NetBSD 9.0 Coming Soon With 64-bit ARM, Updated ZFS, Hardware-Accelerated Virtualization

[phoronix]

Phoronix: NetBSD 9.0 Coming Soon With 64-bit ARM, Updated ZFS, Hardware-Accelerated Virtualization

The second release candidate of NetBSD 9.0 is now available for testing of what should be the last test candidate before the stable NetBSD 9 unveiling in the very near future...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NetBSD-9.0-RC2-Released

[kylew77]

As always appreciate the BSD news Michael. Other than the Reddit subs there isn't much in the way of BSD news. Would love to see NetBSD 9 benchmarked when it is final. I know I said I would benchmark OpenBSD 6.6 vs NetBSD 9 vs FreeBSD 12.1 for you around Christmas but school started back up and I got busy so nothing ever came out of the project. Couldn't get the benchmarking tools to run on OpenBSD at all after spending hours on it but I don't deal with Open or Net very often mostly just FreeBSD.

[Paradigm Shifter]

Ooh... as soon as release hits I'll pop it on my RPi4 and see how it goes. I always like the idea of a *BSD, but usually end up going back to a Linux flavour I know better. Comfort in familiarity, and all that.

[ksec]

Are there any reason to choose NetBSD over FreeBSD? Apart from it runs on nearly everything.

[kpedersen]

Let's face it right now the leader on Raspi platform amongst BSDs is FreeBSD, NetBSD has a lot to catch up and OpenBSD ... doesn't even plan on supporting the platform

OpenBSD supports the Pi fairly well.

https://www.openbsd.org/arm64.html

You are right though; FreeBSD is the better support out of the 3 BSDs for the Pi.
Yes, NetBSD supports *everything* but at quite a basic level. With FreeBSD you get less range of hardware but what it does support it does pretty well. I think even the camera and GPIO are accessible.

[jaypatelani]

ksec here are some user stories why they choose NetBSD over others https://www.unitedbsd.com/d/90-netbs...sd-and-openbsd

[skeevy420]

Ooh... as soon as release hits I'll pop it on my RPi4 and see how it goes. I always like the idea of a *BSD, but usually end up going back to a Linux flavour I know better. Comfort in familiarity, and all that.

Same here.

What's funny is if it were 10 years ago I wouldn't have a hard choice and would likely pick a random BSD over a random Linux distribution. Proton, Steam, Wine, and access to a lot of my Windows games keeps me on Linux and makes other OSs nonviable as a daily driver. Once BSD's Wine, Linux compat layer, and AMDGPU driver stack gets close to what Linux now can accomplish, BSD will be a lot more appealing to me.

It reminds me of that scene on Stargate Atlantis about them trying to get Solitaire removed from all the PCs and how it always finds its way back and McKay making the comment about how it's hard to keep a geek away from their games.

[starshipeleven]

With systemd cancering the PI as well people looking for alternatives, there is no way to run a malware on a mini computer with very limited resources!

embedded device malware runs in devices with 32MB of RAM too, didn't you look at the reports from botnets composed of IoT devices? ("smart" fridges/TV/washers/whatever)

[starshipeleven]

Once BSD's Wine, Linux compat layer, and AMDGPU driver stack gets close to what Linux now can accomplish, BSD will be a lot more appealing to me.

This also assumes Linux is sitting on its ass for the many years needed to BSDs to do this and catch up. I don't see this in the future.

[k1e0x]

Same here.

What's funny is if it were 10 years ago I wouldn't have a hard choice and would likely pick a random BSD over a random Linux distribution. Proton, Steam, Wine, and access to a lot of my Windows games keeps me on Linux and makes other OSs nonviable as a daily driver. Once BSD's Wine, Linux compat layer, and AMDGPU driver stack gets close to what Linux now can accomplish, BSD will be a lot more appealing to me.

It reminds me of that scene on Stargate Atlantis about them trying to get Solitaire removed from all the PCs and how it always finds its way back and McKay making the comment about how it's hard to keep a geek away from their games.

I use FreeBSD as a personal workstation. Why? What makes it good? It's fast, boot environments, it's simple to customize, ZFS backup is very simple, ports give you flexibility on how you want your packages built. (I'm bad and mix ports and packages but only a few and I lock them.) The only thing that is really close to it is Gentoo, but Gentoo can be a real headache ripping out all the garbage Linux stuff you don't need / want. What do you lose? Not much really. Games and some things like Gnome lag behind. Most of the software I use / want is up to date in ports and current. The graphics drivers are plenty up to date for me.

I do game a little but not on my workstation.. I just use steam on my mac.. easy. In the past I've had a windows system I used just for games, I didn't even browse the web on it.

I've used Ubuntu and Gentoo on the same hardware, Linux seems to be slightly slower (it's doing a lot more useless stuff I don't need it to), and setting it up to my liking is much more complicated.. also has annoying bugs some times. Ubuntu seems to be fragile with it's networking and it's pretty easy to get it in a state where it's not sure if it's online or not. It's too smart for it's own good and trying to "help" me too much. No idea why it needs to check if it's online or not.. like it's scared of sending me a dns error.

One of the other things about Linux and Ubuntu is a lot of packages I use aren't in the repos.. and you have to go 3rd party or source. Very annoying.. This isn't the case with ports. Everything I want is in ports. It's mostly typical shit too.. I install all the same stuff on macOS right from .dmg's.. it's not "exsotic git hub" stuff. (usually) I find this bizarre because FreeBSD is supposed to have less manpower than Linux but 3rd party repos are so common on Linux maybe nobody cares to do the work there.. I'd prefer to have one trusted repo for everything tho. FreeBSD is really good for software diversity and you don't need to use snap, appimage, flatpack or anything else.