# An unexpected contender: NetBSD



## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 31, 2020)

IMHO, the current state of NetBSD now is very similar to FreeBSD 9. It has working ZFS support but not yet able to do root on ZFS. It has two hypervisors: HAXM (via qemu-haxm) and NVMM (via qemu-nvmm). Within a few releases, I think it could catch up with FreeBSD.

NetBSD now is not just for toasters!


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## drhowarddrfine (Aug 31, 2020)

And your point is what? Note that technical discussion of other operating systems is not allowed here.


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## wolffnx (Aug 31, 2020)

of course, but not feels the same
that FreeBSD
And this is not "this is better,this is worst that..."
no,the two systems are good
is useless put it in "Netbsd will cacht up FreeBSD sometime"


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## Alain De Vos (Aug 31, 2020)

some very simpel thing like ipv6 is problematic with netbsd.
There are hardware drivers for weird and old hardware, nothing more i think.


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## sidetone (Aug 31, 2020)

I tried NetBSD about 2 years ago, it may have been a 7 release series.

The desktop of NetBSD was in very low resolution. If this could be fixed, I didn't know how to. Only 1 application could use the sound card at a time. FreeBSD had this setback maybe over 10 years ago, but they said it was at the application layer, not at the sound architecture level.

NetBSD has less ports as well. But it was sturdy, and their ports system seemed less complicated. Their dependency options weren't from an ncurses menu: they were set from a file. Their dependencies may not necessarily have been simpler, but they seemed so.


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## TracyTiger (Aug 31, 2020)

sysctl said:


> IMHO, the current state of NetBSD now is very similar to FreeBSD 9. It has working ZFS support but not yet able to do root on ZFS. It has two hypervisors: HAXM (via qemu-haxm) and NVMM (via qemu-nvmm). Within a few releases, I think it could catch up with FreeBSD.
> 
> NetBSD now is not just for toasters!



I'm confused.  Am I reading threads started from forum member *gh_origin* or *sysctl*?  One account stopped posting and the other started.


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## Mjölnir (Sep 1, 2020)

TracyTiger said:


> I'm confused.  Am I reading threads started from forum member *gh_origin* or *sysctl*?  One account stopped posting and the other started.


Are we witnessing _two_ identity thefts here? NetBSD steals FreeBSD's & sysctl steals gh_origin's? This is a clean-cut case for the Network Police Department!
EDIT if it's gh_origin, expect to see a thread _"issues with NetBSD under bhyve"_ from sysctl ...


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## Deleted member 63539 (Sep 1, 2020)

TracyTiger said:


> I'm confused.  Am I reading threads started from forum member *gh_origin* or *sysctl*?  One account stopped posting and the other started.


Same person here. I lost the gh_origin account and created this one


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## Deleted member 63539 (Sep 1, 2020)

mjollnir said:


> EDIT if it's gh_origin, expect to see a thread _"issues with NetBSD under bhyve"_ from sysctl ...


I have figured it out a long time ago! Check my gh_origin account's post, you will found the solution of how to install NetBSD on Bhyve


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## a6h (Sep 1, 2020)

Since this thread is going down the toilet very soon, I'm going to share my technical observations about NetBSD.
NetBSD is pretty much like my grandfather basement. You could find everything down there and at the same time nothing. Goat bless his Sol La Si.


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## Deleted member 63539 (Sep 1, 2020)

sidetone said:


> I tried NetBSD about 2 years ago, it may have been a 7 release series.
> 
> The desktop of NetBSD was in very low resolution. If this could be fixed, I didn't know how to. Only 1 application could use the soundcard at a time. FreeBSD had this setback maybe over 10 years ago, but they said it was at the application layer, not at the sound architecture level.
> 
> NetBSD has less ports as well. But it was sturdy, and their ports system seemed less complicated. Their dependency options weren't from an ncurses menu: they were set from a file. Their dependencies may not necessarily have been simpler, but they seemed so.


The current NetBSD 9 is a real changer. You should try it. I surprised with it too, it completely changed from previous NetBSD versions. It's an exciting release with many new improvements and innovations. Yeah, I started with NetBSD 7, too. Found it's not usable on my hardware, gave up, try NetBSD 8, it's better but still not usable, but NetBSD 9 worked very well on my hardware.

