NetBSD 11.0-RC4 Comes As Hopefully The Last Release Candidate
In addition to FreeBSD 15.1 releasing in the coming weeks, NetBSD 11.0 is also just around the corner as another prominent and major BSD update. NetBSD 11.0-RC4 is now available for last minute testing with this hoping to be the final release candidate.
Following NetBSD 11.0-RC3 from early April, NetBSD developers hope NetBSD 11.0-RC4 is the last release candidate needed before officially releasing NetBSD 11.0. With it being a year and a half since the NetBSD 10.1 milestone and a year since NetBSD 11 was branched, this new BSD operating system update is ready to meet the world.
NetBSD 11.0 is significant in that it's the first stable release supporting the RISC-V processor architecture. NetBSD 11.0 has support for the StarFive JH71XX-based devices like the VisionFive 2 as well as supporting RISC-V on QEMU.
Over on the Arm side, NetBSD 11.0 has initial support for the Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 Elite hardware, including the Oryon CPU cores and other hardware enablement work.
NetBSD 11.0 also has better support for the POSIX.1-2024 and C23 standards, enhanced compatibility with various Linux system calls using its "compat_linux" code, a new MICROVM kernel for x86/amd64 for extremely fast virtual machine booting, and a virt68k port for running the Motorola 68000 port within QEMU using para-virtualized devices.
NetBSD 11.0 is also bringing some new Intel and AMD drivers, SIMD-accelerated X.Org Server optimizations on AArch64, various kernel optimizations, and other hardware enablement across the board.
Downloads and more information on the NetBSD 11.0 changes can be found via the 11.0-RC4 release announcement on NetBSD.org.
Following NetBSD 11.0-RC3 from early April, NetBSD developers hope NetBSD 11.0-RC4 is the last release candidate needed before officially releasing NetBSD 11.0. With it being a year and a half since the NetBSD 10.1 milestone and a year since NetBSD 11 was branched, this new BSD operating system update is ready to meet the world.
NetBSD 11.0 is significant in that it's the first stable release supporting the RISC-V processor architecture. NetBSD 11.0 has support for the StarFive JH71XX-based devices like the VisionFive 2 as well as supporting RISC-V on QEMU.
Over on the Arm side, NetBSD 11.0 has initial support for the Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 Elite hardware, including the Oryon CPU cores and other hardware enablement work.
NetBSD 11.0 also has better support for the POSIX.1-2024 and C23 standards, enhanced compatibility with various Linux system calls using its "compat_linux" code, a new MICROVM kernel for x86/amd64 for extremely fast virtual machine booting, and a virt68k port for running the Motorola 68000 port within QEMU using para-virtualized devices.
NetBSD 11.0 is also bringing some new Intel and AMD drivers, SIMD-accelerated X.Org Server optimizations on AArch64, various kernel optimizations, and other hardware enablement across the board.
Downloads and more information on the NetBSD 11.0 changes can be found via the 11.0-RC4 release announcement on NetBSD.org.