by algorithm314 on 7/21/18, 2:56 PM with 111 comments
by aaronmdjones on 7/22/18, 2:48 AM
I don't use NetBSD, so perhaps I'm not in "the loop", and please forgive me if so, but;
- GCC 5.5 is only one major version higher than the oldest supported version; 6 or 7 would have been a better choice while you're banging out a whole new operating system release, 6 is still fully supported, 8 was released early this year. I understand newer compilers can sometimes introduce regressions in the build process for something as large as an entire operating system, but surely they could have tested it and gotten those bugs fixed if any?
- Similarly for Clang/LLVM 3.8.1 (Really? The oldest version of Clang that you can get on a modern Linux distro? Really?).
- OpenSSL 1.0.2 is only supported for another 17 months, 1.0.2k (the version they're shipping) is 3 versions older than the current 1.0.2o, and 1.0.2p is going to be released any day now. There are at least 4 CVEs patched between 1.0.2k and 1.0.2o; I hope they're applying those patches on top of 1.0.2k manually.
by avar on 7/21/18, 4:14 PM
> USB stack rework, USB3 support added.
I didn't realize NetBSD was that far behind on some basic features like USB support."The Linux kernel mainline contains support for USB 3.0 since version 2.6.31, which was released in September 2009"[1]. "FreeBSD supports USB 3.0 since version 8.2, which was released in February 2011.".
So they're getting USB 3.0 almost 10 years after it was released for Linux.
by zippie on 7/21/18, 4:17 PM
Often overlooked while discussing performance impact of context switching; context switching also applies to the FPU. There are two modes in which the OS performs FPU context switching: lazy and eager.
“lazy” FPU context switching leaves the previous context on the FPU until a different context gives it a set of instructions. This saves an unload on the FPU, since not all time splices require the FPU, you may see some performance gains under some application workloads.
“Eager” FPU context switching unloads FPU context whenever a time splice is finished. On a new time splice, the FPU context is reloaded. While this constant reloading of context sounds more expensive, it is optimized in hardware and almost never noticeable on modern architectures.
By default eager FPU is enabled in Linux. You can test its’ impact by passing the eagerfpu=on or eagerfpu=off boot flags (Linux).
Kudos to the NetBSD team for enabling/disabling eager FPU based on FPU model instead. This approach makes more sense to me.
by kev009 on 7/21/18, 6:39 PM
by occamrazor on 7/21/18, 6:17 PM
From the respective home pages, FreeBSD targets high performance, OpenBSD security, but it is not so clear to me what is the focus of NetBSD.
by somethingsimple on 7/21/18, 4:34 PM
by krylon on 7/21/18, 5:44 PM
by dfox on 7/21/18, 8:17 PM
[Edit: landisk platform are various NAS boxes, so nothing of comparable obsolescence as pmax]
by 8bitsrule on 7/22/18, 2:29 AM
by vasili111 on 7/21/18, 5:56 PM
1. Why did you choose it?
2. What are your impressions?
by Crontab on 7/21/18, 9:17 PM
by collinmanderson on 7/23/18, 7:28 PM
by qop on 7/21/18, 10:20 PM
Is that still a thing? I've had netbsd on my weekend to-do list for years but just have never found enough time or motivation.
What's so great about netbsd?