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NetBSD Q3/Q4 Status Report Published 83

Posted by Zonk from the for-all-those-of-you-waiting-with-baited-breath dept.
Anonymous Reader writes "The NetBSD Foundation published its first quarterly status report in 2006, covering the months July though December of 2005. Among many other things, this status report includes the release of both NetBSD 2.1 and NetBSD 3.0, a summary of the NetBSD Project's participation in Google's Summer of Code and the release of two stable pkgsrc branches."
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NetBSD Q3/Q4 Status Report Published More

NetBSD Q3/Q4 Status Report Published

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  • The biggest news from the report (Score:3, Informative)

    by aliscool ( 597862 ) * on Friday January 27, 2006 @11:29AM (#14578738)
    Is the port to a toaster

    It has long been regarded that the UNIX-like OS NetBSD is portable to every type of machine except perhaps your kitchen toaster. Just in time for the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in San Francisco in August 2005, Technologic Systems, however, has conquered this last frontier. Using one of its rugged embedded TS-7200 single-board computers housed inside the empty space of a standard 2 slice toaster, Technologic Systems has designed a functional NetBSD controlled toaster. You can find more information on the NetBSD toaster at http://www.embeddedarm.com/news/netbsd_toaster.htm [embeddedarm.com].

    Funny as hell

  • Get it right (Score:1, Informative)

    by mpeg4codec ( 581587 )
    Bated breath, goddammit.

  • Not a dupe (Score:1, Redundant)

    by KiloByte ( 825081 )
    Contrary to what certain low-moderated posts say, this article is not a dupe.
    We got Q3/Q4 reports from both Free and NetBSD.
    I somehow predict a yet another article soon...

    • Re:Not a dupe (Score:4, Funny)

      by arivanov ( 12034 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @11:52AM (#14578975) Homepage
      Not a dupe, but I do not quite understand the article classification.

      First of all, cudos to the NetBSD crowd for maintaining an OS that can run even on a Dead Marmot. Over the years, I have run it on several Dead Marmots (TM) like MIPS 3000 DecStations (should not be mistaken with Dead Badgers which can run Linux).

      What I do not understand is the article classification. Surely, the more popular of the BSDs should have gotten prime time coverage and the less popular coverage between headlines. What's the deal here? Or the FreeBSD people should port their OS to a Dead Lemming instead of dropping the support for anything pre-80486 alltogether?

      • Funny.. they are porting it to the itanic if that counts as a Dead Lemming?

        anyway, FreeBSD-6.* still works on 386.. check the mailling list archives.
    • We got Q3/Q4 reports from both Free and NetBSD.
      I somehow predict a yet another article soon...

      No, sadly OpenBSD aren't releasing an annual report this year.

      The problem is that they have been unable to find a text editor which has been sufficiently audited for security holes.

      Apparently they are diverting 50% of their developer resource to work on a BSD licensed replacement for EMACS which should be ready sometime in 2012.

  • Bated (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    > for-all-those-of-you-waiting-with-baited-breath

    FYI: The spelling is bated.

  • Mac OS X (Score:3, Informative)

    by christurkel ( 520220 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @12:15PM (#14579217) Homepage Journal
    Looks like the Mac OS X port needs some updating. It still requires a UFS disk image, even though HFS+ can be made case sensitive and the instructions are only updated to Mac OS X 10.2 (!). Someone needs to update the port install process and test it on newer systems.
    • the instructions are only updated to Mac OS X 10.2

      Fine with me, as that's what I'm using ... or rather, trying to use. There's so much that won't run on it that it feels like Windows 98 in terms of functionality. So I've been trying to decide between NetBSD, OpenBSD, Debian, and Ubuntu as a replacement for this aged, hobbled OS.

      Michael

  • NetBSD consistently churns out good product... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pschmied ( 5648 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @12:23PM (#14579320) Homepage
    ...despite their relatively small developer and user community.

    The Q3/4 status report indicates what seems to be the modus operandi for the NetBSD team: consistent incremental gains.

