Where Does NetBSD Fit In? 380
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."
Everyone knows (Score:5, Funny)
OpenBSD is the secure one
and NetBSD is the one that'll run on my electric toothbrush
Re:Everyone knows (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re:Everyone knows (Score:2)
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...
Re:Everyone knows (Score:2)
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
The King Lives! (Score:2, Funny)
In a similar vein... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In a similar vein... (Score:2)
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
Theme Songs (Score:2, Insightful)
On the firewall (Score:4, Informative)
Re:On the firewall (Score:3, Insightful)
What? (Score:2)
it fits on my old SPARC (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:it fits on my old SPARC (Score:2, Informative)
maybe 10M memory) to Solaris 7 (which barely runs on
32M memory). If you've ever used Solaris you would know
it is extremely powerful but also requires a lot of
resources to back it up. NetBSD is quite light on
using resources and it runs well on older hardware.
I use a SS4-85 running Solaris (because I like Solaris
and all my apps are for Solaris), but run NetBSD
on a spare IPC I keep next to my sytem. NetBSD runs very well on
that system, much better than Solar
Re:it fits on my old SPARC (Score:2)
runs on old and rare archs (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:runs on old and rare archs (Score:2)
arm, mips, alpha, x86-64, m68k, powerpc, sh3, sh5, hppa, i386, ns32k, sparc, and vax... that makes 13.
Re:runs on old and rare archs (Score:2, Informative)
I counted just like they did:
http://netbsd.org/Ports/#ports-by-cpu [netbsd.org]
" Machines of the same MACHINE_ARCH share the same userland binaries"
Re:runs on old and rare archs (Score:2, Informative)
Re:runs on old and rare archs (Score:4, Interesting)
Some distros (e.g. Debian) smooth this out, and some make it a nightmare (e.g. Gentoo), but until there's a GNU/Linux distribution that is consistent across all archs in source AND binary deployment and a kernel that contains all architecture fixes at once and keeps up with mainline development, Linux will not be as easy to 'jump between' archs as NetBSD.
NetBSD has the same build procedure on any architecture, using the same headers, sources, and resulting software (sans tools that only make sense one some archs). THAT is the same OS on every arch. The same name of kernel on every arch doesn't even compete. Being able to cross-compile consistently is a great bonus too, but this sometimes breaks down if you're following a development branch. Not all archs have an installer, but those that do appear to have the SAME installer, with extra functionality for those architectures needed.
My example of where even Debian does not have this: SGI MIPS. It does NOT automatically handle the SGI Volume Header (hint: NetBSD does, and installs its own bootloader), nor even tell you what to do: you have to figure out how to use the fdisk-like editor and hope you left enough space for arcsboot or your kernel. On some machines which have very tiny hard drives and need all the space they can get, Debian's way leaves a lot of user calculation to be done. You could call this "well if you're incompetent then don't use Linux", but then that's supporting my argument: NetBSD is an OS for all archs, Linux is a kernel that got ported to some archs at some point in time, and if they're not used by corporate sponsors you can kiss them good bye. Distros won't care either - why should they?
Linux' 'technical excellence' in supporting every arch and every feature anyone could want (to at least some extent) is nice, but that's beside the point of which system is actually more convenient for the architectures it supports. I know if I was running a polyarchitectural (cool word) network I wouldn't use Linux no matter how much faster it was, the administrative mess of managing a plethora of different kernel sources and base packages would be a nightmare. That's how it is in Gentoo at least, maybe Debian is better after installation (but then you lose the source-based flexibility NetBSD still offers without compromise).
Re:runs on old and rare archs (Score:2, Interesting)
There is one core configuration system, one userla
Re:runs on old and rare archs (Score:3, Insightful)
What the heck are you talking about? Of the architectures I mentioned, Debian Linux is available for every one of them except for POWER.
Well, maybe you don't like Debian. Okay. Fedora Linux (or distributions based directly off of it like Yellowdog and RHEL) gives you support for all of the architectures I've mentioned, including POWER.
