Announcing NetBSD 11.0 RC1 (february 6, 2026)

Quick links for the impatient:

Download 11.0 RC1 from our CDN: amd64 USB, amd64 DVD, i386 USB, i386 CD-ROM, sparc64 DVD, sparc64 CD-ROM, macppc CD-ROM, RISC-V devices, Cavium Octeon MIPS devices, Nintendo Wii, various Arm devices, full release dir with everything else.

Hashes, signed with the NetBSD Security Officer's PGP key, of all files in the distribution.

Introduction

The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 11.0 RC1, the first release candidate of the nineteenth major release of the NetBSD operating system.

Upgrade instructions

An existing installation can be upgraded by booting an installation image and selecting the Upgrade option.

If you are using other update methods, update the kernel and modules first, then reboot and update your userspace. You will need to adjust any package repository URL and update all third-party packages. Note also the addition of the various new sets, which may need to be installed separately with sysinst(8).

Please take particular note of Incompatible changes if you are upgrading from an earlier release.

Changes since NetBSD 10.1

Highlights

  • New port to the RISC-V processor architecture. NetBSD 11.0 is the first stable release to include support for 64-bit RISC-V platforms, including a range of StarFive JH71XX-based devices such as the VisionFive 2, PINE64 STAR64, as well as QEMU.
  • Enhanced compliance with POSIX.1-2024 and C23 programming interface standards.
  • Enhanced support for Linux system calls in compat_linux(8), including epoll (implemented around kqueue), POSIX message queues, statx, readahead, close_range, waitid, renameat2, clone3, sync_file_range, syncfs, and inotify.
  • Initial support for the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite platform.
  • Improvements to the npf(7) firewall, including Level 2 and User/Group filtering.
  • New MICROVM kernel for x86, supporting both i386 and amd64, NetBSD 11.0 introduces a dedicated MICROVM kernel designed for extremely fast virtual machines boot, leveraging PVH boot, VirtIO MMIO, and multiple kernel optimizations, it can boot in about 10 ms on 2020-era x86 CPUs.
  • New virt68k port, for running the Motorola 68000 port in QEMU using paravirtualized devices.

Ports

  • aarch64 - Initial support for Qualcomm Oryon CPUs.
  • aarch64 - Added support for Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite battery & charger sensors, GPIO, and I2C controllers.
  • aarch64 - Enabled Advanced SIMD-accelerated X.Org optimizations.
  • alpha - Added support for Secure PLT ELF binaries.
  • amd64 - Added amdgpio(4) device driver for AMD GPIO found on some HP laptops.
  • amd64 - Added support for temperature sensors on Siena, Turin Classic, Turin Dense, Strix Point, Zen 5 CPUs.
  • evbarm - Added NUMA awareness for ACPI based systems.
  • evbarm - Added Arm SCMI performance protocol support.
  • evbarm - Added driver for Amlogic Meson I2C controller.
  • evbarm - Support the USB controller on Libre Computer AML-S905X-CC.
  • evbarm - Added driver for Rockchip USB-C PHY.
  • evbppc - Added support for the Nintendo Wii DVD drive, bwi(4) WLAN, USB Gecko serial console, hardware AES engine (used to accelerate disk encryption and Wi-Fi), and standalone bootloader.
  • evbppc - Improved X.Org performance and colour reproduction on Wii, with GX RGB to YUY2 video conversion acceleration.
  • hp300 - Added sti(4) framebuffer support for 362 and 382, X.Org server now works on these machines.
  • hppa - New summitfb(4) driver for HP Visualize FX video cards.
  • hppa - New hyperfb(4) driver for HP HCRX video cards.
  • hppa - New dedicated X.Org driver for HP’s NGLE family of graphics devices, supporting acceleration on the Visualize EG.
  • m68k - Improved floating point emulation.
  • mac68k - Improved support for PowerBook 1xx series, including backlight control, and new pbbat(4) battery driver.
  • macppc - Improved support for G5/G4 I2C/OpenPIC.
  • macppc - Enable fan control for PowerMac7,2.
  • macppc - Enable PaX MPROTECT and ASLR security mitigation features by default.
  • mips - Enable stack-smashing protector by default, and RELRO mitigation on mips64.
  • riscv - Initial support for QEMU, including Google Goldfish RTC, VirtIO (network, disk, etc) devices, virtualized audio.
  • riscv - Initial basic support for the Allwinnder D1 SoC (used on e.g. MangoPi MQ Pro, Allwinner Nezha), including support for GPIO and UART serial console.
  • riscv - Support for the StarFive JH7110 SoC (used on e.g. VisionFive 2, STAR64), including PCI/PCIe, TRNG, pins, temperature sensors, etc.
  • riscv - Support for the crash(8) kernel debugger.
  • x86 - Support for VirtIO over MMIO device discovery handled through kernel command-line parameters via the pv(4) pseudo-bus.
  • x86 - Added support for pv(4) pseudo-bus, for all paravirtual devices that do not attach to a well-known bus like pci(4).
  • x86 - Added support for non-Xen PVH boot (e.g. QEMU -kernel option).
  • x86 - Added support for newer Intel TCO watchdog timers in tco(4).
  • x86 - Expose a thinkpad(4) sysctl interface to control some aspects of charging behavior on supported systems.
  • x68k - Added Sixel graphics sequence support to the framebuffer console.

