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  • Colin Gordoncsgordon@discuss.systems
    Oct 28, 2026, 3:48 PM

    So yesterday I learned via several posts here that #NetBSD has a persistent live USB image for x86-64. Seems to work pretty much like you'd hope: find out right away if your hardware works, kick the tires for a bit without committing to a full install, try it on different machines if you have options. Log in as root, run startx, and it's like a fresh install. Only odd thing is an extra remote after resizing to use the whole USB stick.

    It's like a throwback to Knoppix CDs of old. (But those weren't persistent; you can actually install packages and stuff on this and they stick around)

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  • technomancytechnomancy@hey.hagelb.org
    Oct 28, 2026, 9:08 PM

    @csgordon this sounds cool, but I couldn't find it mentioned on the web site

    do you have a link? wonder why it's not documented clearly

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  • Colin Gordoncsgordon@discuss.systems
    Oct 28, 2026, 10:36 PM

    @passthejoe @technomancy yeah I'm also puzzled why is not more visible. @netbsd is there a reason the live USB image isn't advertised? That sort of thing is incredibly useful for people checking things out, and it already exists!

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  • NetBSD Foundation 🚩netbsd@mastodon.sdf.org
    Oct 28, 2026, 11:10 PM

    @csgordon @passthejoe @technomancy Possibly because we already have lots of images listed on release pages (amd64 live image is linked under "various" or "more") and the regular install image can also be used to drop into a shell and check hardware support, and can install to a USB stick just fine.

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  • Colin Gordoncsgordon@discuss.systems
    Oct 28, 2026, 11:39 PM

    @netbsd @passthejoe @technomancy I agree those things are technically true, but also not the whole story.

    One of the big things is X11: people want to know if their graphics card is supported, and lack of support (something it sounds like a surprising number of people are bumping into these days as more people check it out) sucks to hit after working out the install process. Vs booting from USB, typing startx, and finding out. Or being able to set up the live USB with things like a web browser, and then being able to try it out on a different machine that only has Internet via wifi with a captive portal, which I don't believe you can get around using anything from the install image. (I did this today.)

    This is part of why Knoppix was big back in the day, My own segue to the BSDs was facilitated by GhostBSD years ago.

    Lack of live USB wouldn't have deterred me, but I've gotten paid to write kernel code, and I've been installing Linux and BSDs of all forms since the 90s, including Linux from Scratch and bootstrapped Gentoo. So even though it's not technically groundbreaking, I think making the live image more visible will help more people get into NetBSD.

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