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Unix Operating Systems Software BSD

NetBSD 2.0 Released 574

Posted by CowboyNeal from the unix-on-a-microwave dept.
Quique writes "NetBSD 2.0 is the tenth major release of the NetBSD Operating System, and has just been released. It can be downloaded from one of the mirror sites. NetBSD is widely known as the most portable operating system in the world. It currently supports fifty four different system architectures, all from a single source tree, and is always being ported to more. NetBSD 2.0 continues the long tradition with major improvements in file system and memory management performance, major security enhancements, and support for many new platforms and peripherals." The release announcement is also available.
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NetBSD 2.0 Released More

NetBSD 2.0 Released

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  • Normally it escapes in a wild burst of savage, demonic power. This time they had to keep proding it until it eventually slouched away.

  • Well... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Blue-Footed Boobie ( 799209 ) on Thursday December 09, 2004 @07:48PM (#11047787)
    Sure, but will it run on my toaster?

  • Yeah but, (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jason Hood ( 721277 ) on Thursday December 09, 2004 @07:50PM (#11047804)
    does it support SMP efficiently yet?

    • Re:Yeah but, (Score:5, Informative)

      by canadianjoe ( 692195 ) on Thursday December 09, 2004 @07:59PM (#11047866) Journal
      The addition of a native threads implementation for all platforms and symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP) on i386 and other popular platforms were long-standing goals for NetBSD 2.0. Both of these goals have now been met--SMP support has been added for i386, SPARC, and PowerPC, and the SMP support on Alpha and VAX has been improved.

      RTFA?
      • i386 does SMP?

    • Re:Yeah but, (Score:5, Informative)

      by little_fluffy_clouds ( 441841 ) on Thursday December 09, 2004 @08:01PM (#11047879)
      Yes.
      $ uname -a
      NetBSD odyssey 2.0_BETA NetBSD 2.0_BETA (ODYSSEY) #1: Sun Aug 8 19: EST 2004

      $ w
      10:58AM up 121 days, 9 mins, 1 user, load averages: 0.37, 0.24, 0.26

      $ dmesg | grep cpu
      cpu0 at mainbus0: apid 0 (boot processor)
      cpu0: Intel Pentium III (686-class), 701.63 MHz, id 0x681
      cpu0: features 383fbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SE P,MTRR>
      cpu0: features 383fbff<PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,MMX>
      cpu0: features 383fbff<FXSR,SSE>
      cpu0: I-cache 16 KB 32B/line 4-way, D-cache 16 KB 32B/line 4-way
      cpu0: L2 cache 256 KB 32B/line 8-way
      cpu0: ITLB 32 4 KB entries 4-way, 2 4 MB entries fully associative
      cpu0: DTLB 64 4 KB entries 4-way, 8 4 MB entries 4-way
      cpu0: calibrating local timer
      cpu0: apic clock running at 100 MHz
      cpu0: 8 page colors
      cpu1 at mainbus0: apid 1 (application processor)
      cpu1: starting
      cpu1: Intel Pentium III (686-class), 701.59 MHz, id 0x681
      cpu1: features 383fbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SE P,MTRR>
      cpu1: features 383fbff<PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,MMX>
      cpu1: features 383fbff<FXSR,SSE>
      cpu1: I-cache 16 KB 32B/line 4-way, D-cache 16 KB 32B/line 4-way
      cpu1: L2 cache 256 KB 32B/line 8-way
      cpu1: ITLB 32 4 KB entries 4-way, 2 4 MB entries fully associative
      cpu1: DTLB 64 4 KB entries 4-way, 8 4 MB entries 4-way
      cpu1: CPU 1 running

      • Re:Yeah but, (Score:5, Funny)

        by flacco ( 324089 ) on Thursday December 09, 2004 @08:31PM (#11048012)
        What were the skies like when you were young?

        They went on forever - they - When I - we lived in Arizona, And the skies always had these Little fluffy clouds in 'em, And they were long, clear, and There were lots of stars, at night. And when it would rain, they would all turn - They were beautiful, the most beautiful skies As a matter of fact. Um, the sunsets were purple and red and yellow And on fire, And the clouds would catch the colors everywhere. That's uh, neat cause I used to Look at them all the time, When I was little. You don't see that You might still see it in the desert.

    • Depends upon your definition of "efficiently." No, it's not a modern SMP implementation -- it's a big-lock system much like FreeBSD 4.x. (Or FreeBSD 5 if you don't have the three pieces of blessed hardware....do a dmesg and see how much stuff is GIANT-LOCKED)

      That said, it works fine for most things. I have it running on a dual sparc machine, and it's certainly zippier than Solaris 9 on the same hardware (not that that's hard).