Kernel

  • kernel - Optimization: Omit needless memory barrier when triggering soft interrupts on various ports.
  • kernel - Optimization: Replaced the vdrain kernel thread with two threadpool jobs.
  • kernel - Optimization: Improved the performance of byte swaps (specifically for Adiantum disk encryption) on SPARC, PowerPC, and MIPS.
  • kernel - Added O_CLOFORK implementation.
  • procfs - Added support for sysvipc and self/limits for Linux compatibility.
  • zfs - Implemented DIOCCACHESYNC in zvol, used by Xen.
  • clock_getres(2) - Support CLOCK_PROCESS_CPUTIME_ID and CLOCK_THREAD_CPUTIME_ID.
  • memfd_create(2) - New system call, compatible with the Linux system call of the same name.
  • pipe(2) - Improved performance, reduced lock contention.
  • ddb(4) - Added some simple show commands to the in-kernel debugger: condvar, selinfo, sleepq.
  • dk(4) - Added support for discovering Atari TOS partitions as disk wedges.
  • nvmm(4) - Implemented VMware compatible TSC and LAPIC frequency detection in CPUID.
  • wscons(4) - Added support for bright and xterm-style 256 colour escape codes to VT100 emulation.
  • wscons(4) - Added WSDISPLAYIO_GFONT ioctl for obtaining information about the current font.
  • npf(7) - Added Layer 2 filtering support.
  • npf(7) - Added user/group-based filtering support.
  • heartbeat(9) - New mechanism to check progress of kernel. This uses hard interrupts to check progress of low-priority soft interrupts, and one CPU to check progress of another CPU.

Machine-independent device drivers

  • aac(4) - Added support for Adaptec RAID 5445, 5805, and 5085.
  • apei(4) - New driver for ACPI Platform Error Interfaces.
  • awge(4) - Improved fine-grained locking with NET_MPSAFE kernel option.
  • axen(4) - Added support for ASIX AX88179A USB Ethernet.
  • bwi(4) - Removed unnecessary delays.
  • ds2482ow(4) - New driver for the Maxim DS2482-100 and DS2482-800 I2C to 1-Wire bridge chip.
  • ds28e17iic(4) - New driver for the DS28E17 1-Wire to I2C bridge chip.
  • dse(4) - New driver for DaynaPORT SCSI/Link Ethernet devices. These legacy devices can currently be emulated on a Raspberry Pi with an RaSCSI board running PiSCSI software.
  • emcfan(4) - New driver for Microchip Technology / SMSC EMC210X and EMC230X fan controllers.
  • gftty(4), gfpic(4) - New drivers for the "Goldfish" virtual hardware platform.
  • gscan(4) - New driver for USB to CAN bus adapters.
  • igc(4) - Added support for TCP Segmentation Offload (TSO).
  • ikbd(4) - New i2c HID keyboard driver.
  • lm(4) - Support five auxiliary fan sensors for NCT6794D.
  • mcx(4) - Added support for NVIDIA Mellanox ConnectX-6 virtual functions.
  • ncm(4) - New driver for USB Network Control Model (used by newer Android for USB tethering).
  • pms(4) - Added support for PS/2 mouse hotplugging.
  • puc(4) - Added support for Brainboxes and Oxford Semiconductor PCI serial cards.
  • pvscsi(4) - New driver for VMware paravirtualized SCSI controllers.
  • rge(4) - Added support for Realtek RTL8126 5Gbps Ethernet.
  • u3g(4) - Support for the Sierra Wireless MC7304 LTE modem.
  • uaudio(4) - Support for devices compatible with USB Audio Class 2.0.
  • udl(4) - Added support for the SANWA SUPPLY 500-KC002N USB to VGA Adapter.
  • uftdi(4) - Added a "match quirk" mechanism that allows the driver to selectively reject individual interfaces, allowing them to be matched by ugen(4) and accessed through libusb.
  • umcpmio(4) - New driver for the MCP-2221 / 2221A multi-io chip.
  • urndis(4) - Match against additional device types.
  • urtwn(4) - Added support for Asus USB-N10 Nano B1 Wi-Fi adapter.
  • viaide(4) - Improved support for a range of VIA IDE/PATA/SATA controllers, especially in RAID modes.
  • viogpu(4) - New driver for QEMU virtual GPUs.
  • virtio(4) - Marked VirtIO drivers as MPSAFE so they don’t hold the big kernel lock.

