What is the difference between NetBSD and other BSD flavors?

Posted in: s/NetBSD

🚀 stack

2023-08-27 · 9 months ago · 👍 Addison, norayr, coderwx, pkitz

12 Comments ↓

😺 gemalaya · 2023-08-27 at 20:23:

NetBSD is highly portable, it runs on a lot of platforms.

🦀 jeang3nie · 2023-08-27 at 20:50:

NetBSD famously focuses on portability, but there's a bit more to it than that.

Of the three largest BSD projects, the NetBSD is probably the one that has diverged the least from the original 386BSD code in a lot of places. This makes the code pretty interesting in a number of ways. If you're looking to import some BSD code into another OS, the NetBSD code is the best place to start as it will usually be closest to POSIX and have the least extensions. That's from my own experience, having ported a number of BSD utilities to Linux.

One of the interesting projects that originated in NetBSD is the rump kernel, which allows debugging drivers or even entire kernel subsystems running in user space. That's primarily of interest if you're a developer of course.

Another cool NetBSD project is pkgsrc, the NetBSD ports tree. Pkgsrc runs not only one NetBSD but on just about any Unix like system. Linux, Solaris, all of the BSD's, Minix and HP Unix are all supported. Pkgsrc developers do a lot to find portability issues in third party software and push patches upstream. They're unsung heroes in that regard really.

As for what it's like to run it on a daily basis it's very similar to running Linux or FreeBSD. Most of the same software is available with the exception of Gnome and Plasma desktops, which I wouldn't miss. I would caution that it shouldn't be judged based on it's performance in a virtual machine, which is abismal. It's fine on physical hardware though.

🦀 jeang3nie · 2023-08-27 at 20:56:

I forgot to mention two other really cool things. You can cross compile the NetBSD base system for any supported architecture from any Unix system with a relatively modern compiler, and you can cross compile Pkgsrc packages for a different architecture of your running NetBSD. I read a blog post from a guy last year who had gotten hooked of an old Vax workstation and brought a full NetBSD system up on it using his x86_64 desktop machine to do the heavy lifting. Really cool stuff.

🐐 drh3xx · 2023-08-28 at 13:05:

Major 4 in summary have focuses of: FreeBSD performance and wide hardware compatability, NetBSD portability, OpenBSD security and DragonflyBSD heavy multithreading/performance.

🚀 stack [OP] · 2023-08-28 at 13:11:

Thank you. I've been on a lifelong quest to simplify my environment, and Linux is getting pretty fat. While I use Xubuntu for everything, I often dream of going lower - I was thinking Arch or Void, but BSD seems like a nice no-bullshit solution...

😺 gemalaya · 2023-08-28 at 13:33:

Void Linux is a great compromise, and is systemd-free. If you pay attention to what you install, void will give you as much control as what you get with any of the *BSDs

🚀 stack [OP] · 2023-08-28 at 14:29:

@gemalaya: thanks, void has always been at the top of the list for me... Currently struggling to figure out why PCManFM defaults to opening files with Emacs instead of Vim... This kind of time waste really drives me nuts.

🦀 jeang3nie · 2023-08-28 at 15:54:

Void is the only Linux distro I'm currently using for anything. It runs the raspberry pi that serves my capsule, and is on my Dell laptop so I can play steam games sometimes (dual booted with FreeBSD). It's a great distro. The other Linux I'd use if not Void would be Alpine. Similar vibe.

While I use FrreeBSD as my daily driver, there's a lot of Gemini folk using OpenBSD and they all have great things to say about it.

😺 gemalaya · 2023-08-28 at 16:49:

@stack This is managed by xdg-utils. Look into the "xdg-mime" command, it will tell you (and let you change) which program the system will use by default to open a certain type of file. For example, to know which program will open PNG files, run:

And xdg-mime of course lets you change which program opens what:

🍵 innerteapot · 2023-08-30 at 03:01:

One reason I used NetBSD, in the past, was because I wanted to run the same compatible OS on a number of different older machines (PC, mac68k, VAX, Sun).

🚀 stack [OP] · 2023-10-01 at 23:33:

Is there a simple way to default all text to vim?

This is turning into a nightmare. Setting text/plain to vim.desktop invokes a weirdly different Vim, one that assumes 24x80 display and pollutes the screen. Maybe DWM has something to do with this.

looking for vim.desktop reveals 6 different files. The most likely, in use/share/applications, is a very long file (5K) with all kinds of crap, but seems to list vim as executable. But when it runs, it looks different, fonts, weird sizing issues. I don't have gvim installed...

Please tell me BSD does not use this idiocy and I will switch today.

Although it may have something to do with how pcmanfm sets up the environment prior to invoking vim... I should install mc instead, since I like dual fms

🚀 stack [OP] · 2023-10-11 at 02:22:

Thank you for your input. I switched to FreeBSD and am pretty happy.