Announcing NetBSD 1.6

The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce that release 1.6 of the NetBSD operating system is now available.

NetBSD is widely known as the most portable operating system in the world. It currently supports fifty two different system architectures, all from a single source tree, and is always being ported to more.

NetBSD 1.6 continues our long tradition with major improvements in file system and memory management performance, major security enhancements, and support for many new platforms and peripherals.

Complete source and binaries for NetBSD 1.6 are available for download at many sites around the world. A list of download sites via FTP, AnonCVS, SUP, and other methods is provided at the end of this announcement; the latest list of available download sites may also be found at: http://www.NetBSD.org/mirrors/

About NetBSD

The NetBSD Operating System is a fully functional Open Source UNIX-like operating system derived from the University of California, Berkeley Networking Release 2 (Net/2), 4.4BSD-Lite, and 4.4BSD-Lite2 sources. NetBSD runs on fifty two different system architectures featuring seventeen machine architectures across eleven distinct CPU families, and is being ported to more.

The NetBSD 1.6 release contains complete binary releases for thirty nine different system architectures. The thirteen remaining are not fully supported at this time and are thus not part of the binary distribution. For information on them, please see the NetBSD web site at http://www.NetBSD.org/

NetBSD is a highly integrated system. In addition to its highly portable, high performance kernel, NetBSD features a complete set of user utilities, compilers for several languages, the X Window System, firewall software and numerous other tools, all accompanied by full source code. We also support third party software (including the KDE and GNOME desktops) through our package system.

More information on the goals of the NetBSD Project can be procured from the NetBSD web site at:

http://www.NetBSD.org/Goals/

NetBSD is free. All of the code is under non-restrictive licenses, and may be used without paying royalties to anyone. Free support services are available via our mailing lists and web site. Commercial support is available from a variety of sources; some are listed at:

http://www.NetBSD.org/gallery/consultants.html

More extensive information on NetBSD is available from our web site at:

http://www.NetBSD.org/

NetBSD is the work of a diverse group of people spread around the world. The `Net' in our name is a tribute to the Internet, which enables us to communicate and share code, and without which the project would not exist.

System families supported by NetBSD 1.6

The NetBSD 1.6 release provides supported binary distributions for the following systems:

NetBSD/acorn26 Acorn Archimedes, A-series and R-series systems
NetBSD/acorn32 Acorn RiscPC/A7000, CATS, Digital Shark, EBSA-285, VLSI RC7500
NetBSD/algor Algorithmics, Ltd. MIPS evaluation boards
NetBSD/alpha Digital/Compaq Alpha (64-bit)
NetBSD/amiga Commodore Amiga, MacroSystem DraCo
NetBSD/arc MIPS-based machines following the Advanced RISC Computing spec
NetBSD/atari Atari TT030, Falcon, Hades
NetBSD/cats Chalice Technology's Strong Arm evaluation board
NetBSD/cobalt Cobalt Networks' MIPS-based Microservers
NetBSD/dreamcast Sega Dreamcast game console
NetBSD/evbarm ARM evaluation boards
NetBSD/evbmips MIPS-based evaluation boards
NetBSD/hp300 Hewlett-Packard 9000/300 and 400 series
NetBSD/hpcarm StrongARM based Windows CE PDA machines
NetBSD/hpcmips MIPS-based Windows CE PDA machines
NetBSD/hpcsh Hitachi SH3/4 based Windows CE PDA machines
NetBSD/i386 80x86-based IBM PCs and clones
NetBSD/luna68k OMRON Tateisi Electric's LUNA series
NetBSD/mac68k Apple Macintosh with 68k CPU
NetBSD/macppc Apple Power Macintosh and clones
NetBSD/mipsco Mips family of workstations and servers
NetBSD/mvme68k Motorola MVME 68k SBCs
NetBSD/netwinder StrongARM based NetWinder machines
NetBSD/news68k Sony's 68k-based "NET WORK STATION" series
NetBSD/newsmips Sony's MIPS-based "NET WORK STATION" series
NetBSD/next68k NeXT 68k 'black' hardware
NetBSD/pmax Digital MIPS-based DECstations and DECsystems
NetBSD/prep PReP (PowerPC Reference Platform) and CHRP machines
NetBSD/sandpoint Motorola Sandpoint reference platform
NetBSD/sbmips Broadcom SiByte evaluation boards
NetBSD/sgimips Silicon Graphics' MIPS-based workstations
NetBSD/shark Digital DNARD ("shark")
NetBSD/sparc Sun SPARC (32-bit) and UltraSPARC (in 32-bit mode)
NetBSD/sparc64 Sun UltraSPARC (in native 64-bit mode)
NetBSD/sun2 Sun 2
NetBSD/sun3 Sun 3 and 3x
NetBSD/vax Digital VAX
NetBSD/walnut IBM 405GP PowerPC "walnut" evaluation board
NetBSD/x68k Sharp X680x0 series

Ports available in source form only for this release include the following:

NetBSD/amigappc PowerPC-based Amiga boards
NetBSD/bebox Be Inc's BeBox
NetBSD/cesfic CES's FIC8234 VME processor board
NetBSD/evbsh3 Evaluation boards with Hitachi Super-H SH3 and SH4 CPUs
NetBSD/mmeye Brains' mmEye Multi Media Server
NetBSD/mvmeppc Motorola MVME PowerPC SBCs
NetBSD/ofppc Generic OpenFirmware compliant PowerPC machines
NetBSD/pc532 The NS32532-based PC532 computer
NetBSD/playstation2 SONY PlayStation 2
NetBSD/amd64 AMD x86-64(tm) 64-bit CPUs

Major Changes Between 1.5 and 1.6

It is difficult to completely summarize the extensive development between the 1.5 and 1.6 releases. Some highlights include:

Kernel

Networking

File Systems

Security

System administration and user tools

Miscellaneous

See the list of significant changes between 1.5 and 1.6.

And of course there have also been innumerable bug fixes and other miscellaneous enhancements. Kernel interfaces have continued to be refined, and more subsystems and device drivers are shared among the different ports. You can look for this trend to continue.

Please note that at the moment, sysinst will not assist you in installing pre-built third-party binary packages or the pkgsrc system itself. See the NetBSD packages collection documentation.

Lastly, it should be noted that the X11 binaries shipped in NetBSD 1.6 for all ports except i386 are based on XFree86 version 3.3.6, while i386 is based on XFree86 verison 4.2.0. You may at compile time pick which sources to build and install. A snapshot of XFree86 3.3.6 for i386 will be made available.

Acknowledgments

The NetBSD Foundation would like to thank all those who have contributed code, hardware, documentation, funds, colocation for our servers, web pages and other documentation, release engineering, and other resources over the years. More information on contributors is available at:

http://www.NetBSD.org/contrib/

We would like to especially thank the University of California at Berkeley and the GNU Project for particularly large subsets of code that we use, and the Internet Software Consortium, Redback Networks and the Helsinki University of Technology for current colocation services.

About the NetBSD Foundation

The NetBSD Foundation was chartered in 1995, with the task of overseeing core NetBSD project services, promoting the project within industry and the open source community, and holding intellectual property rights on much of the NetBSD code base. Day-to-day operations of the project are handled by volunteers.

NetBSD mirror sites

Please use the mirror site closest to you.

Please also note our list of CD-ROM vendors.


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