NetBSD 1.5 released

Leto2 writes "I'm happy to see NetBSD has released version 1.5 of their OS. NetBSD-1.5 currently runs on about 20 platforms, with an additional 10 avaliable as experimental. Get it from your local mirror today!"

Re:BSD?

[wjw]

> BFD
Yes, it is big deal indeed. NetBSD project doesn't release new version every day. NetBSD 1.4 was announced in May 1999.
And the changes are well worth new number. Soft updates in FFS, full featured RAID implementation, LFS improvements, Kerberos V and more cryptography support integrated (and available outside US as well), NFS lockd, IPv6 and various performance and reliability enhancements to name only a few.

HRM...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why wasn't this on the front page?

Re:Compatibility support for Win32 programs??

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy shit! That is funny! But how does it work? It's linked to Windows libraries, which I don't think use the same namespace or calling convention (win32 uses pascal)

Re:HRM...

[f5426]

> Why wasn't this on the front page?

Don't know. There are a lot of BSD article that don't make the front page.

I always wondered why. Someone pretended it was a bug, but I seriously doubt it.

Cheers,

--fred

aw, kraut

[Kwantus]

I just got 1.4.3 installed!

Oh well, I wanted to wait for at least 1.5.1 anyway to get the bugs shaken down. 1.4.0 nipped me with bizarre crashes, so I don't leap onto new branches like I useta.

I just hope this time they included my one-line quirk table patch for my CD drive! grrr

Compatibility support for Win32 programs??

[morel2k]

What is that supposed to mean?

Oh, come on! Moderate this guy up!

[dcs]

This is a _fair_ question. The recent releases of FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD (1.4.3) all got the front page. Why didn't 1.5?

Re:Compatibility support for Win32 programs??

[wjw]

It means that NetBSD can run win32 binaries (PECOFF format) just like those for Linux, NetBSD, Solaris, etc.

Basic system libraries (win32 API) have to be replaced by versions specifically written for NetBSD.

Look at compat_pecoff(8) (the manual page) and http://chiharu.haun.org/peace/ (libraries).

Re:Compatibility support for Win32 programs??

[MycroftXXX]

It's a reimplementation of the core Windows DLLs, along with a dynamic linker, using native system calls and X. It's still very very alpha, but it's already running some GUI stuff.

Note: This approach will only work for Win32 software, but that's how damn near everything ships these days.

I love the cube!

[MycroftXXX]

I've been running NetBSD on a Mac G4 cube for more than a month now. It's schweeeet. With XFree86 4 (Tsubai's patches, not integrated yet unfortunately), GNOME and Mozilla, it really is a complete desktop environment. And have I mentioned that I run exactly the same software (yah, yah, so it's recompiled) on an Alpha, a Shark (ARM-based), a Celery, a SPARC and a WorkPad Z50? You can't beat true platform-independence. </speech> (Posting this from a cube right now.)

Re:Compatibility support for Win32 programs??

[hubertf]

Someone else already mentioned that the Windows
execution format is only a modified version of COFF, the Common Object File Format. But I think something that really rocks the boat can be looked at at this URL: http://chiharu.hauN.ORG/peace/screenshot/cmd.png [haun.org].

(Using a cmd.exe as your login shell :-)

- Hubert

shameless plug

[jmetatron]

BTW, you can buy 1.5 CDs (and toys) at http://www.wasabisystems.com ... jm

Re:tick, tock

[daniell]

True. But if you read all the m68k specific NetBSD stuff you'll find that its a hardware issue. Yup, the clock that the system "knows" runs funny over time while on; apparently its behavior is improved or resynched to some other clock through long down times and/or frequent reboots. Suggested fix: sync to a network clock.

Re:Oh, come on! Moderate this guy up!

[frankie]

Agreed. From the release announcement, it looks like 1.5 addresses most of the complaints in the discussion of 1.4.3 -- FFS soft updates, improved VM, IPsec, etc. Just about everything except SMP.