NetBSD 10.0 Released With Much Improved Hardware Support & Faster Performance

[SteamPunker]

FreeBSD is the more popular BSD. OpenBSD is the security-focused BSD. DragonFly BSD is the oddball with a supposedly good filesystem that you can't get anywhere else. Where exactly does NetBSD fit in?

From what I understand, what sets NetBSD apart is the wide range of architectures and platforms it supports, more so than Linux or the other BSDs. Even older and more obscure platforms that Linux has dropped support for over the years continue to be supported by NetBSD. Hence the slogan "Of course it runs NetBSD."

Also, the entire OS, including its driver model, has been designed with cross-architecture portability in mind. So if a certain PCI card or USB device has a NetBSD driver, it will almost certainly work in any system that you would like to install the device in or connect it to, provided that the system has PCI slots or USB ports.

For instance, I have an old Sun Blade 250 that I'd like to install a USB 2.0 (or maybe even USB 3.0) PCI card in, since the system itself only had slow USB 1.x ports. It has PCI slots, but the machine is of a niche architecture, so in the case of something like Linux, common add-on cards might not have been properly tested on such architectures and the kernel drivers might have certain architecture dependencies that nobody ever caught, since nobody ever bothered to test that combination of hardware with that driver. Under NetBSD, this is far less likely to be a problem than with other OSes.

So if you have some older machine that you'd like to tinker with, but would want to run a still-maintained OS on, NetBSD might be the best choice.

[jaypatelani]

No wonder no one is using it. If this is the attitude of BSD users, then I wouldn't want to use it either. I hope there are friendlier users.

I don't think dlq84 is BSD user.

[Mario Junior]

Many great improvements - but what made it take so long?

Because is a small community and they loves waste time and resources on 1009755 outdated and unsupported architecture nobody uses.

[kylew77]

Yes I have interest in doing so but yes hardware support concerns has been my main hesitation without going down a rabbit hole of spending a lot of time to see what works nicely first with NetBSD 9. Not thinking of laptops but either desktops or more than likely I would assume servers (unless there is more NetBSD desktop use these days than servers?) given the use-case. But yeah will try to see what relatively modern servers I can get working well on NetBSD 9 within a few tries to be able to do such a comparison.

Thank you sir, just knowing that you would try makes me happy! I appreciate all the hard work you do for this site sir, I really do. I will continue to re-up my membership each year!

[kylew77]

BSDs are kind of living fossils. They could have been what nowadays linux is, but missed the opportunity because of historical and political reasons.

The only reason Net or FreeBSD isn't the Unix-like of choice is AT&T being dicks and suing them. Linus has gone on record saying that if not for the lawsuit he would have never invented Linux. FreeBSD was about 2 years behind Linux and that was all the time it took for Linux to gain enough of a head start to become the behemoth it is today. Heck up to about 2000 the, at the time, three main BSDs and Linux were about neck in neck with similar hardware support and use cases on the desktop.

[brad0]

Its a good ideia since BSD is almost dead this days

Ridiculous nonsense.

[brad0]

No wonder no one is using it. If this is the attitude of BSD users, then I wouldn't want to use it either. I hope there are friendlier users.

No wonder no one wants to touch Linux with an attitude like this.

[jaypatelani]

Why (Net)BSD over Linux?

This might give you some idea : https://www.unitedbsd.com/d/90-netbs...d-and-openbsd/

[jacob]

FreeBSD is the more popular BSD. OpenBSD is the security-focused BSD. DragonFly BSD is the oddball with a supposedly good filesystem that you can't get anywhere else. Where exactly does NetBSD fit in?

It supports hardware that neither of the other can run on. You want a BSD OS for an Amiga 3000? NetBSD has you covered.

[partcyborg]

You just paraphrased my Dad's favorite advise: "If you don't already know I'm not going to tell you."

Your dad sounds like an asshole