NetBSD 3.1 and 3.0.2 Released 71
hubertf writes, "The NetBSD release engineering team has announced that the NetBSD 3.1 and 3.0.2 releases are now available. NetBSD 3.1 contains many bugfixes, security updates, new drivers, and new features like support for Xen3 DomU. NetBSD 3.0.2 is the second security/critical update of the NetBSD 3.0 release branch which includes a selected subset of fixes deemed critical in nature for stability or security reasons. See the NetBSD 3.1 Release Announcement and the NetBSD 3.0.2 Release Announcement for more information."
Great! (Score:1)
I don't get it (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
The BSDs provide everything you've come to love in Linux: stability, security, and probably a little more consistency especially regarding system administration and configuration. Linux and the BSDs are both fine systems, but maybe you'll prefer how BSD handles things. I honestly find it easier and more comfortable to do system administration via the CLI on BSD than via the various GUI administration tools in Linux, but that's just a matter of taste.
So, don't just dismiss NetBSD just because a release information page doesn't provide a detailed list of reasons why NetBSD is better than a 2 year old Gentoo installation. Try it out. Get your hands dirty and be "enlightened".
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Uhm, you do know that you can do system administration on the command-line in Linux too, right? (And I bet that there are GUI administration tools for the BSD's too, for that matter...
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Informative)
Here's a pretty interesting thread [freebsdforums.com] by a BSD user who had to learn to use Debian at work and shares his experiences. He sums up the differences between FreeBSD and Debian quite nicely. Makes for an interesting read.
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It just comes down to what distro you choose. And if you want rc-file style init, there's for instance file-rc.
And I find it quite revealing that the thread you refer to complains about the need of hunting down repositories for Debian, when Debian already contains the biggest set of packages available in any distribution... Also, searching enough it's always possible to find something to whine about if you really want to. The user in the refered to thread obviously wants things to work out of the box -
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Uhm, no, I'm not retarded, thank you very much (and if you cannot even stand for your opinions, you should not post such things). I read the original posters comment, I responded to some of the incorrect critique against Linux, I did not say anywhere that Linux is superior to BSD. If you find my posts to be "frothy-mouthed linux zealotry" you really need a reality check... I do however suspect that you are some sort of zealot, and I definitely do not think it furthers whatever cause you support...
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Informative)
Debian may have the highest number of packages available, but it does not have the highest number of applications. A lot of the packages in the Debian repos are for the libs that come with apps, and for multiple versions of the same app with various features enabled or disabled. If you take out all those duplicates, you end up with a lot fewer apps. A lot, yes, but probably not the most.
At the time that I wrote that piece, Ubuntu was a horrid little thing that was just starting out. Kubuntu didn't exist yet, and being a KDE user, why would I try Ubuntu?
Wireless is the worst grafted-on technology in the Linux world. There are multiple wireless networking stacks, multiple WPA supplicants, multiple commands for working with wired connections, wireless connections, and device-specific options. And Debian was (at the time) one of the worst for wireless support -- there was none officially in Sarge for madwifi or wpa_supplicant. Now, in Etch, things are a bit better, but nowhere near the level in FreeBSD. Why is there an ifconfig, a iwconfig, and driver-specific commands to work with wireless links? In FreeBSD, there's only ifconfig since they are all network interfaces, there's only a single networking stack that all the devices use. There a single config file to manage the wireless side of things.
I've become proficient with Debian in the year and a bit since I posted that, but Debian in particular and Linux in general remains a conglomeration of a bunch of hacked together software projects without an overarching feeling of togetherness or unity to it. There's no cohesiveness to "Linux" even in some of the distros.
Ubuntu is moving along nicely in that area, but that only drives home the notion that there is no Linux OS, just a hodge podge of OSes built around it, each with their own ideosyncracies, and the only way to get anything done is to standardise on a single distro. People need to get out of the "Linux" mindset and into the "Ubuntu" or "Fedora" or "Debian" or "Gentoo" mindset. Once that happens, then things will probably get better
And, yes, upgrading a couple apps can result in an upgrade to the entire OS. I've done it a few times. I'll never understand the whole Linux distro concept of "the OS and apps are one". Why do I need to upgrade to Debian Etch in order to run KDE 3.5? I can run KDE 3.5 on FreeBSD 4.11, 5.5, and 6.1, it doesn't require an OS upgrade to run newer apps.