And with Debian (and Fedora), you never loose the s
Re:runs on old and rare archs (Score:4, Insightful)
NetBSD's like that by design and it works. Source or binary. Hell, you can cross compile it from another operating system running on another architecture and it will still work. If there's a Linux distro out there that does it just as well (or 'better' because of that 'all the modern architectures' that 0.01% of the sysadmin population will get to look at in the next few years), well, I'd love to hear about it.
Re:runs on old and rare archs (Score:2)
Re:runs on old and rare archs (Score:2)
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.
Re:runs on old and rare archs (Score:2)
It already runs on an ARM so the rest might not be too hard.
NetBSD for Newton?? (Score:2)
Re:NetBSD for Newton?? (Score:2)
You might like to read all of these things about the Newton (and all of why Java stinks) and consider that maybe running NetBSD won't get the most out of it. The Newton is [according to this] an engineering marvel and NetBSD on it would just make it any other ARM rig.
Re:runs on old and rare archs, except mine (Score:2)
misinformation? (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
Re:misinformation? (Score:2, Interesting)
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
Re:misinformation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Old threads (Score:2)
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
Re:misinformation? (Score:2)
Real world wasn't using 2.4 code and hence 2.4 was not being used and took a _lot_ of time (years) and efforts to be really stable. This is exactly the problem that the new "development model" addresses and many people don't seem to realize it
Re:misinformation? (Score:2)
For example, RH AS 2.1 had a big amount of RH-added crap. RH EL 3.0 is better, and RH EL 4.0 will hopefully improve again.
The problem with this is that the more standardized Linux distros are, the less premium they command, so financial gains stand in compatibiliy's way. For Linux vendors, it's going to be hard to find the right balance as
Re:misinformation? (Score:2)
How far does this chicken little attitude carry? (Score:2)
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
Re:How far does this chicken little attitude carry (Score:2)
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
Re:misinformation? (Score:2)
6 billion people? It'd be great if that many people even had a chance to see a computer.
Perhaps you meant 6 million?
Re:misinformation? (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:misinformation? (Score:2)
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.
Re:misinformation? (Score:2)
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.
Re:misinformation? (Score:2)
Which of these apply:
?
Re:misinformation? (Score:2)
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.
What about 2.7? (Score:2)
We need to finalize 2.6 already and move onto 2.7, so critical servers can get a much needed kernel upgrade once it's stable. I even have a couple of Fedora Core 2 based servers running 2.4 because 2.6 kept randomly crashing.
-Z
NetBSD stands to gain share (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
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)
Re:VERY handy. (Score:4, Interesting)
Find a lightweight distro for SPARC. I remember one that supported it was RedHat, I don't remember the other but it was nearly as big. "standard" Linux is helluva big, you have actively work to make it small enough to fit on such small systems. (plus don't bull me that your Slack on your 386+16M works at any reasonable speed under X. Even on 486 it's not really acceptable, even console gets slow at times.)
The thing with NetBSD was that I actually didn't have to fight for space. I was happily browsing the binary tree and kept adding components. It felt on that 200M drive, about the same as Linux on 20G one. Kernel sources, compiler tools to recompile it, NFS demons, TFTP, BOOTP, all that was needed to compile the kernel and run the diskless workstation, and if I was short on diskspace, I was just shrinking its swapfile (from original 64M to 20M or so in the end. Still left the user with some 5M for personal data...)
How is the 2.6.x kernel compilation running on your 386?
Re:VERY handy. (Score:2)
Re:VERY handy. (Score:2)
Re:VERY handy. (Score:2)
Re:VERY handy. (Score:2)
su-per-portly (Score:3, Insightful)
netbsd is relevent cause its has a niche (Score:4, Interesting)
NetBSD fills a need no-one else will, and because of that its relevant.
Best option for Sparc32 (Score:4, Interesting)
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!
Re:Best option for Sparc32 (Score:2)
It is. They made the switch about a year ago IIRC, the Solaris Express versions suddenly stopped working on sun4m.
Sun supports their software for years, though, so you should be in good shape.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:License.. (Score:2, Informative)
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
Re:License.. (Score:2)
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)
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)
Re:License.. (Score:2, Interesting)
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)
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)
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)
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
Re:License.. (Score:2)
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)
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;
Re:no brainer - commerial embedded devices (Score:2)
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.
