Announcing NetBSD 4.0

The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce that release 4.0 of the NetBSD operating system is now available. NetBSD is a free, secure, and highly portable Unix-like Open Source operating system available for many platforms, from 64-bit Opteron machines and desktop systems to handheld and embedded devices. Its clean design and advanced features make it excellent in both production and research environments, and it is user-supported with complete source. Many applications are easily available through pkgsrc, the NetBSD Packages Collection.

Major achievements in NetBSD 4.0 include support for version 3 of the Xen virtual machine monitor, Bluetooth, many new device drivers and embedded platforms based on ARM, PowerPC and MIPS CPUs. New network services include iSCSI target (server) code and an implementation of the Common Address Redundancy Protocol. Also, system security was further enhanced with restrictions of mprotect(2) to enforce W^X policies, the Kernel Authorization framework, and improvements of the Veriexec file integrity subsystem, which can be used to harden the system against trojan horses and virus attacks. Please read below for a list of changes in NetBSD 4.0.

NetBSD 4.0 runs on 54 different system architectures featuring 17 machine architectures across 17 distinct CPU families, and is being ported to more. The NetBSD 4.0 release contains complete binary releases for 51 different machine types, with the platforms amigappc, bebox and ews4800mips released in source form only. Complete source and binaries for NetBSD 4.0 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. A list of hashes for the NetBSD 4.0 distribution has been signed with the well-connected PGP key for the NetBSD Security Officer: ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/security/hashes/NetBSD-4.0_hashes.asc

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 website. 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 website:

NetBSD 4.0 is dedicated to the memory of Jun-Ichiro "itojun" Hagino, who died in October 2007. Itojun was a member of the KAME project, which provided IPv6 and IPsec support; he was also a member of the NetBSD core team (the technical management for the project), and one of the Security Officers. Due to Itojun's efforts, NetBSD was the first open source operating system with a production ready IPv6 networking stack, which was included in the base system before many people knew what IPv6 was. We are grateful to have known and worked with Itojun, and we know that he will be missed. This release is therefore dedicated, with thanks, to his memory.

We would like to remind everyone that the Fundraising Campaign 2007 is still underway, but it will soon be over with the end of the year. With this release, we would like to call all NetBSD users to send a Christmas present to the project. You can help us to improve NetBSD even more - donate!

The NetBSD 4.0 release provides supported binary distributions for the following systems:

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

The complete list of changes can be found in the CHANGES and CHANGES-4.0 files in the top level directory of the NetBSD 4.0 release tree. Some highlights include:

Besides this list, there have also been innumerable bug fixes and other miscellaneous enhancements of course.

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:

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 Inc., the Network Security Lab at Columbia University's Computer Science Department, and Ludd (Luleå Academic Computer Society) computer society at Luleå 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 organization 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. Your generous donation would be particularly welcome assistance with ongoing upgrades and maintenance, as well as with operating expenses for The NetBSD Foundation.

Donations can be done via PayPal to <paypal@NetBSD.org> 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 <finance-exec@NetBSD.org>.

Please use a mirror site close to you.

Please also note our list of CD-ROM vendors.