- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
lobsters score: 1 · tags: netbsd
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The idea of running a slop-free operating system wasn’t on my agenda, but sounds like a fun hobby project to run on a laptop that isn’t my daily driver. (I use Linux.)
I think my top candidates right now are OpenBSD and 9 Front. Both adhere to the Suckless philosophy in my unofficial opinion.
score 1 · canonical
Seems neat, but I think I’ll stick with chimeralinux (FreeBSD userspace, musl, dinit, linux kernel).
score 1 · canonical
I’m a bit confused why another userland needed to be created on top of the NetBSD kernel and libc, given NetBSD’s no-LLM-output policy. I’d have thought starting with stock NetBSD then spinning up a new package repository curated down to LLM-free projects might be easier. Either way, happy hacking!
score 4 · canonical
The answer is buried behind the lede a bit (in that you’ll only find it by looking at who’s the user behind the source code), but it’s a project from Drew.
Drew uses Alpine as his daily driver and for all his servers, and has also been vocally critical of Linus accepting LLM contributions into the kernel.
This probably is his way of resolving that criticism; moving over to BSD as it categorically hasn’t accepted LLM code in its kernel, while still getting to keep the specific userland he prefers. At a glance, it’s a neat idea although I’m also curious to see how it’ll confront reality if he opts to move Sourcehut to AlpineBSD as well. (This isn’t sarcasm, I’m genuinely curious; Linux distros and BSD have very different philosophies on how a system is assembled, and the nature of Linux has always lend itself to being more “choose the parts you want”, with distros acting mostly as curators, compared to BSD shipping much more “complete” elements in terms of userland.)
score 1 · canonical
AFAIU Alpine’s council actions are much more relevant than Linus. Case in point: https://mastodon.social/@drew@social.freebitcoin.gay/117358303430810583
Note: I’m linking through mastodon prime as the original instances requires authentication to view.
if he opts to move Sourcehut to AlpineBSD as well. (This isn’t sarcasm, I’m genuinely curious; Linux distros and BSD have very different philosophies
Might be painting communities with too broad a brush, but afaict Drew is already more philosophically aligned with the BSDs. If you’ve looked into how SourceHut does deploys, you’ll notice that Drew already does things the ‘sysadmin’ way. As in to deploy they package the repository and push a new version to their self-hosted apk repository (similar to an Ubuntu PPA) and uses sshs into the production boxes to update to the new version through apk. An average Linux user is much more likely to use a container registry instead.
Personally, although I’ve been playing with vanilla NetBSD I’m hoping the AlpineBSD projecs because popular so that it helps revitalize NetBSD. Which has plenty of cool features (rumpkernels) to stand on its own merits.
score 1 · canonical
Exactly, bringing in GNU tooling is actually more likely to introduce LLM slop into a NetBSD system.
I think there are probably some good ideas in this amalgamation, but I feel like if you want a better NetBSD just install OpenBSD.
score 1 · canonical
The NetBSD kernel has spotty hardware support
I’d always been under the impression NetBSD runs on pretty much anything. That’s been the community’s marketing line for at least two decades, that it’ll even run on a toaster (provided your toaster runs ARM)
score 1 · canonical
NetBSD was designed for a world where many CPU architectures were extant, and each one was associated with a relatively small complement of hardware accessories (and therefore drivers). This made a lot of sense in the 1990s and 2000s when minicomputers and workstations still roamed the earth. Now we have two relevant architectures and a neverending stream of hardware devices, and it’s a lot harder for a small volunteer project to keep up.
score 1 · canonical
NetBSD “runs on pretty much anything” in the sense that it’s highly portable and if you write the drivers, you can probably get it booting on that random piece of hardware you’ve got. However, “booting” (or even “usable for headless use cases”) is quite far from the requirements most people have for desktop use (working audio, accelerated graphics, performant networking on the built-in network devices), never mind laptop (power management etc). It’s this kind of “polish” driver work that NetBSD is lacking.
score 3 · canonical
Yeah, it’s easier to do a port with NetBSD than Linux since it’s better structured and simpler, but the 10% of supporting peripherals is much harder than the first 90% of architecture. Assuming it even supports your architecture - NetBSD doesn’t support modern Power at all.
score 2 · canonical
Which is just bonkers since FreeBSD and OpenBSD (I think) does. When I finally turn my AIX POWER6 into a museum piece and replace it with the POWER9 Raptors, they’ll be running FreeBSD, maybe with an AIX VM as a bridge, even though I’d rather run NetBSD since most of my other boxes do.
score 1 · canonical
OpenBSD only supports Raptor’s systems from the looks of it.
I’ve also had bad luck with FreeBSD on IBM systems; none of my POWER8s want to boot it; I suspect some issue with the bootloader.
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NetBSD supports the CPU is different than it supporting all your hardware like WiFi and such. My understanding is that “it runs on a toaster” is the former and that it has low resource requirements.
score 1 · canonical