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Well, you have learnt at least one lesson then. You are right: there's no more "a Linux OS" than there is "a BSD OS", it seems you finally grasped the concept.
"Why do I need to upgrade to Debian Etch in order to run KDE 3.5? (...) I can run KDE 3.5 on FreeBSD 4.11, 5.5, and 6.1"
Because Debian's concept of "stability" (pay attention to this: DEBIAN's concept, nothing to do with Linux) is different than that from FreeBSD (pay attention to this: FREE
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So you were merely comparing apples to oranges.
"compare
Good work!
"Here's a pretty interesting thread by a BSD user who had to learn to use Debian at work and shares his experiences. He sums up the differences between FreeBSD and Debian quite nicely. Makes for an interesting read."
That really good make a difference
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Well, I already read the thread, and I can assure it doesn't "make for an intersting read", it doesn't "sum up the differences between FreeBSD and Debian" at any rate and probably the only interest in there is for a psychologist about the many ways the human mind manages to confuse itself.
Just a
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What the BSDs are missing is software support. It seems that most noncommercial (and tons of commercial) Unix software is now developed on Linux and then later ported to *BSD, which means that updates are available for Linux first.
This is not universal, but it does seem to be the pattern.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
What do I get by installing this that I can't get in a 2 year-old Gentoo Linux installation? The BSD's have always been a bit of an enigma to me. Could someone enlighten me?
firs of all, nobody is trying to make you switch. the BSDs aren't out to conquer the world (AFAIK), they just try to make proper operating systems.
second, you get:
and many more. you can read in detail on the project's feature page [netbsd.org]. that being said:
10:49:47 (1.15 MB/s) - `i386cd-3.0.2.iso' saved [209747968]
Woo woo (Score:3, Interesting)
My question should have been read like "I'm already a nerd, what would I find most appealing about NetBSD? What would I fall in love with if I installed it?"
As i
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If you want to run an old Pentium as a firewall, I'd choose pf over ipf and OpenBSD over NetBSD.
Not wanting to start an BSD war here, since I enjoy using Free, Net and Open, but for BSD firewalls, OpenBSD is a big hub of active development. Development which
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Wow. Ubuntu doesn't even _boot_ in that.
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``NetBSD installs in 2 minutes'' Wow. Ubuntu doesn't even _boot_ in that.
it takes 2 minutes because it has to unpack 62M of .tgz-s for the 3.1 release (full base install, no X, GENERIC kernel). you probably spend more time fiddling around the installer menus, than actually installing the OS.
depending how much shit you got in rc.local, NetBSD will also boot in half an hour if you want it to. but after you install it you'll reach the login in a few seconds. i don't know exactly, i haven't timed it, but it
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That said, allow me to elaborate on the things I have seen. The most drastic difference between the BSD's and ANY other OS I have seen is stability. They are rock freaking solid. This however comes are a great cost to thier tech currency. Lets face it, new software although bright and shiny, is not stable. The BSD release trees have always been sluggish but only because they insist that package
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The BSD release trees have always been sluggish but only because they insist that packages be as stable as reasonably possible.
that "sluggishness" can also be considered a feature. some people don't like the upgrade treadmill, and if the new "features" might introduce bugs they choose to stick with their sta[b]le installs. i still run 2.0.2 on the "serious" boxen for example. so even the BSDs can be too fast sometimes.
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Sigh...
"Bleeding edge"
We're talking about computers and software, not motorcycles and muscle cars.
I suppose that bleeding edge could refer to those cheap cases that don't have any of the sheet metal folded to protect our fingers, but seriously does all of this "extreme" bullshit have to happen here too?
LK
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Gentoo isn't as bleeding edge as it used to be. I'm still using KDE 3.5.2 on gentoo's stable branch. When darwinports is beating your release cycle, that says a lot. Gentoo is fairly up to date, but it's been slowly dragging more and more in its release cycle. That's not necessarily a bad thing if you like stability.
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A BSD system, basically. Although, functionally, it will be very similar to GNU/Linux, the focus is different. NetBSD, in particular, seems to focus on portability and quality/cleanliness of code, rather than features (like Linux and FreeBSD) or ideology (like GNU). For fun, read some of the NetBSD kernel source and compare it to the Linux source. I had particular "fun" trying to figure out how the VFS works in L
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Why run one of the BSDs?
