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  • Nina Kalininanina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt
    Oct 17, 2026, 9:02 AM

    @davidgerard I used to be mad/fuming about that too, until I realised the whole GPU support in NetBSD is basically done by a single unpaid volunteer. And same can be said about their WiFi stack, or their hardware virtualization. And then their entire budget for everything last year was less than 10% of what Meta or Google would spend on a single engineer supporting Linux - and megacorps have hundreds of engineers contributing to Linux.

    Then it became clear to me that this is a miracle and incredible and this project and these people need more support and appreciation.

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Replies

  • Ken Milmorekbm0@mastodon.social
    Oct 17, 2026, 9:17 AM

    @nina_kali_nina @davidgerard I've always thought the real problem is that host bus interfaces are excessively balkanised. Once you get a good standard interface like, say, AHCI, you need fewer bespoke drivers and new devices become naturally compatible. The PC world has always suffered from this over-reliance on drivers, but we've got used to it being less of a problem because of the enormous development effort put into Linux.

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  • Eggs now in different baskets.the_wub@mastodon.social
    Oct 17, 2026, 12:44 PM

    @jspath55 @nina_kali_nina @davidgerard And that is a problem because?

    To me it is a bit like "we now have more than enough money to fix the roof so we are going to get someone in to decorate our living room".

    It is also a very positive way for the NetBSD project to reinforce their stance on AI contributions.

    It also makes human artists know that they and their skills are still appreciated.

    Just like some folk appreciate developers still writing code in the "manual" way.

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  • Cassandrichdalias@hachyderm.io
    Oct 17, 2026, 3:25 PM

    @jspath55 @the_wub @nina_kali_nina @davidgerard@circumstances.run Paying humans to do something that betters the community, even if it's not the thing you would have preferred, is way better than the norm:

    Paying for slop tokens, hardware, hosting, proprietary tooling, SaaS, CI, etc.

    It's capitalist management brainrot, the idea of being willing to pay for anything that's not human labor, especially if you can pretend it's capex rather than taking on new liabilities.

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  • ltningltning@anduin.net
    Oct 17, 2026, 9:56 AM
    @nina_kali_nina So much this. And the enthusiasm with which they do it .. amazing. Like all the BSDs, really. EuroBSDCon is such an energy boost, makes me briefly optimistic about the future.

    Cc @davidgerard
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  • Eggs now in different baskets.the_wub@mastodon.social
    Oct 17, 2026, 10:23 AM

    @nina_kali_nina @davidgerard The level of corporate contributions to the Linux codebase has been a concern for me for some time.

    It seems to me that "embrace, extend, extinguish" has been going on for some time in relation to Linux.

    Single solutions such as "Wayland everywhere" and "systemd is the only true way" are now the norm instead of the "choose what you want" freedom of the past. (Now only offered by projects such as MX Linux).

    Maybe this will be the year of the NetBSD desktop.

    🙃

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  • Michael BaconMichaelTBacon@social.coop
    Oct 17, 2026, 10:36 AM

    @nina_kali_nina @davidgerard

    The thing to me is that NetBSD for decades I've seen NetBSD as the FOSS project least focused on desktop development. Sure, you could put together a computer that would run it, but it's like running Linux on the desktop in the 90s, you had to check your hardware compatibility lists really carefully.

    NetBSD was designed to run *nix-style server processes on every damned thing under the sun, and it was amazing at that. It's completely unsurprising that it's not ready for its closeup for desktop use.

    Which raises a question. When the 386BSD project split long, long ago, FreeBSD was the one that was going to focus on PC-style hardware while NetBSD focused on running everywhere. Is there a reason people aren't switching to FreeBSD instead of Linux? Did they already go vibe coding in the kernel too or something?

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  • Nina Kalininanina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt
    Oct 17, 2026, 10:41 AM

    @MichaelTBacon @davidgerard correct, FreeBSD allows LLM in the codebase. Doesn't seem to be as unhinged as Linux, and without sponsorship from OpenAI and Google (just Meta).

    Edit: to clarify, OpenAI and Anthropic are major sponsors for Linux; Google is powering an LLM "agent" for the Linux kernel. Meta is listed as a sponsor for FreeBSD (which is hopefully a good thing, they literally have a trillion bucks, they better be giving it away to open source, but can be risky too)

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  • Michael BaconMichaelTBacon@social.coop
    Oct 17, 2026, 10:51 AM

    @nina_kali_nina @davidgerard

    Thanks, that's clarifying. I assume there's similar concerns about OpenBSD? Or does it just have the same hardware compatibility issues as NetBSD?