Userspace

  • build.sh - New target pkg=CATEGORY/PACKAGE, cross-builds CATEGORY/PACKAGE from pkgsrc, bootstrapping pkgsrc.
  • libc - Improved performance of writes via stdio FILE handles.
  • libc - Added ffsl(3), ffsll(3), mempcpy(3), wmempcpy(3), heapsort_r(3), mergesort_r(3), qsort_r(3), c8rtomb(3), mbrtoc8(3), timespec_getres(3) functions.
  • libm - Added more long double variations of functions. Expanded tests.
  • libpthread - Audited missing POSIX.1-2024 cancellation points.
  • aiomixer(1) - Support the informal standard of allowing setting NO_COLOR in the environment to disable the use of color.
  • c17(1) - New wrapper script for the ISO 2017 C compiler as required by POSIX.1-2024.
  • calendar(1) - Updated dates of moving holidays for 2026.
  • crunchgen(1) - Honour -L option to set the library directory.
  • cut(1) - Add -n option to not split multi-byte characters when the -b option is used.
  • date(1) - Add -R option for displaying time in RFC 5322 format, similar to GNU date.
  • df(1) - Add -M (ignore non-mounted arguments) and -q (suppresses warnings) options.
  • gzip(1) - Add --ascii and --license options for GNU compatibility.
  • install(1) - Add -v (verbose) option.
  • lint(1) - Support for checking C23 code.
  • lint(1) - Detect more types of integer overflow in code.
  • make(1) - Various performance improvements, including recognizing include guards and improved pattern matching with :M and :N.
  • man(1) - Add -l flag to load a local path.
  • patch(1) - Added --backup-if-mismatch and --no-backup-if-mismatch for GNU patch compatibility. These options only make sense in POSIX mode, patch(1) has backups enabled by default and GNU patch doesn’t.
  • patch(1) - Handle lines of length beyond INT16_MAX.
  • pkill(1) - Added -F option to use a pidfile and -L to ensure it’s locked.
  • printf(1) - Improve detection and diagnosis of invalid values for conversions.
  • printf(1) - Added %C format conversion and -L option to use long doubles.
  • sh(1) - Adjusted tilde expansion to comply with POSIX Issue 8 requirements.
  • sh(1) - Now rejects NUL characters in shell input.
  • sh(1) - Added -r option to display version information.
  • sh(1) - Added -b and -nMAX options to the read builtin.
  • sh(1) - Implemented suspend as a builtin, similar to the csh(1) builtin.
  • sh(1) - Implemented the HISTFILE and HISTAPPEND variables.
  • stat(1) - Added symbolic flags printing.
  • touch(1) - Added -d, -R, -D options.
  • videoctl(1) - Improved enumeration of frame sizes.
  • curses(3) - Implemented the ncurses extension wgetscrreg(3) which returns the scrolling region of the given window.
  • proplib(3) - Added support for JSON serialization format.
  • cribbage(6) - Added -y option to keep playing without asking.
  • tetris(6) - Support the informal standard of allowing setting NO_COLOR in the environment to disable the use of color.
  • worms(6) - Added -C option to display worms in color, -H option to add more variance in worm heads.
  • blocklistd(8) - Support multiple configuration files in a configuration directory like /etc/blocklistd.conf.d.
  • chown(8) - Added a -d flag to avoid changing a file’s owner/group to the current value. This avoids some unnecessary operations on the file.
  • cpuctl(8) - Recognize Intel Meteor Lake and Emerald Rapids CPUs.
  • dkctl(8) - Add new getgeometry command.
  • envstat(8) - Added support for JSON output.
  • gpt(8) - Additions to GUID management and an option to print start/size in hexadecimal.
  • iostat(8) - Added -X option, limited alternative statistics. This is like the "-D" option, except it skips the xfers/s, and reports MB/s instead of KB/s. Allows for ~50% more devices to be displayed per line by default.
  • makefs(8) - Allow cd9660 file systems to be size-limited with -m, and allow version=0 4.3BSD FFS file systems to be created for compatible boot ROMs.
  • mount_cd9660(8) - Added support for mount options mask,dirmask,uid,gid.
  • scsictl(8) - Add identify vpd to report Vital Product Data that identifies the device.
  • syslogd(8) - Added -k option to disable the translation of remote messages from "kern" to "user".

