system, pkgsrc and the NetBSD Foundation both in general and from the perspective of each group, to give users and people interested in
NetBSD insight into the project. Please join our mailing lists for articipating in ongoing discussion, and see our web site for more information about the NetBSD project, http://www.NetBSD.org.
NetBSD in 2003 – Annual NetBSD Status Report
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
NetBSD is a fantastic OS. If you have never installed/ran it before, definatly give it a shot. Relatively small ISO. I used to think that it was just for portability, which made me hesitate to use it. “I’ve only got x86”, I would say. Then for some reason I ended up giving it a whirl. It’s now my favorite OS to tinker with. Very small and clean.
-adapt
NetBSD always lacked a powerful ally. FreeBSD got a boost through its use at Yahoo. OpenBSD had the security angle. NetBSD’s portability has been somewhat eclipsed by linux, which is basically as available on the platforms people care about.
Nice operation though…but you have to wonder at what point they lose interest.
NetBSD – no hype.
Reasons to use NetBSD (assuming that you want to use some NIX derivative):
– most advanced package management system (I have used Gentoo and FreeBSD for years as well). NetBSD has the best. I know use it on my Linux boxens as well. It handles dependecies best and updates most elegantly (“make update” – wait – done).
– the code is a thing of beauty. Most eloquently written. Does that help the user? Yes. Transparent, logical code means reducing errors and translates into the most stable system.
– NetBSD evolves slowly, rather than in big “revolutions” like FreeBSD (e.g 5.x). System upgrades are easier than on OpenBSD and easily done remotely. Daily system compiles on netbsd daily where you can track progress before you compile. You can easily cross compile on your faster box. E.g. I compile on my G5 box for my PII 200 MHz laptop.
It’s fast, low footprint. Use it on big iron or on your PDA. It works. Developed by normal people, not an ego show.
It’s an OS unlike linux and anybody who has used BSD understands what I mean.
Try it.
If not use pkgsrc on linux and see if you like it (www.pkgsrc.org).
It’s good.
“The team is in the final stages of kicking 1.6.2 out the door”
That’s good to hear. I’ll try NetBSD when 1.6.2 comes out. And hopefully they’ll have a really cool new logo by then.
Yeah ,i’d like to see a new logo to,its getting kind of old
speaking of logos, i tried to install freeBSD on a local church’s sever for my mum,they wouldn’t have any of it with the logo and all,lol. It’s great to see that they have a well worked out road map. Keep up the good work NetBSD team.:D
Now excuse me for a minute. I’m sure you mean well, and could even be right on some or all of your points. However baseless claims like this are really irritating as are claims and insinuations that it is better than other systems. They are “hype”, in fact.
Oh, and you cannot run NetBSD on your G5 because NetBSD does not support PPC64. And it doesn’t even support G5 in 32-bit mode. Sorry.
if you had actually read his post he said he does his cross compiles from his g5 which doesn’t require netbsd to be running on it.
Yes, but then it wouldn’t be quite so simple as he makes it sound.
There are some new logo entries here:
http://www.outshine.com/bsdlogo/
I’m not sure when NetBSD will show us all of them and ask for a vote. Although it looks like there will be a vote of some kind, maybe a subset of the entries.
NetBSD 2.0 comes in 2004… Nice.
…again, slashdot’s linuz zealots are launching all those childish comments like “bsd is dying”….( huh?)
When will NetBSD 1.6.2-RELEASE be out? Will it support SMP without upgrading to STABLE branch?
How is SMP support compared with linux??
Thx!!
BSDero
I agree that NetBSD is a great OS (my favourite, too). Very clean, well designed, rock solid and fast. Really, even though everyone thinks that the only interesting thing about NetBSD is its portability (and therefore it shouldn’t be as optimized on x86 as some other systems), it’s actually faster on desktop than other systems I’ve tried, especially Linux – programs start faster, it’s noticeably snappier in GUI with XFree86 than Linux, dialog windows appear instantly, it’s responsive and smooth, lower overhead of many basic things like pressing keys, moving the mouse etc. The excellent design also means it’s the most stable OS I know. It’s a pity that it’s also one of the most overlooked/ignored systems, which means worse drivers (e.g. the sound and TV drivers are poor) etc. But if you like Unix, try NetBSD, it’s not as fancy as some of the user-friendly Linux distros, and somewhat lacking in the cutting-edge multimedia stuff that’s starting to appear on Linux, but anyway it’s a very nice OS.
I really like NetBSD, I am of those who apreciate code correctness and cleanliness above all else (yes, included speed). Never liked quick hacks. I have tried 1.6.* before but it seems to cause some problems with my specific harware and freezes up during boot. I think I will give it a new try when 2.0 comes out.
Thanks I’ll have a look.
agree. NetBSD just rocks… I use a current on my X86 Laptop for developing mainly in Java, daily. And it is so clean. I just hope that the MacPPC Port will be as mature soon as the e.g. X86 one is.
Regards
Andreas
PS:pkgsrc is really worth a try (on other os as well)
It is my understanding that NetBSD’s SMP implementation is akin to Linux 2.2 or FreeBSD 4.x, in that it uses a giant lock of some sort. However, it may very well perform better then Linux 2.2 or FreeBSD 4.x did due to its threading support, but I’m not sure.
Check out these benchmark results.
http://bulk.fefe.de/scalability/
a previous poster mentioned that he daily develops Java on NetBSD?
i’d be very interested in how he/she does this. i don’t want to use the kaffe implementations, i want a fully capable release. Something that I can add additional Sun librarties to (eg Java Advanced Imaging API can be added to a standard sun j2sdk install). Is there a way to run the Sun’s j2sdk 1.4.2 over netbsd?
surely IBM would have had a more portanle j2sdk 1.4 out by now?
t
i like dolphin / whale logo on the competitions page… i really don’t want netbsd to have a personality-less design with no “living creative” … even a plant/vegetation would be good. perhaps the leaf of a ginkgo biloba trea – this tree has amazing natural history – being areound from before the jurassic period – it is in a genetic order all of its own – has fire-retardent properties, … and the leaf is very elegent… i used it once on one of my own projects… i cans donte my high res scan of a real leaf to better designers.
t