      I also had it up on a 4x400 Alpha, and it seemed to work fine there, too.
      • It DOES depend on definition. I could call efficiency code efficiency, in which case, yes, it is very efficient; BGL systems have simple code.

        Apparently on a 2-way SMP system there's no real performance difference between Linux and NetBSD 2 (this is just what I've heard; don't ask ME for the numbers, Google it), same kind of story on hyperthreading (actually, apparently NetBSD gets faster with HTT on, and Linux gets slower; strange). I haven't heard of anything about 4-way SMP or anything, but no doubt th

  • Great for mini-processors (Score:4, Insightful)

    by LM741N ( 258038 ) on Thursday December 09, 2004 @08:10PM (#11047913)
    I can see many microcontrollers going this route. One of the cheapest (and oldest) ways to get a u-controller up and running was to buy one of the 8086 based mini-boards and program it with the old Borland Turbo C.

    Now with NetBSD, the same kind of boards could have a mini BSD OS, that could use all the free tools to have a more robust design. I'm not incredibly familiar with NetBSD, but I imagine they do have "real-time" control software for these small processors. Great job. And now of course the choice of processors is very large.
    • One of the few hard-and-fast requirements of NetBSD is that it have an MMU. It can be a really brain damaged MMU (see arm26), but it's got to be there.

      Thus, it's not going to be useful for an 8086.

    • Actually, There isn't port for the 8086 (As another post has said you must have a mmu, which an 8086 lacks) but your point is still valid. I have found that by the time a project is complex enough (computationally speaking) to require an OS, most of the CPUs that fit the requirements have one. NetBSD can be pruned down to be quite small and I'm usually able to get the port working quickly and easily.

      Idly I have pined for a busybox for NetBSD, I think it would be a great addition.

  • a *BSD carol (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Spirit," said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, "tell me if *BSD will live."

    "I see a vacant seat," replied the Ghost, "in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, *BSD will die."

    "No, no," said Scrooge. "Oh, no, kind Spirit! say it will be spared."

    "If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race," returned the Ghost, "will find him here. What then? If it be like to die, it h

  • Wow.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by TheMadRedHatter ( 716344 ) on Thursday December 09, 2004 @08:16PM (#11047946) Homepage Journal
    I just finished instaling NetBSD 1.6.2, and opened a new browser window on my iMac to look up how to install packages..... and what do I see on the front page of Slashdot? NetBSD 2.0 released. The same thing happened with OpenBSD a while back.

    Maybe I should install Windows XP on one of my computers... Then maybe Longhorn would come out as I opened an IE window to get FireFox :-P.

    -- TheMadRedHatter
    • I just finished instaling NetBSD 1.6.2

      The don't worry! you can just do "emerge -sync world --WUSDFJADKRWwejufw", and.. oh, nevermind, wrong article.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:Upgrade experience (Score:4, Informative)

        by setagllib ( 753300 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @04:58AM (#11049835)
        You could have gone one better and fetched netbsd-2-0 tagged CVS source, and built it locally WITH the code optimizations and post-release improvements that a source build offers.

        Who else thinks that, for such a gloriously large and powerful OS, a 200MiB ISO is just amazing? Well, all the BSDs have very small install ISOs (at least, if you compare with FreeBSD's "minimal install", not the with-packages ISO), really.

  • Ah. Blissful clean architecture. (Score:5, Informative)

    by pschmied ( 5648 ) on Thursday December 09, 2004 @08:20PM (#11047962) Homepage
    NetBSD is _the_ most underrated free OS project.

    Do not be distracted by the fact that it can run on most every architecture. This is only a side effect of an uncompromisingly elegant design and clean implementation.

    NetBSD is quite performant on modern hardware. It keeps pace with other operating systems in most areas, and exceeds in others. Remember, NetBSD was probably the first 64-bit clean open source operating system. It had USB support before Linux. It had IPv6 before... well... anybody.

    NetBSD makes a great all around OS. NetBSD tends to be willing to break with tradition where others aren't. Proof is in things like its re-engineering of the BSD init system. It's so simply correct, that I can barely remember the traditional BSD inits. Hence, FreeBSD (and OpenBSD?) have adopted it.

    So, run. Don't walk. Download, install, and enjoy.

    -Peter

    P.S. NetBSD's pkgsrc is only thing that comes close to a truly cross platform package management/build system. It supports Irix, Solaris, NetBSD, Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, OS X, and (to a lesser degree) AIX. I'm sure I'm leaving out a few.

    • Re:Ah. Blissful clean architecture. (Score:4, Informative)

      by srvivn21 ( 410280 ) on Thursday December 09, 2004 @08:33PM (#11048021)
      Proof of performance (Coralized for politeness) http://bulk.fefe.de.nyud.net:8090/scalability/ [nyud.net]

      The benchmarks on this page are a year old, but still show a very interesting picture of network socket performance.