NetBSD 9 has i915kms driver in a usable form that I could play 4K video on youtube and play my favorite game supertux, too. It's a bit lagging compared to FreeBSD. And it use my native resolution, too. IMHO, the current state of it is better than the i915kms shipped with FreeBSD 11.4 by default but lose to the i915kms installed from drm-kmod.

The sound quality is very good now. It still can't comparable to FreeBSD and OpenBSD but it just works.

NetBSD now using pkgin as the package manager. I found it's much better than their old pkg_* commands. OpenBSD's pkg_* commands is a joke compared to pkgin. pkgin is both powerful and easier to use, comparable to Linux's apt.

But the real thing I want to mention is NetBSD 9's new hypervisors: HAXM (via qemu-haxm) and NVMM (via qemu-nvmm). They are real contenters to FreeBSD's Bhyve!


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## Deleted member 63539 (Sep 1, 2020)

Alain De Vos said:


> some very simpel thing like ipv6 is problematic with netbsd.


I think it's no more a problem for modern NetBSD.


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## Deleted member 63539 (Sep 1, 2020)

drhowarddrfine said:


> And your point is what? Note that technical discussion of other operating systems is not allowed here.


It's not technical. I only want to inform people here about the rising of an unexpected contender, NetBSD. Given how people here underestimate NetBSD, I think I should do so.


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## Deleted member 63539 (Sep 1, 2020)

wolffnx said:


> of course, but not feels the same
> that FreeBSD
> And this is not "this is better,this is worst that..."
> no,the two systems are good
> is useless put it in "Netbsd will cacht up FreeBSD sometime"


"Catch up" is "in the same state of usable, in both features and ease of use" in this narrow context. I didn't measure the performance of NetBSD compared to FreeBSD so I didn't put it in the definition. But it should be there to be a complete definition of "catch up". So "nearly catch up" could be a more correct phrase.


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## richardtoohey2 (Sep 1, 2020)

sysctl said:


> an unexpected contender, NetBSD


Contender for _what_?

If you want to use NetBSD, no-one on this forum is stopping you from doing so.  If you think it's better than FreeBSD, great.  Your post about OpenBSD was much the same - it's better at some things, not so good at others, and does some things differently.

Is there some sort of race or competition?

Use whatever operating system you want and works for you.  We don't need to know about it.  What next, a review of breakfast cereals to let us know which ones you find crunchiest?

An unexpected contender: Kellogg's Frosties

There's no one perfect operating system that's "best" for every use any more than there's a "best" breakfast cereal.


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## 20-100-2fe (Sep 1, 2020)

Contender is definitely improper here. From what I see, there is much more cooperation than competition in the BSD world.


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## 20-100-2fe (Sep 1, 2020)

I think the main reason to choose a BSD flavor rather than another is the values of its community.


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## richardtoohey2 (Sep 1, 2020)

20-100-2fe said:


> I think the main reason to choose a BSD flavor rather than another is the values of its community.


What are the "values" of the FreeBSD "community"?

What are the "values" of the "communities" of OpenBSD or NetBSD or DragonflyBSD or Linux or Windows or MacOS or Android or iOS or Kellogg's Frostie consumers?  Or Toyota Corolla drivers?  Most of those things are a bunch of different people using something in common.

YMMV but my experience is that there are lots of nice people trying to get along and be helpful in all those "communities" but plenty of jerks and trolls as well.  And the internet magnifies some voices x5 (and social media x50!)

Find what works for you - and that might be a combination of operating systems depending on the tasks you need to handle, or a mix of breakfast cereals.  Your choices aren't necessarily any better than mine, but hey, that's OK.  You want/need to do different things to me.  I don't need to convert you and you don't need to convert me.  We're all winners!

I don't understand people who get so fired up about operating systems especially free/open-source ones.  You don't like it - great, go find another one.  No-one is holding a pistol to your head forcing you to use MegaBSD.  MegaBSD happens to work for me and these other folk, it doesn't work for you.  That's OK.