    I have an immense amount of respect for the NetBSD project. OpenBSD drives the BSDs (and Linux) to be more secure. FreeBSD traditionally has shown us what a great administrative user experience should be like. NetBSD continues to show us the way with respect to proper system architecture.

    For example, NetBSD and FreeBSD (and OpenBSD?) natively support the same wireless hardware that Linux does. The difference? I can configure WEP and/or WPA through the exact same ifconfig that I use to configure a wired ethernet interface. No madwifi drivers. No 'download' wpa_supplicant. No difference that I'm setting up "different" network hardware. It's all just network hardware.

    In my opinion Linux's weakest point is its kernel. The userland is great for the most part, but the kernel and the parts of the userland that deal directly with the kernel seem to be its major flaw. To follow the networking example: because the underlying wireless system is so fragmentary in Linux, NetworkManager (a good attempt at a friendly gui network profile configurator) feels like a bit of a bubblegum and bailing wire solution. This isn't NetworkManager's fault, it's Linux's for not providing a consistent system API for wireless. In NetBSD (FreeBSD & OpenBSD?) this isn't the case.

    Alas, Linux (and it's collection of cool features like boot splash screens, polished user interfaces and installers, good binary OpenGL video drivers, great hardware detection utilities, commercial support on the server side, native Sun Java support, etc.) enjoys ubiquity while well architected systems like NetBSD languish in relative obscurity.

    The cool Linux features often feel hackish (have you ever built an isolinux splash screen? NetBSD has always struck me as a natural choice for building a user-oriented/workstation distribution. Some of the little features are missing in NetBSD, but they could be added easily by a team focused on such a task. If a Mark Shuttleworth style billionaire pulled an Ubuntu with NetBSD, I think the world would generally be a better place.

    -Peter
  • Has there been any work on EHCI USB controllers, in combo with Mass Storage Devices... Last time I tried NetBSD it was a sad state in that aspect (the rest of the system completely rocked though) Basically, iPod Minis wont work if you have that combination (atleast USB2 that is) I was kind of shocked when I was trying to get support and the answer was "Buy a firewire card" right...cause thats not exactly a suitable solution considering how popular EHCI / Mass storage is. Id love to check it out again, i

    • I had problems with an iPod mini over USB - it seems that the iPod doesn't perform a connection handshake properly, leaving the host waiting for a response that never comes. This has been worked around, and NetBSD 3.0 works perfectly with my iPod mini (all praise to gtkpod [sourceforge.net]). It certainly sounds like you hit the same issue, so I'd suggest giving NetBSD another try. As for live CD's, if you can't find a recent one on the mailing lists, then you could try making one with mklivecd [netbsd.org].

    • OT: FreeBSD 6.0 got a huge improvement in this area. Finally I can plug in a 2.0 USB thumbdrive and have it attach to EHCI and a high speed interface.

  • Oh The Irony... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by devphaeton ( 695736 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @01:07PM (#14579868)
    I'm just now giving NetBSD a serious try. I half-heartedly installed it on one of my little-used machines some time ago (1.6.1 iirc), but didn't really spend a lot of time with it. My main workstation is Fbsd 6.0, but i'm having an issue with a series of bugs or quirks in sysinstall and glibs in the ports collection. Maybe I'm just thick or something, but after a couple of months of googling, mopish hacks and/or otherwise trying to resolve these I'm running out of motivation. (There are open bug reports on most of these issues but they don't affect everyone so they're not being followed up on. Fbsd devels are busy with more important things, and I appreciate that).

    So for now I've decided to upgrade that little 1.6.1 machine to 3.0 and try that out for awhile. Take a break from my issues above. So far I like it. I had the assumption that nbsd would be "all business no fun" (like obsd) but I'm pleasantly surprised. pkgsrc seems no less comprehensive than FreeBSD's ports selection (well duh), or at least I'm finding all the stuff that -I- use in there.

    I still feel like I'm running away from my problems but at the moment nbsd seems like a nice umbrella to stand under for the time being.
  • I was thinking some kind of port of Quake 3 and Quake 4 had come about! Now that would be a reason to switch from Ubuntu to NetBSD.

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