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I remember when I left the GNU/Linux world behind me and I was so amazed by how not all forums and mailing-lists where filled with the "but windows is doing this" "a windows-like desktop that" . Instead just meaningful discussions. Wow! The average linooxer seems to have some bizarre inferiority complex related to Microsoft.
I remember reading something along the lines "linux people do what they do because they h
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Linux: For those that hate Windows
FreeBSD: For those that love Unix
Not sure where it first cropped up, but it's certainly remained true.
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``Pkgsrc/ports - package management that works. (unlike some systems for Linux which will remain nameless
On the other hand, I still find Debian's package management more convenient.
``A core system which is developed in a centralised and generally more disciplined way, as opposed to Linux's more organic, chaotic modularity.''
The disadvantage of which is that if there's a vulnerability in the base system, you
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Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Interesting)
I've found doing anything in *BSD is more painful than it should be.
I'm struggling to think of an example. For instance, installing init scripts for third party software is far more painful on Linux:
cp foo.sh /etc/init.d/ /etc/init.d/foo.sh /etc/rcS.d/K69foo /etc/init.d/foo.sh /etc/rc0.d/K69foo /etc/init.d/foo.sh /etc/rc1.d/K69foo /etc/init.d/foo.sh /etc/rc2.d/K69foo /etc/init.d/foo.sh /etc/rc3.d/S69foo
/etc/init.d/foo.sh start
ln
ln
ln
ln
ln
Unless your Linux distribution supports one of the other half-baked init schemes of course.
Meanwhile, on NetBSD it's:
cp foo.sh /etc/rc/ /etc/rc.conf (add the line foo=YES)
/etc/rc/foo start
vi
Basically, anything administrative I can think of is more tedious or complex on Linux than on NetBSD.
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If you like source based packaging systems, then NetBSD is a better choice than Gentoo. I have the misfortune to work with someone who insists on using Gentoo on his work machine. He's a lazy sod, but even if he wasn't he would still be unable to do much work because usually his machine is either grinding through another rebuild or awaiting a reinstall because a half-baked update has rendered it unbootable. If you want binary packages, the quarterly releases of pkgsrc are excellent - and far more reliable t
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Difference between BSD and Gentoo, which strode towards BSD, is that it has meaningful error messages, instead of just failing, or ignoring input altogether. As well because of install bas
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Are you serious? WEEKLY builds? And thats not already a lot more trouble than any other distro?
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You've pretty much described my opinion on the matter. However, there's an ongoing battle between the project manager, who wants shot of him, and human resources who are on the other side of the country and don't give a shit about discipline in our office. In the meantime I've suggested locking down his computer with Fedora or CentOS and a BIOS password.
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Maybe his network connection on that computer might mysteriously not work
Seriously if HR wont discipline him for lack of performance than hacking certainly would get him canned. After all his boss did not approve and installing extra software and damaging equipment can get you
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Of course, you can pretty much say goodbye to bleeding edge stuff and complicated GUI apps like Ardour, etc.
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NetBSD runs on a number of different platforms (like around 50) without modifications to the source tree. All you do is select one of the targets when you run the build script. No patching or other hokey workarounds. Just a good cross-platform architecture. Building the whole system (kernel+basic userland) can be done with a few commands.
If you are only interested in running on PCs, then NetBSD is probably not what you are looking for. But for embedded develpers it is quite attractive.
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> FreeBSD installation?
Support for ~50 hardware platforms.
- Hubert
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Has Netcraft confirmed this?
jason dixon confirmed the other one [google.com]
BSD is Dying Presentation (Score:1)
Nice (Score:2)
For one, I'm not gonna bother (Score:2)
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Err, no one of the founders threw a hissy fit because he'd fucked up the administrative side of the NetBSD Foundation. An ill informed "debate" on Slashdot followed. NetBSD is still going strong, often providing new features like SMP support that then filter into the other BSDs (OpenBSD in the case of SMP). Recently, a new Bluetooth stack was integrated into the main codebase and dozens of new drivers - some ported from the other BSDs, others written specifically for NetBSD. NetBSD is also the first choice
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Speaking of new Releases... (Score:1)