I like seeing what the other BSDs and Linux distributions are up to so I go and read sites that cover all that sort of stuff.

Anyway, cough, these are the FreeBSD forums about FreeBSD stuff, so  from me.


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## Mjölnir (Sep 1, 2020)

IMHO it's perfectly ok to have an eye on where other OS are going and what methods & tools they implement, especially the other BSDs.  Interesting things can get ported over, this happens often & in a colaborative fashion.

the _HAMMER_ filesystem of DragonflyBSD is very interesting (it is mentioned on a FreeBSD projects page),
the _self-healing facilities_ of Solaris & MINIX3, or
the _role-based access control_ (RBAC) of Solaris: no _root_ login, _root_ is a role & can be configured to require aproval of a configurable number of administrators for certain tasks, e.g. 2 out of 3; it's always clear who did what because it's logged (like sudo(8)'s log).
Thus I find it reasonable to discuss such topics in a FreeBSD forum.


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## DutchDaemon (Sep 1, 2020)

The *gh_origin* and *sysctl*  accounts have been merged.


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## Deleted member 63539 (Sep 1, 2020)

20-100-2fe said:


> Contender is definitely improper here. From what I see, there is much more cooperation than competition in the BSD world.



I created the thread after watching WWE. I'm not an English speaker not I'm good at English. I encountered the word "contender" on the WWE show and found the word is cool so I just pick it up and use it. Please pardon me for my lack of English vocabulary, everyone. BTW, what is the correct word to use?


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## Mjölnir (Sep 1, 2020)

sysctl said:


> [...] BTW, what is the correct word to use?


Companion? Buddy?


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## 20-100-2fe (Sep 1, 2020)

sysctl said:


> BTW, what is the correct word to use?



Using "contender", you have learned a few things you didn't know, so it was worth doing. 
Besides, your post didn't contain any idea of competition or rivalry, so you could just have chosen "NetBSD" as title and not changed anything else. 
IMO, sharing new and opinions about related systems is always interesting - what's more when they belong to the same family.
I'm glad I have learned interesting things about DragonFly on this forum, for instance.


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## richardtoohey2 (Sep 1, 2020)

"NetBSD mini-review"?

I think any words that sound like there's some battle or conflict or race or competition or upmanship is going to set some people off (myself in this case!).

As the others have said - co-operation, learning from others (people and operating systems), and free information exchange.

For me that's one of the best things about open source - we can see something good in DragonflyBSD, or NetBSD, or OpenBSD, or Linux and try and do the same in FreeBSD (or vice versa.)

But just saying FreeBSD should copy all this cool stuff from MegaBSD (or whatever) isn't very helpful - there are a limited amount of developers (thank you!) working on FreeBSD and they can't do everything or match the resources behind Windows or Linux.  (That's not happened in this thread, just a pet peeve!)  But think that is the same in all walks of life - "the government should do X and Y and P and Q and R because the government of [some other country] is doing those things".  Or replace "government" with "council" or "school" or "soccer club" or "knitting club".  Only so many resources to go around.

I use OpenBSD and FreeBSD daily (and Linux, Mac OS X, and, yes, even Windows when I have to) - looked at NetBSD and DragonflyBSD but not much past doing an install - just because I install them and then stop and think what I _need_ them for and don't have an answer. But maybe one day I'll be after the HAMMER file-system or an OS that will run on a toaster, and I'll know where to look.


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## Alain De Vos (Sep 1, 2020)

It took netbsd a very long time to have rtsold. I don't know if it works good.


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## drhowarddrfine (Sep 2, 2020)

I'll repeat what I said earlier. I don't see the point of bringing it up here on the FreeBSD forum at all.


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## ralphbsz (Sep 2, 2020)

Actually, a detailed technical discussion of the form "I just found that operating system X has this nice feature", or "Operating system Y does ABC better than FreeBSD because..." would be welcome. Even when phrased negatively: "FreeBSD's elephant feeding mechanism is inferior to Linux because my elephants really like Salade Nicoise, and FreeBSD only has Caesar Salad, what would it take to improve the salad bar?"