Re:no brainer - commerial embedded devices (Score:2)
Familiarity (Score:3, Interesting)
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)
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.
On the "runs on obsolete hardware" thing (Score:2)
I guess NetBSD can be counted as the most under-hyped OS. I welcome everyone to actually try NetBSD! :-)
- Hubert
2.0 Doesn't boot on EPIA 5000 boards. (Score:2)
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.
Re:2.0 Doesn't boot on EPIA 5000 boards. (Score:2)
Sorry, it was not kern/26007, but port-i386/26007 [netbsd.org]; though it's a show-stopper nonetheless.
Re:2.0 Doesn't boot on EPIA 5000 boards. (Score:2)
Re:On the "runs on obsolete hardware" thing (Score:2)
Re:On the "runs on obsolete hardware" thing (Score:2)
I'm aware, that's why I said it's negative for NetBSD not to support it. I was hoping readers would post-process the post's words to get meaning out of them before responding.
And that's nice to know, but can Linux actually run 64-bit sparc binaries or not? That's the question.
Re:On the "runs on obsolete hardware" thing (Score:2)
Screenshots: see NetBSD in Action (Score:3, Interesting)
- Hubert
Re:Screenshots: see NetBSD in Action (Score:2)
Last I checked, http://www.duh.org/cxoffice/ [duh.org] showed that it's still a big hack to get it working but that page has not been updated since 2003.
Re:Screenshots: see NetBSD in Action (Score:2)
Unification (Score:2)
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
Re:Unification (Score:2)
Or, on the other hand, you could de-fragment the Linux code (as in, all these separate projects have to somehow fit
what i run it for (Score:2)
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
Re:Obviously (Score:2, Funny)
That's funny, I always thought that was the place where Windows fit in...
Re:Obviously (Score:4, Funny)
And imagine the viruses. While it may keep me on my toes, suriken toast is not something I want to deal with in the morning...
Re:Obviously (Score:2)
Re:Read the WHOLE article. (Score:3, Informative)
NetBSD was the first open source OS to have IPv6 support. Yeah, "way out of date" IP stack.
NetBSD was the first open source OS to have USB support. Yeah, "way out of date" hardware support. Further, NetBSD allows for "Machine Independent" drivers, leading to portability far beyond other operating systems.
Not enough developers? You don't need a lot of developers. Code remains cleaner when only educated people submit features.
Unlike with other operating systems -- including FreeBSD
Re:Read the WHOLE article. (Score:2)
If a feature is not considered stable on OpenBSD, it's not included in the release. Just because OpenBSD releases twice a year does not imply that the include features considered to be unstable.
It's one of the most secure operating systems in the world. Compare the NetBSD 1.6.2 security patch list to the
Re:Read the WHOLE article. (Score:2)
Re:Read the WHOLE article. (Score:2)
I'm all for NetBSD on its merits, but the people that claim that it's more secure than OpenBSD are just a bunch of asshats. It's a flat out insult to all the great work that the OpenBSD team does.
Re:Read the WHOLE article. (Score:2)
Re:Read the WHOLE article. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Read the WHOLE article. (Score:2)
I don't know when Linux got the support, but when NetBSD first started to support the x86-64 architecture it was in 2001, when the hardware was only in the form of pre-release simulators. It doesn't get much better tha
Re:Read the WHOLE article. (Score:2)
Re:NetBSD runs on a lot of archs... (Score:2)
From what I've s
Re:NetBSD runs on a lot of archs... (Score:2)
There's a fair amount of hardware that NetBSD supports, but by "support" they mean you can hook a dumb terminal to the serial port, and boot off of ethernet. I personally consider "supported" to mean that the machine can access and boot of its own harddrive, can use and display more then just text on the graphics card, and can use its own keyboard.
As examples, check out the amount of hardware support offered for the vax or hppa architectures. It c
Re:On my Macintosh PowerBook 3400c (Score:2)
Didn't know that bastardized versions also count in!
Re:On my Macintosh PowerBook 3400c (Score:3, Informative)
Linux development, oddly enough, has suffered a similar fate. You need to have BootX installed (this may be true for NetBSD as well), which entails a Mac OS partition, even if it is a minimal install. Also, mo