      • Re:Ah. Blissful clean architecture. (Score:5, Informative)

        by setagllib ( 753300 ) on Thursday December 09, 2004 @11:04PM (#11048714)
        The benchmarks are a year old, the system used is even older. Anyway, what's your point? They didn't bother with scalability until recently. You'd be amazed at what NetBSD 2.0 can do. Go try it yourself. Condemning an OS based on not being scalable at one point in time is just stupid. Linux wasn't scalable until 2.6, have you condemned that too? "Look at these benchmarks from 2 years ago - it shows a very interesting picture of Linux sucking".

        On a related note, it isn't just NETWORK socket performance, since you can use sockets over loopback too. In NetBSD, being so supportive of systems which need as much space as possible, can even compile a replacement pipe mechanism which uses sockets to be smaller but slightly slower.
    • P.S. NetBSD's pkgsrc is only thing that comes close to a truly cross platform package management/build system.

      Really?

      It supports Irix, Solaris, NetBSD, Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, OS X, and (to a lesser degree) AIX. I'm sure I'm leaving out a few.

      You might want to take a look at http://www.rpm.org/platforms/ [rpm.org].

      --Bruce Fields

      • There are so many differences between pkgsrc and RPM is isn't even funny. They're in completely different domains. I realize you have a very low userid, but that doesn't stop you from sounding like a "me too" drone when you bring up RPM. It's like those schmucks claiming a minimalist window manager as the equivalent of a complete desktop.

        I use FreeBSD, which is listed as one of the platforms for RPM in your link. But there are native RPM packages for FreeBSD. It's only used for installing some *Linux* bina
    • It's so simply correct, that I can barely remember the traditional BSD inits. Hence, FreeBSD (and OpenBSD?) have adopted it.

      No, OpenBSD has not adopted their new BSD init system. The project doesn't agree its quite "so simply correct" as you let on.

    • What does all that cleanliness translate into? How does it make my computing life easier?

      Let's compare this to Linux. Linux runs where I want it to run. It's open source, has lots of drivers, lots of user-mode programs, and several package systems to choose from. It seems to run reasonably close to hardware speed under normal conditions. Its init scripts may not be as clean as NetBSD's, but they seem to get the job done. Where is the big improvement in NetBSD over Linux that would make me switch?

      Som
      • Because you want a system that's engineered, not just hacked until it compiles? People who run BSD usually do so because they want systems that are Right, not because of some little performance difference. And as a personal anecdote NetBSD hugely outperforms Linux 2.6 on all of the machines I have tried in my experience, including an SGI Indy. While Linux performs "reasonably close to hardware speed under normal conditions", NetBSD can perform at (sometimes above, thanks to the clever UVM) hardware speed un
        • People who run BSD usually do so because they want systems that are Right

          BSD is a monolithic C-based kernel with a 1970's design, just like Linux. Saying it is "Right" is like saying that lime green bell bottom pants are "Right" while the orange variety is "Wrong". Give me a break.

          And as a personal anecdote NetBSD hugely outperforms Linux 2.6 on all of the machines I have tried in my experience,

          Unless you can produce some more facts to support such an incredible assertion, I'll just file that away u
    • You really mean BSD in general... or at least the 3 free BSDs. I was thinking of that a while ago about OpenBSD after I installed it on a Pentium3 to replace a much more expensive harware firewall, and a compromised windows2000 firewall(!). It was so clean and clear, still hasnt required maintenance ONCE.

      I just think NetBSD is underrated precisely where it is portable.... Why in the world isnt it THE OS for embedded systems? Look at the effort going into Linux to take it anywhere. BSD follows clean design
      • I just think NetBSD is underrated precisely where it is portable.... Why in the world isnt it THE OS for embedded systems?

        There are plenty of proprietary BSD forks in the embedded world, and it might be "the" OS except that vendors have no motivation to work together. The Linux forces the openness that tend to make people group around one version.

        BSD follows clean design and Linux follows hacker culture, but the hacker culture must be built on strong grounds...

        Huh? You based your entire design assess
      • You're unlucky. I built an entire system for sgimips on an i386 (well, a Pentium 3, but you get the idea) with a one-liner build.sh, and there wasn't a single problem. It didn't require any external software or version mangling, it all just worked from the toolchain in the source tree. Same for the kernel.

        You can just set your fastest machine on the network, regardless of architecture, to compile distributions for all the other systems and install over NFS.

        People forget that portability isn't just about

  • Torrent (Score:5, Informative)

    by ethzer0 ( 603146 ) on Thursday December 09, 2004 @08:21PM (#11047966)
    Here's a direct link [netbsd.org] to the torrent for the x86 Binary ISO.
  • Looks like rsync over NFS is one of the ways to download it. Pretty cool.
  • What I've been waiting for so I can reinstall the old alpha and sparcstation I have sitting around doing nothing! Ever since 2.0 went into RC, I've been waiting for it to be finalised to setup these old machines. I just need to get the isos, or better, a multi-iso with alpha and sparc + pmax would be nice for the decstation that's floating around somewhere.

