

NetBSD 5.0 Released  - systems
http://www.netbsd.org/releases/formal-5/NetBSD-5.0.html

======
shizcakes
I only ask this question because newsnews mentioned that they released new
"anti-flamewar" features recently:

I am generally familiar with CentOS / RHEL, and mostly like the way of doing
things on there. I am particularly grateful for the package manager, and being
able to add repositories to lots of software as needed, including cutting-edge
up to date stuff.

How does NetBSD compare to something like CentOS? I realize they are different
kernels, but that's about where my understanding seems to end. Why would I
want to use one or the other?

~~~
iigs
They're about as drastically different as major free Unices can be.

The BSDs are the reference standard for add-on package management. In the
RedHat 5 days (a decade before RHEL 5, mind you) the BSDs had a huge third
party software library available using either the ports tree to compile from
source or using "pkg" files precompiled from the same source base and
available for download from the distribution FTP sites.

The BSD package management platform doesn't really address OS upgrades, which
has been a weakness for me when considering it for business use. The preferred
method of upgrading for a long time was to check the code base out and
recompile it periodically. FWIW this doesn't have the Gentoo stigma -- it's
not done for the optimizations, it was simply the most pragmatic way to
distribute updates to large systems over the small network links of the time
(you can easily maintain an up to date system over a dialup modem if you've
installed it some other way).

NetBSD specifically has a focus on running on as many architectures as
possible. This isn't a big win for you perhaps, but it makes the OS suitable
for installation on embedded devices. The NetBSD distribution tends to be
fairly small, which also plays well into running on modest devices.

 _Why would I want to use one or the other?_

I would suggest selecting one and giving it an honest assessment for six or so
months, trying to use it daily for the same things you use Linux for. Linux
has overwhelming developer and industrial inertia behind it, so you may well
find that you prefer CentOS, but it will broaden your horizons, particularly
around the edges -- firewalls, RAID, kernels, package management, and so on.

You might also do the same thing for Solaris 10 (particularly not OpenSolaris
first). It's a really interesting mix of some legacy stuff (a miserable
default shell) and some advanced new features (dtrace, zfs, smf).

~~~
shizcakes
This is a fantastic answer, and why I love HN. Thank you for this.

------
cperciva
This seems to be BSD week -- NetBSD 5.0 is released on Wednesday, OpenBSD 4.5
is released on Friday, and FreeBSD 7.2 is released next Monday.

~~~
furburger
viva *bsd. and the linux kernel is progressing nicely as well. its a great
time for free OSs.

------
illumen
I really like that they're supporting the posix realtime scheduling
extensions, and async IO.

Very nice. Even if to know such things are available on more platforms now.

