--- title: NetBSD 11.0 Released | daily.dev description: NetBSD 11.0 has been officially released after a notable delay. The release includes installation images for multiple architectures, including ARM devices via... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/netbsd-11-0-released-uszcbwpw5 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: NetBSD 11.0 Released | daily.dev og:description: NetBSD 11.0 has been officially released after a notable delay. The release includes installation images for multiple architectures, including ARM devices via... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/netbsd-11-0-released-uszcbwpw5 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/uSzCBWPw5.png og:image:alt: NetBSD 11.0 Released og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # NetBSD 11.0 Released **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 2 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary NetBSD 11.0 has been officially released after a notable delay. The release includes installation images for multiple architectures, including ARM devices via pre-configured U-Boot images. The project is being transparent about three open security issues present at release time — an hdaudio ioctl privilege check, a remotely triggerable null pointer dereference in ipfilter, and a use-after-free in pf fragment reassembly — none of which are enabled by default in released kernels. All open issues will be committed to the stable branch shortly and included in the planned 11.1 release, targeted within two months. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 2 discussions and 62 comments across hackernews, lobsters (as of 2026-08-03). **TL;DR:** The community is broadly positive about NetBSD 11.0, celebrating its remarkable hardware breadth and continued support for legacy architectures, while side-discussions explore BSD ecosystem comparisons, optical media relevance, and toolchain choices. **Sentiment:** 55% positive · 35% mixed · 10% skeptical **The case for** - NetBSD's support for a huge range of architectures (including 32-bit and legacy platforms) keeps old hardware out of the landfill and saves users money. - The MICROVM kernel for x86 booting in ~10ms is seen as a genuinely useful new capability. - NPF firewall improvements (layer 2 and user/group filtering) are highlighted as valuable additions. - OpenBSD and FreeBSD are praised for security hardening and robustness respectively, reflecting well on the BSD family overall. - NetBSD is considered the best or only modern Unix option for many 32-bit and exotic platforms Linux distros have dropped. **The pushback** - GCC is still at version 12.5.0 while upstream is at 16.x, with no clear explanation for the lag beyond GPLv3 aversion (which doesn't explain the gap between 12 and 16). - NetBSD as a daily driver is considered nowhere near Linux in terms of general usability. - CD-ROM media inclusion is questioned as redundant given USB .img files are already provided. - Optical media longevity concerns raised — CD backups reportedly degraded within 10–12 years. **By community** - hackernews (mixed): Discussion is broadly positive about NetBSD's legacy hardware support and BSD ecosystem, but meanders into debates about optical media relevance, BSD daily-driver viability, and unexplained GCC version lag. - lobsters (positive): The single comment highlights delight at continued support for geriatric architectures like mac68k and hp300, framing NetBSD as the best choice for 32-bit platforms. **Hottest debate:** Whether CD-ROM media is still justified given that USB .img files are already provided and most modern systems can boot from USB. **Open questions** - Why is NetBSD still shipping GCC 12.5.0 when upstream is at 16.x, given the GPLv3 licensing didn't change between those versions? - What is the current trajectory of NetBSD's user and developer base — growing, stable, or shrinking? - Is there a realistic path to Clang/LLVM for NetBSD given its portability goals? **Highlights** > OpenBSD is the most security hardened OS out there, and the project maintains many pieces of software people take for granted, like pf, openssh, and libressl. FreeBSD is definitely the most robust, and is a very good server OS. NetBSDs niche is how many platforms can run it. If it's supported by GCC, theres a decent chance NetBSD will run on it > — [mghackerlady on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49138366) > I’m using OpenBSD as a daily desktop. The main motivation is that it’s a complete system instead of several projects. So you got simpler userland tools as the kernel interfaces can be easily adjusted. Also the subsystems are way simpler (packet filtering, sound, network management). Linux is full choke of abstraction which aim to serve a huge range of devices. And I truly believe that there should have been a bifurcation somewhere. Most software are easy to port around, but there are some that relies on linuxisms (udev) and some on glibc-isms, which can require some patching. Some of the pains I encountered are about device files (usb) and the fact that openbsd relies on root a bit more (mounting with fuse). You can read the “Absolute OpenBSD, 2ed” book, published 13 years ago and almost everything still holds. You can even read the “Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD” and still have a good understanding of the OpenBSD design. Linux is chaotic land compared to that. > — [skydhash on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49138337) > There are some ISA USB cards with custom drivers to support them and present them as normal drives under MS-DOS. Never tried it myself, but they exist and seem to work! Other commenter is correct, there are some late 486 boards with PCI support that would allow USB 1.0 or even 2.0 cards to be installed and used. Probably slow, but should work. On the topic of modernizing a 486-class machine, there also exist a few with native PS/2 mouse support, and certain Matrox PCI cards have digital out, so it'd be possible to build a 486-class machine with USB 1.1, DVI/HDMI, and PS/2. Since some Logitech wireless mice support PS/2, one could connect a 486 rig to a crisp digital LCD, use a wireless mouse, and plug in USB flash drives, sound, 10/100 network, NT 4.0, etc. -- all supported. Can make a fairly "modern" machine out of a pre-Pentium chip. > — [accrual on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49138023) > From the linked release announcement: > Improvements to the npf(7) firewall, including layer 2 and user/group filtering That's a valuable, useful feature > New MICROVM kernel for x86... it can boot in about 10 ms That could open some doors, nice There are some good hardware improvements too. > — [Panino on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49138365) > What impresses me most from the release announcement ( https://www.netbsd.org/releases/formal-11/NetBSD-11.0.html ) is the continued new development for some delightfully geriatric architectures - like mac68k with improved support for the PowerBook 100 series, or better framebuffer support in the hp300 port. And of course nowadays it's probably your best choice for any 32-bit platform. (long time user of /mac68k, /hpcsh, /cobalt and /macppc) > — [classichasclass on lobsters · 2 points](https://lobste.rs/s/pvrnor/netbsd_11_0_released#c_rx8pgb) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49136736) · 71 points · 61 comments - [lobsters](https://lobste.rs/s/pvrnor/netbsd_11_0_released) · 26 points · 1 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [NetBSD 11.0 Nears Release With RC3 Released For Testing](https://daily.dev/posts/netbsd-11-0-nears-release-with-rc3-released-for-testing-vptahksd7) · Phoronix · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#security](https://daily.dev/tags/security) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/netbsd-11-0-released-uszcbwpw5) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"NetBSD 11.0 Released","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/netbsd-11-0-released-uszcbwpw5","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/netbsd-11-0-released-uszcbwpw5"},"datePublished":"2026-08-01T19:13:28.527Z","dateModified":"2026-08-03T13:37:15.629Z","description":"NetBSD 11.0 has been officially released after a notable delay. 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