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Unix Open Source BSD

In Development Since 2019, NetBSD 10.0 Finally Released (phoronix.com) 37

"After being in development since 2019, the huge NetBSD 10.0 is out today as a wonderful Easter surprise," reports Phoronix: NetBSD 10 provides WireGuard support, support for many newer Arm platforms including for Apple Silicon and newer Raspberry Pi boards, a new Intel Ethernet drive, support for Realtek 2.5GbE network adapters, SMP performance improvements, automatic swap encryption, and an enormous amount of other hardware support improvements that accumulated over the past 4+ years.

Plus there is no shortage of bug fixes and performance optimizations with NetBSD 10. Some tests of NetBSD 10.0 in development back during 2020 showed at that point it was already 12% faster than NetBSD 9.

"A lot of development went into this new release," NetBSD wrote on their blog, saying "This also caused the release announcement to be one of the longest we ever did."

Among the new userspace programs is warp(6), which they describe as a "classic BSD space war game (copyright donated to the NetBSD Foundation by Larry Wall)."
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In Development Since 2019, NetBSD 10.0 Finally Released

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  • by Pluvius ( 734915 ) <pluvius3@@@gmail...com> on Saturday March 30, 2024 @08:41PM (#64357760) Journal

    It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying

    One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming close on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

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

    FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

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

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

    All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a cockeyed miracle could save *BSD from its fate at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

    Fact: *BSD is dying

    • by kriston ( 7886 )

      USENET posts?! What is this, an article from 1997?

      • by vbdasc ( 146051 )

        By the way, Netcraft also confirms that USENET is dying. The handwriting is on the wall. Mene mene tekel upharsin.

    • by jmccue ( 834797 )

      This is tiring, and as a troll you are far from good. You may think you are clever, but you posted just about the same exact text that has shown up every time a BSD has been released for over 20 years. All it proves it you are lazy and have no imagination.

      • Wow. Talk about missing the joke. Who pissed on your cornflakes this morning?
        • by jmccue ( 834797 )

          Even the funnest joke go stale fast if you hear it over and over again for 20 years :)

          People should come up will a new troll that is funny. Ages ago in USENET days some famous UNIX Hacker posted a guide to a successful troll which I lost. It was informative and funny.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      Slashdot is dying. No appreciation of our heritage or sense of humor. Came here to post the once-obligatory BSD-is-dying quote and see nothing but downvotes.
    • Yeah. I last ran NetBSD something like 20 years ago, at least. Maybe 30. I'm thinking it was 1996 or so.

    • replying to undo accidental moderation, should have been +1 funny

    • It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying

      You have not truly experienced the BSD is dying meme until you have read it in the original Klingon.

    • by vbdasc ( 146051 )

      Don't worry, Apple will surely save the day :)

  • Congrats! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Saturday March 30, 2024 @09:15PM (#64357810)

    For previous NetBSD releases a number of older platforms were no longer able to self build kernels or userland, they had to be cross compiled. This has been fixed with the 10.0 release. I'm using NetBSD on an old ibook laptop to talk with some test equipment on my electronics bench.

  • Upgraded, al is good (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jmccue ( 834797 ) on Saturday March 30, 2024 @09:17PM (#64357818) Homepage

    Congratulations to the team, I just upgraded to 10.0 and all is good. NetBSD has some unique items that no other free UN*X has, one I found useful is the rump kernel.

    https://www.netbsd.org/docs/rump/sptut.html

    Also as time is going on, based upon what I have been seeing lately, it could very well be the only UN*X that will run on older systems in the near future. I expect eventually it will be the only game in town for 32 bit hardware.

    • that looks pretty cool. I didn't read the full description, but do you know if there are security implications in using rump?
  • by chas.williams ( 6256556 ) on Sunday March 31, 2024 @07:35AM (#64358450)
    Asking for some friends.
  • by kenh ( 9056 ) on Sunday March 31, 2024 @09:08AM (#64358624) Homepage Journal

    Don't mean to be sarcastic/critical, but why would someone choose to run NetBSB versus, say, OpenBSD or a Linux distro?

    OpenBSD is described as being focused on security, Linux can be described as the most common alternative OS with great infrastructure/documentation but what is the appeal to run NetBSD?

    From the outside looking in, I'd guess it has to do with supporting lots and lots of platforms, many of which have no other current OS support - is that the appeal of NetBSD? If it is, that's fine - admirable even - but I get the sense there are other reasons.

    So, in all sincerity, what draws people to install NetBSD on a machine, what specific benefit does it have over other OSes?

    • Don't mean to be sarcastic/critical, but why would someone choose to run NetBSB versus, say, OpenBSD or a Linux distro?

      NetBSD is the most ported BSD. Unfortunately the more obscure platforms may not be currently supported. Compiling cross platform is easier though. It has security built-in but maybe not as secure as OpenBSD. FreeBSD of the three has the most driver support and third party support. It lies somewhere between OpenBSD and FreeBSD in terms of compromise between performance, security, and compatibility.

      • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        Don't mean to be sarcastic/critical, but why would someone choose to run NetBSB versus, say, OpenBSD or a Linux distro?

        NetBSD is the most ported BSD. Unfortunately the more obscure platforms may not be currently supported.

        Much to my absolute amazement, NetBSD-mac68k released a NetBSD 10 build. That's seriously obscure at this point, yet still apparently supported. I'm even seeing a few names on the mailing list that I recognize from when I ran it back in the last century. Pretty cool.

    • by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Sunday March 31, 2024 @12:16PM (#64358896)

      Because it runs on my 1980s MicroVAX and my amd64 desktop.

      • That's thoroughly impressive. So what software can one use on it? No systemd for sure, bonus there, but stuff like desktop environments that one may know from Linux? Icewm, E, KDE? Or is it really meant as a server?
    • by vbdasc ( 146051 )

      NetBSD still runs on VAX :)

  • a new Intel Ethernet drive

    Please forgive my ignorance, but what is this thingy? Intel Optane that you can directly connect to the network or what?

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them. -- Isaac Asimov

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