NetBSD 11.0 released with RISC‑V support and new MICROVM kernel

The NetBSD Project announced the nineteenth major release, NetBSD 11.0, adding the first stable 64‑bit RISC‑V port. The port runs on QEMU virtual machines and on several RISC‑V boards, including the StarFive VisionFive 2, PINE64 STAR64 and Allwinner D1‑based devices, with support for PCI/PCIe, VirtIO networking and storage, virtual audio, hardware RNG and temperature sensors.

On the ARM side the release introduces initial support for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite platform and related drivers, plus broader improvements such as NUMA awareness for ACPI systems, Rockchip USB‑C PHY, and enhanced Raspberry Pi 5 compatibility. A dedicated MICROVM kernel for amd64 and i386 systems is included, designed for ultra‑fast VM startup (about 10 ms on 2020‑era x86 CPUs) using PVH boot and VirtIO MMIO.

The Linux compatibility layer is expanded with many new system calls—epoll, clone3, statx, inotify, renameat2, and others—allowing a wider range of Linux software to run on NetBSD without modification.