NetBSD 1.4 Release Announcement

Date: 12 May 1999 16:52:58 -0400
From: Perry E. Metzger <perry@NetBSD.org>
To: netbsd-announce@NetBSD.org
Subject: NetBSD 1.4 is released!

We are pleased to announce release 1.4 of the NetBSD Operating System, a complete and fully functional Open Source Unix-like OS.

NetBSD runs on twenty different system architectures featuring eight distinct families of CPUs, and is being ported to more.

Complete sources to NetBSD 1.4 are now available for download on all of the sites listed below. Binary releases for all supported architectures are either available for download now or will be made available within a few days.

The NetBSD 1.4 release provides supported binary distributions for the following architectures:

alpha, amiga, arm32, atari, hp300, i386, mac68k, macppc, mvme68k, next68k, pc532, pmax, sparc, sun3, vax, x68k

Binaries and sources are available at:

ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-archive/NetBSD-1.4/

and on mirror sites listed at the bottom of this message.

Full information on NetBSD is available at:

http://www.NetBSD.org/

The NetBSD 1.4 release engineering team would like to thank the literally hundreds of contributors who made this release a reality. We would also like to thank our users, who have supported NetBSD with their enthusiasm, evangelism, and contributions.

What is NetBSD?
---- -- -------

The NetBSD Operating System is a fully functional Open Source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Networking Release 2 (Net/2), 4.4BSD-Lite, and 4.4BSD-Lite2 sources. NetBSD runs on twenty different system architectures featuring eight distinct families of CPUs, and is being ported to more. The NetBSD 1.4 release contains complete binary releases for fourteen different machine types. (The six 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 completely 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, and numerous other tools, all accompanied by full source code.

NetBSD is a creation of the members of the Internet community. Without the unique cooperation and coordination the net makes possible, it's likely that NetBSD wouldn't exist.

Changes Since The Last Release
------- ----- --- ---- -------

The NetBSD 1.4 release is a substantial improvement over its predecessors. We have provided numerous significant functional enhancements, including support for many new devices, integration of hundreds of bug fixes, new and updated kernel subsystems, and many userland enhancements. The results of these improvements is a stable operating system fit for production use that rivals most commercially available systems.

It is impossible to completely summarize the nearly two years of development that went into the NetBSD 1.4 release. Some highlights include:

• Substantial improvements in the TCP/IP implementation, including numerous performance enhancements and bug fixes by Jason Thorpe and others.

• A new, high efficiency kernel memory pool allocator by Paul Kranenburg. This has been integrated into most kernel subsystems.

• A new, totally rewritten virtual memory subsystem, UVM, created by Chuck Cranor, which is substantially cleaner and better performing than the old Mach derived VM subsystem.

• Improved POSIX and XPG standards compliance.

• Completion of the integration of all remaining 4.4BSD Lite-2 kernel improvements and bug fixes that had not been previously integrated. (Integration of all userland components was completed before NetBSD 1.3)

• Several new ports, including macppc, bebox, sparc64, next68k, and others, have been integrated into the source tree.

• The system compilers have been upgraded to egcs 1.1.1, and the system compiler toolchain now (mostly) uses the latest versions of GNU binutils instead of the obsolete versions left over from 4.4BSD Lite.

• Everyone's favorite ftp(1) client has been improved even further. See the man page for details.

• A new architecture independent console driver, wscons(4), has been integrated into many ports.

• Numerous improvements have been made to the audio subsystem support, including support for MIDI device drivers.

• Linux compatibility support has been improved.

• A number of scheduler enhancements have yielded dramatic improvements in interactive performance and better control of background tasks.

• Several network tunneling protocols, including GRE and IP in IP, have been implemented.

• Kernel support for the CODA distributed file system has been added.

• Manuel Bouyer completed major changes to the IDE support. It is now architecture independent. Major changes have been made to the IDE code for better error handling, improved ATAPI support, 32 bit data I/O support and bus-master DMA support on PCI IDE controllers.

• Lennart Augustsson has added full USB support, permitting the use of a wide variety of Universal Serial Bus peripherals. The drivers should easily port to any future platforms that support the PCI bus. See usb(4) for an overview.

• RAIDframe, version 1.1, from the Parallel Data Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University, has been integrated. Supports RAID levels 0, 1, 4, 5, and more.

• Luke Mewburn added nsswitch.conf(5) functionality to the system to specify the search order for system databases.

• syslogd(8) now supports listening on multiple sockets, to make the chrooting of servers easier.

• Most third party packages have been updated to the latest stable release.

As has been noted, there have also been innumerable bug fixes.

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.

Enjoy!

Perry Metzger
perry@NetBSD.org

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