NetBSD Formal Releases
The latest formal release is NetBSD 6.1.2. It was released on September 30, 2013.
Formal releases of NetBSD are intended to provide a stable, supported platform on which people can base their work. They provide a balance between features and stability.
Because they are well-tested and made relatively infrequently, formal releases are useful for people who don't want to be on the “bleeding edge” of development, or who just want to run applications. Since formal releases are effectively unchanging (there are typically very few official patches made to them), they are relatively easy to support, both by NetBSD's developers and the developers of applications. The biggest problem with running the latest formal release of NetBSD is that you don't have access to the latest features and bug fixes in the development tree.
Formal releases are relatively easy to install. All of the platforms supported by a formal release come with a detailed set of installation instructions, and most also include some sort of bootstrapping media. (For example, the i386 port typically uses a CD or DVD to bootstrap, while the amiga and hp300 ports use a miniroot filesystem image.) There is also typically an upgrade procedure to bring a system from the previous formal release to the current one.
In short, if you're not the type of person who'd be willing to upgrade your operating system on a semi-daily basis, or if you want a system that is relatively easy to install and upgrade, a formal release of NetBSD is for you.
For those who do not wish to wait for the next release, we have daily updated snapshots of the release branches available via both FTP and SUP.
The directories /pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-release-5-0 and /pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-release-6 contain the extracted sources plus weekly updated tar files of both the 5.0 and 6 release branches respectively. These files are created in a similar manner to those in the /pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-current directory.
The NetBSD-6 and NetBSD-5 branches are currently being maintained. The NetBSD-4 and older branches have reached End-Of-Life and are no longer supported.
The latest release is NetBSD 6.1.2. It was released on September 30, 2013.
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NetBSD 6.0, released October 17, 2012.
- NetBSD 6.0.1, released December 26, 2012
- NetBSD 6.1, released May 18, 2013
- NetBSD 6.0.2, released May 18, 2013
- NetBSD 6.0.3, released September 30, 2013
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NetBSD 5.0, released April 29, 2009.
- NetBSD 5.0.1, released August 2, 2009
- NetBSD 5.0.2, released February 12, 2010
- NetBSD 5.1, released November 19, 2010
- NetBSD 5.1.2, released February 2, 2012
- NetBSD 5.2, released December 3, 2012
- NetBSD 5.1.3, released September 28, 2012
- NetBSD 5.2.1, released September 28, 2012
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NetBSD 4.0, released
December 19, 2007
- NetBSD 4.0.1, released October 14, 2008
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NetBSD 3.0, released
December 23, 2005
- NetBSD 3.0.1, released July 24, 2006
- NetBSD 3.0.2, released November 4, 2006
- NetBSD 3.1, released November 4, 2006
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NetBSD 2.0, released December 9, 2004
- NetBSD 2.0.1 was tagged in our CVS repository but never released in binary form due to hardware problems with our build servers at the time.
- NetBSD 2.0.2, released April 14, 2005
- NetBSD 2.0.3, released October 31, 2005
- NetBSD 2.1, released November 02, 2005
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NetBSD 1.6, released September 14, 2002
- NetBSD 1.6.1, released April 21, 2003
- NetBSD 1.6.2, released March 1, 2004
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NetBSD 1.5, released December 6, 2000
- NetBSD 1.5.1, released July 11, 2001
- NetBSD 1.5.2, released September 13, 2001
- NetBSD 1.5.3, released July 22, 2002
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NetBSD 1.4, released May 12, 1999
- NetBSD 1.4.1, released August 26, 1999
- NetBSD 1.4.2, released March 21, 2000
- NetBSD 1.4.3, released November 25, 2000
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NetBSD 1.3, released January 4, 1998
- NetBSD 1.3.1, released March 9, 1998
- NetBSD 1.3.2, released May 29, 1998
- NetBSD 1.3.3, released December 23, 1998
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NetBSD 1.2, released
October 4, 1996
- NetBSD 1.2.1, released May 20, 1997
- NetBSD 1.1, released November 26, 1995
- NetBSD 1.0, released October 26, 1994
- NetBSD 0.9, released August 23, 1993
- NetBSD 0.8, released April 20, 1993