Incompatible changes

  • The new OpenSSH in this release does not support DSA keys any more. If you had a custom configuration that enabled these in some contexts, your sshd startup may fail now. Please adjust the configuration accordingly.
  • Compatibility libraries (for 32-bit binaries on 64-bit platforms, and 64-bit binaries on MIPS) have been split into new base32/base64, debug32/debug64 sets.
  • The HTML manual pages have been split from the "man" set into a new "manhtml" set.
  • The sysctl interface to control CPU frequency on aarch64 now uses MHz instead of performance units.
  • The hdaudio(4) driver now sorts and names mixer controls differently. Take care to update scripts, particularly if you were adjusting input monitor (previously known as "record") or beep volume.
  • libc - Added guard pages to ctype(3) functions to detect common incorrect use of this API at runtime. Code that previously returned wrong results will now segfault. Set the environment variable LIBC_ALLOWCTYPEABUSE to restore the old behaviour.
  • i386 - Removed XMS-specific code from dosboot.
  • heimdal - Disabled sqlite3 credential cache (SCC), removed sqlite3 dependency.
  • Xorg(1) - Removed the libXxf86misc library. Support for this extension was removed from X.Org in 2008 and none of our X servers support it.
  • cp(1) - Always copy regular files, even if they appear to be zero-sized.
  • expr(1) - Use multibyte code points instead of bytes for ":" and "length", required by POSIX.
  • xfwp(1) - Removed.
  • mkstr(1), xstr(1) - Removed, obsolete PDP-11 era tools.
  • curses(3) - Constified argument of define_key(3) for compatibility with ncurses.
  • curses(3) - Constified arguments of newterm(3), setterm(3) functions.
  • lagg(4) - Copy the MTU of lagg to interfaces added to lagg.
  • ppp(4) - Removed several non-functional ioctls.
  • moused(8) - Removed undocumented C option.
  • mount(8) - Reduced information printed with mount -v spec fs, use -vv for previous output.

Third-party components

The complete list of changes can be found in the CHANGES and CHANGES-11.0 files in the top level directory of the NetBSD 11.0 release tree.

Getting NetBSD 11.0 RC1

Complete source and binaries for NetBSD 11.0 RC1 are available for download at many sites around the world. You can download NetBSD 11.0 RC1 from our main CDN, or use a mirror site close to you. A list of hashes, signed by the NetBSD Security Officer's PGP key, is available for the NetBSD 11.0 RC1 distribution in this file.

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. More extensive information on NetBSD is available from our website:

www.NetBSD.org

System families supported by NetBSD 11.0

The NetBSD 11.0 release provides supported binary distributions for the following systems:

