Maybe not yet but I can see Linux's place as the shitbox saviour start slipping a bit in the next few years. Debian dropping x86, distros getting fatter in general.. I can't really see those trends reversing. Meanwhile NetBSD goes against them.
However it goes, the main issue is one no operating system can solve which is modern life relying on the Web and beefier browsers. Unless you want to rebel against that you're probably better off getting a laptop from the past 10 years for < £100 on eBay.
Although I agree with beefier browsers, I also want to say that there are browsers like dillo etc. which can be good enough for simple websites and also not everything needs a web browser to be usable
Imagine this, a system which can watch movies, edit texts, create disks, have curl/wget, send and recieve files using piping server (which is a curl thing) , view pdfs, mpv and what not, a desktop manager, file manager etc.
As someone hacking around with the legendary tiny core linux, I am more and more mind blown each day with just how much can happen in 14-21 MB, you can definitely build a mini self hosting rack with just some remastering as tinycore can actually run podman as well (combine this with alpine containers to create a super duper minimalist self hosting things too)
the possibilities are endless. When I ran tiny core linux on my pc and ran nothing else, It took 21 mb in ram for a whole gui with editors and file managers etc. all running in ram so super fast filesystem with a package manager
I personally wanted to build my own operating system to limit myself to the most minimal system so taht I just study and do nothing else, I thought tiny core was it but then I tried to hack around it and there are sooooo many things in 21 mb, makes me appreciate minimalism
How is TLS negotiation and transport on older hardware (with no AES-NI hardware acceleration)?
I remember it used to be expensive as heck to do TLS back in 2014~, so much so that we bought accelerator cards and segmented "secure" servers so that load wouldn't hit the ordinary browsing of our sites...
The argument for NetBSD is that it runs on almost anything that was ever produced. That isn't the case for Linux, even older x86 is no longer supported in the mainline.
Linux (the kernel) may have been ported to more machines and architectures than NetBSD’s kernel, yes. But is all the code present in the same source tree or do you have to go find patch sets or unofficial branches?
More importantly: is there a modern distribution that builds an installable system for that platform?
The special thing about NetBSD is that you get the portability out of a single and modern tree for many more platforms than any single Linux distribution offers.
What do you think, there are milions of people or companies running NetBSD on 486 to protect the planet from e-waste? How many times have you replaced your phone with a newer model in the last 10 years?
I think they were talking about physical computers ending up in landfills.
Edit: nvmd, I see this account was created 20 minutes ago and has only low-effort comments attacking BSD. I've never understood how people can develop such negative feelings about technologies.
unleaded|4 months ago
However it goes, the main issue is one no operating system can solve which is modern life relying on the Web and beefier browsers. Unless you want to rebel against that you're probably better off getting a laptop from the past 10 years for < £100 on eBay.
Imustaskforhelp|4 months ago
Imagine this, a system which can watch movies, edit texts, create disks, have curl/wget, send and recieve files using piping server (which is a curl thing) , view pdfs, mpv and what not, a desktop manager, file manager etc.
As someone hacking around with the legendary tiny core linux, I am more and more mind blown each day with just how much can happen in 14-21 MB, you can definitely build a mini self hosting rack with just some remastering as tinycore can actually run podman as well (combine this with alpine containers to create a super duper minimalist self hosting things too)
the possibilities are endless. When I ran tiny core linux on my pc and ran nothing else, It took 21 mb in ram for a whole gui with editors and file managers etc. all running in ram so super fast filesystem with a package manager
I personally wanted to build my own operating system to limit myself to the most minimal system so taht I just study and do nothing else, I thought tiny core was it but then I tried to hack around it and there are sooooo many things in 21 mb, makes me appreciate minimalism
dijit|4 months ago
I remember it used to be expensive as heck to do TLS back in 2014~, so much so that we bought accelerator cards and segmented "secure" servers so that load wouldn't hit the ordinary browsing of our sites...
p_ing|4 months ago
jmmv|4 months ago
Linux (the kernel) may have been ported to more machines and architectures than NetBSD’s kernel, yes. But is all the code present in the same source tree or do you have to go find patch sets or unofficial branches?
More importantly: is there a modern distribution that builds an installable system for that platform?
The special thing about NetBSD is that you get the portability out of a single and modern tree for many more platforms than any single Linux distribution offers.
kakwa_|4 months ago
Some architectures are no longer practical with Linux. The kernel might still support it, but distribution support is sketchy.
For a SPARC64 server refurb project, the choices were pretty much OpenBSD or NetBSD in my case.
pabs3|4 months ago
xhkkffbf|4 months ago
xyproto|4 months ago
ptrwis|4 months ago
timeon|4 months ago
Once, after accident.
iberator|4 months ago
Its also one of few OSes where 32-bit 386 is still tier 1 release.
All from single code source code tree.
xyproto|4 months ago
atomic_princess|4 months ago
[deleted]
rfrey|4 months ago
Edit: nvmd, I see this account was created 20 minutes ago and has only low-effort comments attacking BSD. I've never understood how people can develop such negative feelings about technologies.
jamesnorden|4 months ago