Research carried out using NetBSD(www.netbsd.org)
61 pointsby Bluestein5 hours ago3 comments
  • bch4 hours ago
    Microsoft brought up an new processor[0][1][2] with NetBSD...

    [0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=524...

    [1] https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/emips/

    [2] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/an-onli...

    • tosti3 hours ago
      There's the Installing Linux on a dead badger HOWTO, but NetBSD actually runs everywhere for realsies. It's also lovely to work with and has the nicest man pages imho.
  • galleywest20030 minutes ago
    I wonder if the popularity of NetBSD for research has to do with how easy it is to compile a version of NetBSD with favorable licenses.

    You can opt to build it yourself and exclude anything that is not 2-clause BSD licensed, as some drivers and such are if I recall correctly.

  • 3eb7988a16633 hours ago
    How usable are the BSDs as a GUI daily driver? Like 99% of Linux applications work out of the box or more like 50%?

    With new CVEs being discovered in ancient bedrock code on the daily, it seems prudent to switch to a NetBSD/OpenBSD/Qubes system for the next few years until some vulnerabilities might get smoothed over.

    • BSDobelix2 hours ago
      I use FreeBSD on all my machines for everything sinc about 11 years GUI is I3/X11/AMD-Card everything works, but please test it yourself, it's like with linux, you just know what's not/is working if you use it daily for all your edge-cases (maybe your scanner, maybe your barcode-scanner your Bluetooth-Stuff your wireless etcetc)

      Overall i really love FreeBSD for everything computing (Pi/Laptop/Workstation/Servers).

      And the community is great...wanna make a port/src-patch?...just send it to the bug-tracker, no rituals needed ;)

      • Bluestein2 hours ago
        I really wonder what will become of these systems once AI agents start intervening en masse - sending patches and the like.-
        • BSDobelixan hour ago
          they get accepted or rejected, updating ports/packets would be a wonderful AI job, check newest version, update port, poudriere the thing, test it, make patch, send to bugtracker.

          Maybe the AI can even check "funny" upstream commits like it happens with npm/crate and block that stuff.

          But FreeBSD ports is incredible up to date so there should be no flood of patches anyhow.

          • Bluesteinan hour ago
            Indeed. This might be naive but it would be grand if projects could have their own models and compute with which to perform these and other tasks, each trained as per the project's ethos/needs.-
            • a2ff6eeb038 minutes ago
              This is way too expensive. Models are an inherently centralizing technology, and there's no future for niche projects that don't make up a big part of the major providers training sets.
    • __patchbit__3 hours ago
      NetBSD 11 with Firefox 151 from pkgsrc on a custom CTWM is a usable daily driver for Emacs daemon mode GUI/TUI and console tmux simultaneous use. Remote in from a Windows or macOS desktop.
    • skydhash2 hours ago
      Running OpenBSD as a daily driver but with no DE.

      It has a working X11 with DRM from linux as base so everything graphical will work mostly fine. The issue is more around the OS and some subsystems. OpenBSD is still using the Giant Lock model, so SMP can be an issue. Linux has more independent subsystems so heavy processing is unlikely to impact usb audio (which is an issue I have with my oldish laptop). Another issue is the input subsystem (wscons framework) which is not as sophisticated as Linux Input subsystem. In general, linux subsystems are more sophisticated/complex than their OpenBSD counterpart, but the latter work well enough.

      There are some linuxisms in some applications (the recent moves to wayland/systemd,...) but they're mostly easy to port.