this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2024

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NetBSD - thoughts? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

54 comments fedilink hide all child comments

What's the point of it?

OpenBSD = Security

FreeBSD = The main UNIX-like

NetBSD = ???

Based on the name of have assumed it's be used in things like network appliances but in 20 years I've never seen a single device use it.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Yes, it is mostly appliances, but an (informal?) stated goal of NetBSD is too run on all computing hardware.

FreeBSD = user-friendly free Unix (plus ZFS and jails 😀)
OpenBSD = very secure free Unix (no ZFS 🙁 but has the VMM hypervisor 😀)
OpenIndiana = user-friendly free Unix that runs old Solaris software (plus ZFS and zones 😀)
NetBSD = runs on any computer chip ever built within the past 40 years (some ZFS support, but no zones, jails, or VMs 🙁)

Naturally, that makes NetBSD a good choice for appliances, especially ones that might only have limited memory.

(Here is a quick explainer on the difference between Jails, Zones, Containers, and VMs)

EDIT1: someone pointed out to me that ZFS is not supported on OpenBSD. Sorry about that everyone.

EDIT2: there is a ZFS driver for NetBSD

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (2 children)

There’s no ZFS support in OpenBSD is there?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

No, but I think someone made read only support for ZFS available on OpenBSD. Freebsd is obviously the best for ZFS. It works on NetBSD too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Thanks, I had to double check that but you're right, ZFS isn't on OpenBSD. What a shame. Anyway I edited my above post.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

But there is zfs support in netbsd... https://wiki.netbsd.org/zfs/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

According to the wiki, ZFS "works well" but doesn't seem to be as stable as in FreeBSD or OpenIndiana, and is not enabled by default so you have to update your rc.conf file to build the ZFS drivers.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago (1 children)

"I just threw a dead squirrel in a shoe box and installed NetBSD on it." is one of the bash.org quotes I still remember.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

And damnit we did it too

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago

From "back in the day" the big claim was that NetBSD would run on anything. Portability seemed to be their major goal.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Somewhat confused this is in a linux community when none of these OS are linux based. Are we lacking on BSD communities?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago (3 children)

We don't have BSD communities and even if we did they probably wouldn't be big enough to get a decent answer.

So I asked here cos there's a high chance that some Linux users will also know something about *BSD.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

You'd probably get better conversations at selfhosted I know some folks there run *bsd network appliances. NASs, firewalls, etc.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

I think no BSD expert will bother this place

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

There are some BSD communities on Lemmy/kbin, but they don't have many subscribers yet.
Here are the ones I know of:
@openbsd
@openbsd
@bsd
@netbsd
@bsd
@freebsd
@freebsd
@netbsd
@bsd
@freebsd
@FreeBSD

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It's not like the interests are not aligned.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

you're more likely to find BSD communities on reddit, each projects mailing lists, freebsd forums, and unitedbsd.com (which is a great forum, although not too active).

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (2 children)

There's no specific point in any of *BSD. They all are general purpose OSes. NetBSD forked from FreeBSD, OpenBSD forked from NetBSD. Conflicts between developers were main reasons for that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

NetBSD didn't fork from Free iirc. They took 4.4 BSD and started developing it themselves of the net.

Theo de Raadt was kicked out of netbsd, and started OpenBSD.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yes, you are right. Both FreeBSD and NetBSD are based on earlier BSD systems. Anyway there are no fundamental differences between them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (2 children)

no fundamental differences between net and freebsd?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

No such ones that would make one of them unsuitable for some task that another copes with.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

What the hell??

They evolve differently. Saying *BSD is like 4.4BSD is still developed by ucb to provide a single base for all BSD.

Michael W Lucas wrote in Absolute FreeBSD (3rd):

Absolute BSD (No Starch Press, 2002) was my first technology book and was written when the various BSD operating system had more in common than they wanted to admit. The second edition, Absolute FreeBSD (No Starch Press, 2007), came out after the BSDs had diverged, and detailed FreeBSD's advances in the previous five year

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Pretty much like all Debian forks. They're all forked from Debian because of conflicts between developers / different ways of seeing things. :P

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I think the point is network appliances but it seems mainly used by hobbyists from what I’ve seen.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

If you look at the supported platforms you kind of get an answer here. There’s support for the m68k Macintoshes and other similar ancient devices still.

netbsd platforms

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

The main point was always portability, and the ability to run NetBSD on basically ANYTHING.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

OpenBSD = Security

It is actually correctless. OpenBSD = Correctness + Simple + Free (free from copyleft too)

FreeBSD = The main UNIX-like

Citation???

NetBSD

maximum portability??

But up to NetBSD 10 (at the time writing it was not released) YOU DON'T HAVE SSL CERTIFICATES INSTALLED IN THE BASE SYSTEM !

That's my warning :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I dont get that "no copyleft" of OpenBSD. Like, anything they do will just be used by Apple, Sony etc. and they dont give shit back

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (8 children)

OpenBSD try to remove GPL licensed software from base. (with free alternative)

Like, anything they do will just be used by Apple, Sony etc. and they dont give shit back

This is what the OpenBSD team want, and also appreciated by other BSD developers.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

NetBSD, from their own website:

The NetBSD Project's goals

A project has no point if it doesn't have goals. Thankfully, the NetBSD Project has enough goals to keep it busy for quite some time. Generally speaking, the NetBSD Project:

provides a well designed, stable, and fast BSD system,
avoids encumbering licenses,
provides a portable system, which runs on many hardware platforms,
interoperates well with other systems,
conforms to open systems standards as much as is practical.

In summary: The NetBSD Project provides a freely available and redistributable system that professionals, hobbyists, and researchers can use in whatever manner they wish.

Based on the name of have assumed it’s be used in things like network appliances but in 20 years I’ve never seen a single device use it.

The name comes from being develop over the internet, when that was still a pretty new concept. It's pretty popular among Japanese ISP's iirc.

If you're at all interested in unix, you should try NetBSD. Open has security as a focus...although some of that is overstated imo. FreeBSD is clearly targeting servers, even if it is all purpose.

NetBSD is less popular, but it's clean, lightweight, portable, has pkgsrc. Think of Net as a cross between Open and Free.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I think OpenBSD, FreeBSD and NetBSD are much cleaner than Linux (evidence: Chimera Linux)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

you mean chimera using BSD utils instead of gnu?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

yes

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

And then you have NomadBSD if you need an OS in a usb stick :)

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