A free (as in freedom) UNIX-like system from the BSD family, that first appeared publicly on April 20th, 1993 (NetBSD 0.8). It is recognized for its outstanding portability.

Pic 1. NetBSD - random desktop

Portability — Of course it runs NetBSD

NetBSD is recognized for its portability. The source code is divided into two layers: machine dependent and machine independent. Porting NetBSD to another platform requires a rewrite of the dependent layer only. The functions implemented in the machine-independent layer are automatically available for all supported architectures. Drivers are bundled in the two frameworks: Machine independent driver framework and Machine independent audio framework. This feature also improves portability. All mentioned features make NetBSD the most portable OS on the planet. By the way, recently, it has been deployed on a toaster :-) NetBSD's selling phrase is "Of course it runs NetBSD".

Security

The security level is very high. Both system and pkgsrc vulnerability database are regularly updated.

One can activate CGD (CryptoGraphic Disk Driver), to enable encryption of data transfer when writing and reading from HDD. More information can be found in guide and in Inside NetBSD's CGD article. A combination of CGD and Vnode Disk Driver called CGF (CryptoGraphicFile) is also possible to set up. This can be useful for notebook systems.

Additionally there is a possibility to use a sysjail tool which is designed to be close FreeBSD jails replacement.

Some interesting comparisons between NetBSD and other systems in terms of security can be found in the Wikipedia entry: Comparison of operating systems (security). And here are the NetBSD security statistics by Secunia. Many NetBSD's security features is described in Recent Security Enhancements in NetBSD article.

Pkgsrc package system

In contrast to the FreeBSD and OpenBSD, in the NetBSD terminology word "port" means platform and has nothing to do with ports collection. In NetBSD pkgsrc is called Packages Collection (in short or The NetBSD Packages Collection in full). pkgsrc allow you to install the additional software directly from the source code. The advantage is ability to customize all settings to one's preferences. The disadvantage is sometimes long compilation time, especially for such big programs like KDE or GNOME. Installing software is trivial. All you have to do is go to a proper directory in pkgsrc and type make install (for example: # cd /usr/pkgsrc/wm/ratpoison/; make install for installing ratpoison window manager).

Precompiled binary packages do not give us such flexibility, but installation time is much shorter (installing ratpoison is as simple as # pkg_add -v ratpoison, provided that PKG_PATH variable is set). In both cases, dependencies are automatically resolved. Pkgsrc is of course a multiplatform application.

Currently there is more than 7000 packages available for NetBSD. Including wip (work in progress) packages, which are not yet finished but usable, the total number of packages is increasing to more than 9000.

Pkgsrc installation time can be shortened by downloading and unpacking pkgsrc.tar.gz file (current version) or pkgsrc-2008Q1.tar.gz file (stable version) to /usr. Regular pkgsrc updating is important.

Documentation

Like all major BSD flavors, NetBSD is very well documented. A good place to start with is the documentation page of the project.

After installation

After installing NetBSD, it is worth to read the manual for afterboot which contains lots of information useful for new users. Performing the software update is a good idea as well.

After the first and the second boot-up, we can start full customization.

If you need some commercial support for NetBSD — it's available as well.

External NetBSD resources

• Official NetBSD website
• NetBSD Security Advisories
• Description on Wikipedia
• NetBSD@DistroWatch
• NetBSD@OnLamp
• Get to know NetBSD
• NetBSD: Not Just for Toasters
• Unofficial graphical installers: ECBSD, OFInst
• Alternative logos of NetBSD
• NetBSD gadgets
• SUNET Internet2 Land Speed Record: 69.073 Pbmps
• The NetBSD Project's roadmap
• NetBSD SMP status

News

• NetBSD news@DistroWatch
• NetBSD Events
• NetBSD Events Gallery
• Current events — wiki
• planet.NetBSD.se — BSD News Watcher
• NetBSD News Beat
• The NetBSD CVS Digest
• #NetBSD Community Blog
• Hubert Feyrer's blog
• What Do You Want?
• unsigned long geek = random();
• Odds and ends
• The Julipedia
• Quarterly Report: January — June 2007
• Status Report 2006/Q2 — Q4

Documentation, guides and tips

• Documentation for: users, developers
• The pkgsrc guide
• NetBSD Wiki
• UBC: An Efficient Unified I/O and Memory Caching Subsystem
• An Implementation of Scheduler Activations
• An Implementation of User-level Restartable Atomic Sequences
• Splash screen boot HOWTO
• PF loadable kernel module for NetBSD 2
• The NetBSD Xen Guide
• Debugging NetBSD kernel with qemu
• A Few NetBSD Tips for the FreeBSD User

Software

• Application Software for NetBSD
• NetBSD Binary Emulation
• pkgsrc snapshots (stable and current)
• pkgsrc.se
• pkgsrc statistics
• pkgsrc-wip.sourceforge.net
• CD with packages for NetBSD 4.0 (i386) and MD5 control sum, list of packages
• Keeping pkgsrc packages up to date
• How to upgrade packages

Help, forums, community

• NetBSD subforums: BSDForums, KernelTrap, Nabble Forums, BSDnexus
• forum.netbsd.se
• Mailing lists
• Archive of mailing lists

Derivative works and LiveCD

• NetBSD LiveCD NetBSD Live! 2007
• Unofficial LiveCDs: Jibbed, polyBSD, NAMP, wifiBSD
• NetBSD LiveKey — for USB stick
• 1.44MB floppy disk versions: fdgw, g4u — Harddisk Image Cloning for PCs
• sBSD — compact flash version
• Debian GNU/NetBSD
• Buy CD in Linux CD

Reviews

• 4.0: www.internetnews.com
• 2.0: NewsForge
• 1.6.2: OSNews, ServerWatch
• 1.5.2: NewsForge

• NetBSD vs. OpenBSD: out-of-box experience
• Observations and Comparison with Linux Porting Efforts
• NetBSD Multimedia Resources List

Interviews

• Hubert Feyrer: netbsd-pt.org, Daemon News
• Joachim Schueth, Iain Hibbert, Christos Zoulas, Elad Efrat, Charles M. Hannum, Daniel Sieger
• bsdtalk: Sidsel Jensen, Lubomir Sedlacik, Jeff Rizzo, Johnny Lam
• How to get world-class SMP performance with NetBSD, by ad and rmind
• 10 years of pkgsrc!, 10 years of pkgsrc! (part 2)
• Pkgsrc on non-NetBSD

Download

• 4.0: i386, amd64 and MD5 control sums
• List of the NetBSD mirrors
• NetBSD BitTorrents
• Unofficial current ISO images
• Get NetBSD — downloading summary

Screenshots

• See NetBSD in Action
• NetBSD Wiki Screenshot-Corner