What I absolutely can't stand is the threads that are not based on rational technical or organizational arguments, but on emotion (the FoobarBSD desktop makes me fell all warm when I pee on myself), ad-hominem attacks (Lennart is ugly, and Linus has hair loss), or religion (including the open-source religion, which I subscribe to exactly as much as any other religion: not at all).


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## richardtoohey2 (Sep 2, 2020)

ralphbsz said:


> what would it take to improve the salad bar?


But I find those ones a bit annoying because unless there's some _work_ done by the poster to actually improve the salad bar - it's just moaning.

So, fine, say that MegaBSD would be better with feature X, and "here's a patch", or "here's the R&D that I've done", or "I think the work needs to happen in these files", or "I've started a bug bounty" or "I'm donating $X to FreeBSD" or whatever.

And just remember that _you _(the proposer) might be wanting "the" killer feature (for _your_ uses of MegaBSD) but there are plenty of other people who would prefer development went on feature X, port Y, performance improvements, etc.

Moaning on the internet doesn't really do much useful.  (He says, as he moans on the internet   )


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## 20-100-2fe (Sep 2, 2020)

richardtoohey2 said:


> So, fine, say that MegaBSD would be better with feature X, and "here's a patch", or "here's the R&D that I've done", or "I think the work needs to happen in these files", or "I've started a bug bounty" or "I'm donating $X to FreeBSD" or whatever.



Before spending one's free time on any work, it's plain common sense to make sure the work you'll submit will be accepted by those having a commit bit.


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## richardtoohey2 (Sep 2, 2020)

20-100-2fe said:


> Before spending one's free time on any work, it's plain common sense to make sure the work you'll submit will be accepted by those having a commit bit.


Good point.

But - do those people (committers) read these forums?  If not then not much point in posting in here?  Unless the posts make a lot of the FreeBSD users here think "hey, that's something FreeBSD really needs" and it builds up some momentum that gets noticed elsewhere (raised on the right mailing lists or with the right people.)  I'm not convinced but I'll raise it as a counter-argument to my own argument.

And would checking first count as doing _something_ as opposed to empty moaning?

"Here's something that works better in SupaBSD and I've checked with Samatha who has a commit bit and it's all good but needs a bug bounty of $1000 to cover the development time"


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## drhowarddrfine (Sep 2, 2020)

ralphbsz said:


> Actually, a detailed technical discussion of the form "I just found that operating system X has this nice feature", or "Operating system Y does ABC better than FreeBSD because..." would be welcome.


Yep. What happens so often is that someone comes along and just blurts out some point with no direction known--like how this started. Over the almost two decades, we haven't had so many threads start like this that weren't flame bait till a few years ago. Now everything starts to look that way.


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## kpedersen (Sep 2, 2020)

ralphbsz said:


> the FoobarBSD desktop makes me feel all warm when I pee on myself



Haha. A very relevant example


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## 20-100-2fe (Sep 3, 2020)

richardtoohey2 said:


> But - do those people (committers) read these forums?



Frankly, it doesn't make any difference. I've been on the mailing lists (where those people are supposed to be) and ideas (not only mine) are received the same way as here.


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## BostonBSD (Mar 17, 2021)

Deleted member 63539 said:


> I created the thread after watching WWE. I'm not an English speaker not I'm good at English. I encountered the word "contender" on the WWE show and found the word is cool so I just pick it up and use it.


This is the greatest quote I have ever read.  So when you're at work and someone irritates you do you say "lets get ready to ruuuummmmmmbbbbbblleeeeeee!"


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## Deleted member 30996 (Mar 17, 2021)

Deleted member 63539 said:


> I created the thread after watching WWE. I'm not an English speaker not I'm good at English. I encountered the word "contender" on the WWE show and found the word is cool so I just pick it up and use it. Please pardon me for my lack of English vocabulary, everyone. BTW, what is the correct word to use?


I wrastling terminology, FreeBSD would be the "Face", or "BabyFace" (the Good Guy) and Linux would be the "heel", (the Bad Guy). 

Tux Tapioca pudding after I put the Sleeper on him.

I would consider NetBSD a "branch" of BSD.


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