NetBSD/aarch64 Arm 64-bit
NetBSD/acorn32 Acorn RiscPC/A7000, VLSI RC7500
NetBSD/algor Algorithmics, Ltd. MIPS evaluation boards
NetBSD/alpha Digital/Compaq Alpha (64-bit)
NetBSD/amd64 AMD family processors like Opteron, Athlon64, and Intel CPUs with EM64T extension
NetBSD/amiga Commodore Amiga and MacroSystem DraCo
NetBSD/amigappc PowerPC-based Amiga boards.
NetBSD/arc MIPS-based machines following the Advanced RISC Computing spec
NetBSD/atari Atari TT030, Falcon, Hades
NetBSD/bebox Be Inc's BeBox
NetBSD/cats Chalice Technology's CATS and Intel's EBSA-285 evaluation boards
NetBSD/cesfic CES FIC8234 VME processor board
NetBSD/cobalt Cobalt Networks' MIPS-based Microservers
NetBSD/dreamcast Sega Dreamcast game console
NetBSD/emips The Extensible MIPS architecture from Microsoft Research
NetBSD/epoc32 Psion EPOC PDAs
NetBSD/evbarm Various Arm-based evaluation boards and appliances
NetBSD/evbmips Various MIPS-based evaluation boards and appliances
NetBSD/evbppc Various PowerPC-based evaluation boards and appliances
NetBSD/evbsh3 Various Hitachi Super-H SH3 and SH4-based evaluation boards and appliances
NetBSD/ews4800mips NEC's MIPS-based EWS4800 workstation
NetBSD/hp300 Hewlett-Packard 9000/300 and 400 series
NetBSD/hpcarm StrongArm based Windows CE PDA machines
NetBSD/hpcmips MIPS-based Windows CE PDA machines
NetBSD/hpcsh Hitachi Super-H based Windows CE PDA machines
NetBSD/hppa Hewlett-Packard 9000 Series 700 workstations
NetBSD/i386 IBM PCs and PC clones with i486-family processors and up
NetBSD/ibmnws IBM Network Station 1000
NetBSD/iyonix Castle Technology's Iyonix Arm based PCs
NetBSD/landisk SH4 processor based NAS appliances
NetBSD/luna68k OMRON Tateisi Electric's LUNA series
NetBSD/mac68k Apple Macintosh with Motorola 68k CPU
NetBSD/macppc Apple PowerPC-based Macintosh and clones
NetBSD/mipsco MIPS Computer Systems Inc. family of workstations and servers
NetBSD/mmeye Brains mmEye multimedia server
NetBSD/mvme68k Motorola MVME 68k Single Board Computers
NetBSD/mvmeppc Motorola PowerPC VME Single Board Computers
NetBSD/netwinder StrongArm based NetWinder machines
NetBSD/news68k Sony's 68k-based “NET WORK STATION” series
NetBSD/newsmips Sony's MIPS-based “NET WORK STATION” series
NetBSD/next68k NeXT 68k “black” hardware
NetBSD/ofppc OpenFirmware PowerPC machines
NetBSD/pmax Digital MIPS-based DECstations and DECsystems
NetBSD/prep PReP (PowerPC Reference Platform) and CHRP machines
NetBSD/riscv RISC-V-based devices
NetBSD/rs6000 IBM RS/6000 MCA-based PowerPC machines.
NetBSD/sandpoint Motorola Sandpoint reference platform, including many PPC-based NAS boxes
NetBSD/sgimips Silicon Graphics' MIPS-based workstations
NetBSD/shark Digital DNARD (“shark”)
NetBSD/sparc Sun SPARC (32-bit) and UltraSPARC (in 32-bit mode)
NetBSD/sparc64 Sun UltraSPARC (in native 64-bit mode)
NetBSD/sun2 Sun Microsystems Sun 2 machines with Motorola 68010 CPU
NetBSD/sun3 Motorola 68020 and 030 based Sun 3 and 3x machines
NetBSD/vax Digital VAX
NetBSD/x68k Sharp X680x0 series
NetBSD/xen The Xen virtual machine monitor
NetBSD/zaurus Sharp Arm PDAs

Ports included in the release but not fully supported or functional:

NetBSD/ia64 Itanium family of processors

Acknowledgments

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:

www.NetBSD.org/people/

About NetBSD

NetBSD is a free, fast, secure, and highly portable Unix-like Open Source operating system. It is available for a wide range of platforms, from large-scale servers and powerful desktop systems to handheld and embedded devices. Its clean design and advanced features make it excellent for use in both production and research environments, and the source code is freely available under a business-friendly license. NetBSD is developed and supported by a large and vibrant international community. Many applications are readily available through pkgsrc, the NetBSD Packages Collection.

About the NetBSD Foundation

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 to help with ongoing upgrades and maintenance, as well as with operating expenses for the NetBSD Foundation.

Donations can be done via PayPal to , or via Google Checkout and are fully tax-deductible in the US. See www.NetBSD.org/donations/ for more information, or contact directly.

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