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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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