Announcing NetBSD 3.1

NetBSD 3.1 is the first feature update of the NetBSD 3.0 release branch. Changes include bugfixes, critical security updates and new minor features like new drivers.

Complete source and binaries for NetBSD 3.1 are available for download at many sites around the world. A list of download sites providing FTP, AnonCVS, SUP, and other services 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/.

We encourage users who wish to install via a CD-ROM ISO image to download via BitTorrent by using the torrent files supplied in the ISO image area. BitTorrent has recently been added to the list of distribution mechanisms and its use is strongly encouraged to help keep bandwidth available.

NetBSD is a general-purpose Open Source operating system that provides interfaces for running a wide range of applications on a big number of different hardware platforms, all from one source tree. Applications can range from proprietary closed source applications to Open Source software, covering desktop environments, database servers, firewalls, routers, embedded appliances and many more, all made available easily through pkgsrc, the NetBSD Packages Collection, which currently contains over 6.300 packages. Picking up its ancestry from the Berkeley Networking Release 2 (Net/2), 4.4BSD-lite and 4.4BSD-Lite2, the NetBSD project continues to provide its application platform on a wide range of hardware platforms - not only vintage hardware, but also modern desktop and server hardware with Intel and AMD Opteron CPUs as well as embedded systems with MIPS, PowerPC, Super-H, ARM and Xscale CPUs. More recently, NetBSD was also ported to "virtual" hardware provided by the Xen machine monitor. Today, NetBSD runs on 54 different system architectures featuring 17 machine architectures across 17 distinct CPU families, all from a single source tree. In addition, the system offers cross compiling for the kernel, userland and the X Window system.

The NetBSD 3.1 release contains complete binary releases for 53 different machine types, and support for four more machine architectures in source form.

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 the NetBSD web site 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.

The complete list of changes can be found in the CHANGES-3.1 file in the top level directory of the NetBSD 3.1 release tree.

A summary list of changes is as follows:

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: http://www.NetBSD.org/docs/software/packages.html.

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 the people who make NetBSD happen is available at http://www.NetBSD.org/people/.

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. We would also like to thank the Internet Systems Consortium and the Helsinki University of Technology for current colocation services.

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.

As a non-profit organisation with no commercial backing, The NetBSD Foundation depends on donations from its users, and we would like to ask you to consider making a donation to the NetBSD Foundation in support of continuing production of our fine operating system.

Donations can be done via PayPal <[email protected]> and are fully tax- deductible in the US. If you would prefer not to use PayPal, or would like to make other arrangements, please contact <[email protected]>.

Please use a mirror site close to you.

Please also note our list of CD-ROM vendors.