NetBSD 1.5.1 is Out

Kwantus writes: "It's not Earth-shattering news, but at least it's not about Microsoft. NetBSD 1.5.1 is out." Wow, with that kind of introduction who wouldn't want to run out and try NetBSD? :)

Let Kreskin Decide...

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict the future of *BSD-is-dead posts. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD-is-dead posts face a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD-is-dead posts because *BSD-is-dead posts are dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD-is-dead posts. As many of us are already aware, *BSD-is-dead posts continues to lose posting share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD-is-dead is the most endangered of them all.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

*BSD-is-dead leader Anonymous Coward states that there are 50 posters of HotGritsDownMyPants. How many posters of PortmanPetrifiedAndNaked are there? Let's see. The number of HotGritsDownMyPants posts versus PortmanPetrifiedAndNaked posts on Slashdork is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 50/5 = 10 PortmanPetrifiedAndNaked posts. A recent article put *BSD-is-dead at about 80 percent of the troll market. Therefore there are (50+10)*4 = 240 *BSD-is-dead-posters. This is consistent with the number of *BSD-is-dead posts.

All major surveys show that *BSD-is-dead posts have steadily declined in market share. *BSD-is-dead posters are very sick and their long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD-is-dead posters are to survive at all it will be by remaining the anonymous cowards that they are. *BSD-is-dead posters continue to decay. Their teeth are falling out. They fail to bathe. Nothing short of a miracle could get them laid at this point in time. They do not contribute to the gene pool. For all practical purposes, *BSD-is-dead posters are dead.

Re:figures.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pretty easy to tell when these things are going to happen if you watch the respective project's homepages. CVS tags get added, trees get frozen, and all sorts of other good stuff happens before a release. Heck, we (FreeBSD) have released a schedule of such things, which even made it out here to slashtrash.

Schweet

[bwulf]

Time to upgrade that thar ol' machine farm.. maybe get the VAXens up to date.

what i've learned from NetBSD

[krog]

it was my first Unix too, on a Mac IIvx. i completely agree with you that the best way to learn Unix is by complete, terrible, helpless immersion until you learn to love it.

other things i've learned from NetBSD:

* no computer is "useless"
* lots of software will not compile on platforms other than the one for which it's designed
* buying a $20000 Cisco where a $700 machine would do is simply retarded.

figures.

[nitehorse]

and I just ordered my first-ever NetBSD CD from Cheapbytes. version: 1.5.

bastards : )

is this something that every BSD team does to me on purpose? as soon as I bought FreeBSD4.2, the very next day 4.3 came out. unbelievable.

-chris

Re:netbsd 1.5 under VMWare

[abs0]

I believe there is an issue with VMWare not implementing the ATA flush cache command, and NetBSD not handling the failure gracefully:

You might want to join the thread on [e-mail] (which is related to running NetBSD inside VMware on NetBSD, but I'd imagine the issues are pretty similar)

http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-i386/2001/07/11/ 0002.html [netbsd.org]

The person sitting next to me has been running NetBSD 1.5 under VMware on Win2K for a few months without any problems. I'll ask him to boot a 1.5.1 kernel to see if it has any issues...

I'm just getting ready to update our servers here to get that nice NFS and IP checksumming speedup :)

Re:what i've learned from NetBSD

[RickHunter]

Got it running on a P166, and seen it running on everything from an old 386 on up. (Why is it that everyone forgets Debian when they're talking about Linux distros, until the Debian users come by and point it out? Its like most people believe Linux is four distributions: Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, and Slack) Worked beautifully, especially since you can use make-kpkg on a larger machine to make a kernel package you can then install with a minimum of fuss on your smaller machine.

-RickHunter

Re:An OS with no hype...

[dmelomed]

try gentoo linux. Strives to be BSD-like in administration

Re:netbsd kernel

[jonbelson]

Hiya

It's funny, but NetBSD on my old Amiga is the *only* OS which has never crashed on me (including linux on x86)

--
Jon

Re:what i've learned from NetBSD

[BorrisYeltsin]

i have yet to see a distribution (except maybe slack) that really works well on a 486, let alone a 386 or a 68030.

Debian maybe?? I have it running on my 486 at home :)

BorrisYeltsin

netbsd security and recommendations.

[saintlupus]

woo hoo, now i can run an actual release version of netbsd without the obscure kernel race problem from a few weeks back.

you know, i was never really into the unix style operating systems until last year, and i'm really glad i started with netbsd rather than linux. there's nothing like a completely bare-bones install to make you figure out how all the parts actually fit together. when i installed linuxppc for the first time, i was amazed at how obfuscated the actual structure of the system was in comparison. i recommend net/openbsd to everyone i know who wants to "learn unix" (haven't tried free, can't comment on it) and every one has come back to thank me.

--saint
----

Re:what i've learned from NetBSD

[saintlupus]

it was my first Unix too, on a Mac IIvx. i completely agree with you that the best way to learn Unix is by complete, terrible, helpless immersion until you learn to love it.

hear hear. i remember when i first got it to boot, i was incredibly excited. there i was, with a command line to a powerful os on my old mac iicx.

then i realized i had nothing to do with it. nothing. i didn't know how to use vi or ed, so i couldn't configure anything enough to use my network connection and get a different editor. it's amazing how fast you can figure out the syntax for "ifconfig" when you really have to.

* no computer is "useless"

...and every time i have to wipe a machine at work to send to the recycler's, i grit my teeth. this is stuff that could actually be useful to people, low end power macs and pentiums. but they're too slow to run mac os 9 or windows 98, so off to the knacker's. i've got a powermac 7100 sitting next to the g4 in my cubicle. i use it for running older software, including operating systems. works like a charm.

for all the claims about how linux runs on slower, older boxen, i have yet to see a distribution (except maybe slack) that really works well on a 486, let alone a 386 or a 68030.

--saint
----

netbsd 1.5 under VMWare

[MavEtJu]

I recently installed NetBSD/i386 under FreeBSD's VMware. It gave me weird time-outs of minutes while waiting for cd0 (after pciidde0), com0 (after isa0), pcppi0 (after wsdisplay0) and isapnp0 (after fd0). If this sounds familiar for somebody and got it fixed, please let me know.

For the rest it ran fine, it's just the bootup of half an hour which worries me :-)

Re:Where to get it?

[flynn_nrg]

I think CheapBytes and such should stock 1.5.1 pretty soon. About your Solaris/NetBSD question. Unless you have a good reason to run Solaris (e.g. you need some Solaris specific stuff) you'll get much more from NetBSD. Solaris shines on the big iron but I've found it to be really bloated for small machines. I used it every day for a year on a Sun Ultra5 and many times I wished I could just dump it and put another OS on it, just I wasn't allowed to.

netbsd kernel

[ghack]

i have always found netbsd to be much less stable than linux. however, it is a very nice OS, and i'm glad to see 1.5.1 finally released. IMHOP Netbsd is the best of all the BSDs. If you want an alternative to linux/windows, or want to run BSD unix on your wristwatch, netbsd is for you. kudos netbsd developers...