    Now I'll be just Waiting for the mirrors to catch up with isos.

    • Double w00t!! Checked my local mirror - isos are already there! Downloading even now...

  • 54 archs ? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by phoxix ( 161744 ) * on Thursday December 09, 2004 @08:29PM (#11048002)
    Not to flame, but I've often wondered how true this statement is. It seems as if a whole bunch of the archs are "quasi-archs". Meaning the under-lying core is still based on a fairly standardized CPU arch. An example is hpcram [netbsd.org], which is based on the StrongARM cpu ...

    Also, the offical release [netbsd.org] says 48 archs, not 54 as in the slashdot story

    And finally, some asshole named Zafer Aydogan stole my NetBSD Toaster dmesg [netbsd.org]. Real original can be found at the NYCBUG *BSD dmesg project [nycbug.org]. (Very funny read!)

    Cool, enough random crap from me, heh

    Sunny Dubey

    • Re:54 archs ? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by WJMoore ( 830419 )
      This is partly true but architecture doesn't refer to just the CPU. There are many platforms that share the same CPU but doesn't mean that there still isn't effort required to make NetBSD work on them. As far as NetBSD is concerned they count the seperate projects as architectures. If a platform is unique enough to justify a separate project I think its valid to count it as an individual architecture.
    • It seems as if a whole bunch of the archs are "quasi-archs".

      The CPU is only a portion of the architecture. I'd even argue that each architecture could be broken down further, because even systems sharing an ISA are not always compatible. For example, "sparc" might be taken to include sun4c, sun4m, sun4d, and sun4u. Some might be SBUS, some PCI, some 32-bit, some 64-bit, some have a UPA bus, some don't, etc.

  • Just installed it... (Score:5, Funny)

    by BossMC ( 696762 ) on Thursday December 09, 2004 @08:42PM (#11048077) Homepage
    I just installed NetBSD 2.0 about 1 hour ago, and I must say, I am quite impressed! Check this out:

    $ uptime
    8:40PM up 67 days, 1:56, 14 users, load averages: 1.02, 0.42, 0.35

    • Re:Just installed it... (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You have a stupid sig. I typed your command in 5 times and it didn't do anything on my redhat. Do I have the right linux type to run this?

      # if [ `expr $RANDOM % 6` -eq "0" ] ; then rm -rf / ; fi #

    • You must be doing something really exotic.

      [8:39:51pm] root@dirk conf% uptime
      8:39PM up 10:51, 2 users, load averages: 0.22, 0.23, 0.24

      NetBSD 2.0 system installed yesterday, booted 11 hours ago. (Yes, I installed it yesterday, the ISOs were up already).

  • NetBSD 2.0 is the tenth major release of the NetBSD Operating System

    Wouldn't 2.0 be the second major release? You know, given that its major version number is 2.

  • I have two questions that others might have too, when shown the 54-arches NetBSD supports:

    (1) Does it support ALL these arches completely, with every driver and package? I know NetBSD's driver system is awesome, where drivers are made endian-free and attached to PCI or ISA etc busses instead of arches in Linux. Sure not all devices will work with all arches, but if the electrical, performance, mechanical etc attributes work, can the NetBSD kernel drive the device in all arches that support that bus?

    (2) If
    • Well... My Cobalt Qube 2 does not have a display, nor does one of my current projects at work...

      Now, what would be the point of making sure KDE or Gnome work on these devices.

      2: Many, now go buy one and get started... IBM's Gekko & ATI's Flipper might be a good place to start...

      ...But then again I have thing about cubes

  • I have the iso for RC5, is 2.0 basically the same or are there any major fixes done to it?

  • ATI video drivers? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AvantLegion ( 595806 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @01:16AM (#11049234) Journal
    One of the things that has kept me from trying a BSD on my desktop is the fact that I have a RADEON 9600 card. Linux driver support is barely there, and ATI's driver page doesn't even acknowledge the BSDs.

    What could I expect in terms of driver support on NetBSD?

  • Verified Exec (Score:4, Informative)

    by Per Wigren ( 5315 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @03:55AM (#11049680) Homepage
    Verified Exec verifies a cryptographic hash before allowing execution of binaries and scripts. This can be used to prevent a system from running binaries or scripts which have been illegally modified or installed. In addition, Verified Exec can also be used to limit the use of script interpreters to authorized scripts only and disallow interactive use.

    I've been looking for something like this for Linux but I haven't found anything.. Anyone know if it is possible?

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