    (I'm so clearly out of the loop these days on FOSS OS politics . . . )

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  • Nina Kalininanina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt
    Oct 17, 2026, 10:59 AM

    @MichaelTBacon @davidgerard OpenBSD stated that LLM-written code is likely incompatible with their license, and thus won't be accepted, but they seemed to pull a few LLM-authored commits from the upstream. OpenBSD has better hardware compatibility than NetBSD, but it intentionally does not support Wine, and its emulation capabilities are quite limited (hardware acceleration is only limited to headless guests, and it's not trivial to even run Linux as a guest).

    Out of other BSDs, DragonflyBSD and MidnightBSD allow AI usage and have LLM-authored commits.

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  • Nina Kalininanina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt
    Oct 17, 2026, 11:02 AM

    @mooooooo @davidgerard tbh this is how Linux became what it became; Linus nuked his Minix install and kept using Linux, even if it was broken.

    As a person with osdev experience, I'd say this is a huge motivational factor for making things work on your hardware. You get the basics working (shell, text editor, disk, some networking) and you go from there.

    (For clarity: obviously that won't work for 99.999% people)

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  • Moses Izumi (he/him)moses_izumi@fe.disroot.org
    Oct 17, 2026, 11:15 AM
    @nina_kali_nina @mooooooo @davidgerard
    I don't see "install NetBSD NOW!!!" catching on unless it offers a default install that contains a rich GUI and read+write Linux/Windows/Mac disks.
    A known-good copy of Wine might be nice as an optional extra.

    this is what I was on about when I joked about Linux Mint offering a NetBSD Edition.
    (it's a Ubuntu offshoot, but it also offers a Debian-based version because the team doesn't entirely trust the Ubuntu company's judgement)
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  • Nina Kalininanina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt
    Oct 17, 2026, 11:44 AM

    @moses_izumi @davidgerard @mooooooo I want to mention that there's Gnome and KDE, and there's Wine packaged for NetBSD. FS is, sadly, read-only except for a few basic formats like extFat or ext2. It could be tough/not enough for people not ready to tinker with their computers, but we're talking here on Mastodon, right?

    Also, there used to be Debian/kNetBSD and Debian/kFreeBSD, and now there's AlpineBSD that is just getting started.

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  • Techokamitechokami@woof.tech
    Oct 17, 2026, 2:57 PM

    @nina_kali_nina @moses_izumi @davidgerard @mooooooo one key problem is that, while there are packages for these DEs, there are no CLEAR instructions on actually getting them to work. And even with the sparse documentation for XFCE, there are still critical issues (follow The Guide and you get a black screen because the command to launch XFCE also tries to launch X.Org again, causing a conflict and thus kaboom)

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  • Techokamitechokami@woof.tech
    Oct 17, 2026, 3:09 PM

    @nina_kali_nina @moses_izumi @davidgerard @mooooooo Or at least some sensible, simple instructions to go from NetBSD install media to KDE Plasma desktop. Won't be as "fire and forget" as a desktop distribution but would give the same end results.
    Case in point: on my NetBSD install I did install SDDM and KDE Plasma, but I have no clue how to actually get either of them going in place of XDM and CTWM.

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  • Nina Kalininanina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt
    Oct 17, 2026, 3:14 PM

    @techokami in case of NetBSD, the pkgsrc is not the part of the distribution, and thus the documentation is expected to be provided by the package maintainers. Some packages do that, e.g. wine package will show a (very easy to miss!!!) post-install message that will explain how to make it work. I think package maintainers are generally friendly and might offer an advice in this case. And I'm sure that this pkgsrc vs system behaviour is documented somewhere but it would be great if users were not expected to read if not the handbook then afterboot from the beginning to the end. It probably would have to have more blogs and guides out there, too.

    @moses_izumi @davidgerard @mooooooo

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  • David Gerarddavidgerard@circumstances.run
    Oct 17, 2026, 11:10 AM

    @nina_kali_nina the key reason i moved from freebsd to ubuntu in 2005 was that my software was increasingly linux binaries under compat and they didn't work so great

    pity cos as a unix, freebsd is vastly less infuriating than linux, and i can quite believe netbsd is even less so

    also wine is necessary to me

    this shit is why my phone runs stock android, so i can run the shit i need

    fucking computers

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  • Nina Kalininanina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt
    Oct 17, 2026, 12:01 PM

    @nyankat there's no single source of information, unfortunately. A few reports can be gathered from NetBSD wiki or from sites like bsd-hardware.info/

    The major things to think about/things that commonly might not work as expected are:

    • GPU,
    • wifi/networking,
    • power saving features on laptops.

    In case of GPU and WiFi, NetBSD wiki is the source of truth. Another option is to get a live image on a USB stick and see for yourself

    Cc @davidgerard

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