Fifteen years of NetBSD [LWN.net]

Fifteen years of NetBSD

Posted Mar 20, 2008 17:25 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)
Parent article: Fifteen years of NetBSD

"NetBSD has become known as the most portable operating system in the world." And at one time this was true. However, Linux 2.6 has 21 architectures supported in the tree (this page lists 22, but counts User Mode Linux as a distinct architecture, which seems wrong), plus others out-of-tree.

Now, if "operating system" is taken to mean "complete distribution", then perhaps the NetBSD people have a case, as no single Linux distribution attempts to span the whole space. Some of the Linux ports are for embedded devices, others are for server or desktop processors.

But unlike NetBSD, which gets lots of use in servers but not so much in embedded devices, there are plenty of uses of many of those Linux ports deployed in the field, to the extent that most American and European households today probably have at least one device that runs Linux: a set-top box, DVR, DSL modem, cable modem, or router most likely.

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Fifteen years of NetBSD

Posted Mar 20, 2008 18:02 UTC (Thu) by mheily (subscriber, #27123) [Link]

You say Linux supports 22 architectures, plus some other half-baked ports. The list of platforms that NetBSD supports contains 56 architectures. Seems like NetBSD is still the most portable operating system in the world.

I think the victory of Linux in embedded space is due to the fact that Linux is not an operating system; it is a modular monolithic kernel that can be squeezed into very tiny Flash ROMs along with a small C library like Diet libC and your custom program. What NetBSD provides -- a kernel, bootloader, C library, /bin utilities, compilers, headers, init(8) scripts, manpages, etc., etc., -- is overkill for most embedded applications.

A better fit for NetBSD is older, obscure hardware such as a Sun SparcStation, Amiga, BeBox, NeXT cube, etc. These are complete computers that have enough resources to run a complete operating system.

FreeBSD is a better fit for servers due to it's SMP performance. If performance is not critical, then OpenBSD is also good for servers due to it's focus on security.

I feel that Linux is best for desktops because of it's rapid development cycle and wide range of hardware support. These qualities, which make it great for running the latest-and-greatest video card or motherboard chipset, make it a poor choice for servers where stability and backwards compatibility is the most important factor. Yes, there are distributions like RHEL and SLES that try to stabilize the kernel and all the various GNU bits that make up a distribution, but it's far better to use a complete operating system like FreeBSD or Solaris that are designed for servers and are developed under stricter engineering standards (e.g. a separate stable branch and development branch, release documentation, defect tracking system, etc).

Fifteen years of NetBSD

Posted Mar 20, 2008 18:26 UTC (Thu) by Los__D (subscriber, #15263) [Link]

AFAIK, the Linux count is CPU architectures, whereas the BSD count is complete machine
architectures, NetBSD covers 15 CPU architectures (By my count from NetBSD's own list).

Fifteen years of NetBSD

Posted Mar 21, 2008 4:53 UTC (Fri) by moxfyre (subscriber, #13847) [Link]

Correct.  The NetBSD count includes things like Amiga and Atari as separate "architectures"
(both use m68k processors), while the Linux count would identify this as a single m68k
"architecture".

Fifteen years of NetBSD

Posted Mar 20, 2008 20:42 UTC (Thu) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

Any decent "stable" Linux distribution nowadays that doesn't have "separate stable branch and
development branch, release documentation, defect tracking system"?

Anyway, Debian as a complete operating system comes pretty close.
http://www.us.debian.org/ports/


But the Debian system includes much more than the base system (that needs to be buildable on
all supported platforms).

Fifteen years of NetBSD

Posted Mar 20, 2008 19:15 UTC (Thu) by cyrus (subscriber, #36858) [Link]

I don't think this list is up to date. At least the AVR32 architecture (available since
2.6.19), the Blackfin architecture (since 2.6.22) and the MN10300 architecture (will be in
2.6.25) are missing.

Fifteen years of NetBSD

Posted Mar 27, 2008 1:42 UTC (Thu) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]

Note, "has become known as" isn't the same as "is".  NetBSD was once the most widely ported
OS, and NetBSD fans cling proudly to that memory.  Those who achieved it are justified in
their pride at it.  It might point up a failure in marketing Linux, among those casting about
for a kernel to run on their exotic hardware.  However, nowadays one chooses hardware
according to what one can run on it, and it's hard to find anything Linux isn't ported to, so
that's not an issue.  

Another concern is what license restrictions might apply, and NetBSD still has it all over
Linux there.  However, that doesn't seem to be much of an issue for most, because most don't
differentiate themselves by their kernel modifications.  A place where one might expect to
find license restrictions affecting a rational choice would be in hardware- accelerated router
hardware.

Fifteen years of NetBSD

Posted Mar 21, 2008 0:06 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

UML *is* a distinct architecture. It's not a distinct *hardware platform*, 
but that's only because the platform it runs on (Linux userspace) happens 
not to consist of hardware.