Version 10.0 Release Date: March 28, 2024
NetBSD focuses on clean design and well architected solutions. Because of this NetBSD may support certain 'exciting' features later than other systems, but as time progresses the NetBSD codebase is getting even stronger and easier to manage, while other systems that value features over code quality are finding increasing problems with code management and conflicts.
NetBSD supports a massive range of hardware platforms from a single source tree, including simultaneous release across all platforms, and continues to attract users and experienced developers despite lack of media exposure and commercial backing - all thanks to attention to code quality.
While NetBSD uses the GNU toolchain (compiler, assembler, etc), and certain other GNU tools, the entire kernel and the core of the userland utilities are shipped under a BSD licence. This allows companies to develop products based on NetBSD without the requirement to make changes public (as with the GPL). While the NetBSD Project encourages companies and individuals to feed back changes to the tree, we respect their right to make that decision themselves.
The BSD codebase can be traced back to the early 80s at UC Berkeley, and has been open to public scrutiny ever since. NetBSD continues this tradition and works ever harder to promote clean design and functionality over hype. NetBSD is being used at NASA's Numerical Aerospace Simulation facility for a reason. Their main platforms are Alpha systems with lots of RAM and diskspace (terabyte and up), and they need a good, stable, codebase on which they can build custom projects. NetBSD was also the first free OS to make a y2k statement. See our testimonials for more success stories!
Media Type | USB |
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Version | Desktop |
Disc Type | Install Disc |