NetBSD 11.1 Released With Security Fixes & Other Improvements
Following the release of NetBSD 11.0 in August, NetBSD 11.1 is out today with a collection of security fixes and other improvements⦠ā Read more
NetBSD Adds Alternative Text Editor To vi & xedit For Easing New Users
NetBSD-current has added a new command line text editor to its base set of packages for helping out new users as an alternative to their vi and xedit editors currently included⦠ā Read more
@aelaraji@aelaraji.com Thatās true. You learn the most about something when youāre constantly exposed to it.
I canāt bring myself to fully switch to NetBSD or OpenBSD, either. š Not yet. This takes time.
Iām not aware that OpenBSD has an explicit āno AIā policy like NetBSD, but, uhm, the song for the 8.0 release makes it pretty clear. š
@kamme@twtxt.thanatos.be herbstluftwm! I havenāt had much luck with netbsd (skill issues). I had given it a try in a VM, ~4 years ago, and managed to brick it in less than a week xD The sad thing though, was deleting the VM. missing out on an opportunity to boot in single user mode and try fixing my mess.
There appears to be a rush a disgruntled Linux users switching to NetBSD:
https://mastodon.sdf.org/@netbsd/117451701775023949
They even got a ton of new donations (which, funnily, broke their little progress bar):

https://cannot.understand.computer/kunev/p/1791449917.947134
So⦠donations for @netbsd@netbsd over the last few years look like this:
2020 - $46k 2021 - $52k 2022 - $44k 2023 - $60k 2024 - $40k 2025 - $79kAnd in 2026 $120k so far!
And why is all that? Because of this:
Do not commit tainted code to the repository.
If you commit code that was not written by yourself, double check that the license on that code permits import into the NetBSD source repository, and permits free distribution. Check with the author(s) of the code, make sure that they were the sole author of the code and verify with them that they did not copy any other code.
Code generated by a large language model or similar technology, such as GitHub/Microsoftās Copilot, OpenAIās ChatGPT, or Facebook/Metaās Code Llama, is presumed to be tainted code, and must not be committed without prior written approval by core.
https://www.netbsd.org/developers/commit-guidelines.html
This official guideline is much more ātameā and ādiplomaticā than the overall āvibeā (sic) on the Fediverse: NetBSD basically says no to AI as much as possible.
And, apparently, this attracts lots of users and donors. Maybe thereās still some hope after all?
/dev/ulpt0. The netbook doesnāt have a parallel port, so this must be done over USB. NetBSD.escp was created by a little custom ESC/P converter written in C. š„³
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Yeah, the partition stuff with disklabels is what Iām absolutely not used to. I need to invest more time learning this. Not just using it, but how and where is it represented on disk and all that.
I carry my notebook/netbook around a lot. š Watching movies in bed, for example.
I think Iāll stick with NetBSD for a while. It works surprisingly well, itās new stuff to explore, itās fast, and then thereās this:
https://mastodon.sdf.org/@netbsd/112446618914747900
Gentoo (https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Council/AI_policy) might be another idea, but Iām afraid that the little netbook might be too slow for that? Or are there binary packages? No idea, itās been ages since I touched this distro.
(Regarding Linux in general ⦠we all know what Linus said. Iām not sure where this project is heading.)
/dev/ulpt0. The netbook doesnāt have a parallel port, so this must be done over USB. NetBSD.escp was created by a little custom ESC/P converter written in C. š„³
@movq@www.uninformativ.de Cool shit! I also just read your report on installing NetBSD. What a journey. So, you still need to know what youāre doing. But if you make it foolproof, the world invents a new idiot. :-)
I also use an ethernet cable everywhere. Itās just what Iām used to for decades and I donāt carry around my laptop in the house anyway. It stays on the desk.
So, next up FreeBSD? ;-)
Just some light Sunday afternoon entertainment: Printing from NetBSD on the dotmatrix printer by dumping data to /dev/ulpt0. The netbook doesnāt have a parallel port, so this must be done over USB. NetBSD.escp was created by a little custom ESC/P converter written in C. š„³
https://movq.de/v/14b09c47a5/print-small.mp4
Video description:
Video begins with a view of the netbookās screen: 3 windows are open, one of them showing the typical NetBSD logo to print, the other one shows the commands I ran in preparation:
magick /usr/X11R7/include/X11/pixmaps/NetBSD.xpm -depth 8 -alpha set /tmp/NetBSD.pam ./pam2escp /tmp/NetBSD.pam /tmp/NetBSD.escpThe other terminal shows a root shell with this command:
cat /tmp/NetBSD.escp >/dev/ulpt0I hit Enter, the printer starts printing.
Camera pans to show the printer, an Oki ML 3390. Continuous paper. Once finished, I manually feed the paper a little bit to better show the result.
(If you turn up the volume enough, you can hear āLeavingā by āChill Carrierā from 2008.)
NetBSD 9.5 Released To Cap Off The Series
NetBSD 9.5 released today as the final release of the NetBSD 9 stable branch⦠ā Read more
NetBSD 11.0 Released With RISC-V Support, Enhanced Linux System Call Compatibility
NetBSD 11.0 officially shipped today as the nineteenth major release of this popular BSD operating system⦠ā Read more
NetBSD 11.0-RC4 Comes As Hopefully The Last Release Candidate
In addition to FreeBSD 15.1 releasing in the coming weeks, NetBSD 11.0 is also just around the corner as another prominent and major BSD update. NetBSD 11.0-RC4 is now available for last minute testing with this hoping to be the final release candidate⦠ā Read more
NetBSD 11.0 Nears Release With RC3 Released For Testing
For the better part of the past year NetBSD developers have been preparing for the NetBSD 11.0 release and in February NetBSD 11.0-RC1 released followed by 11.0-RC2 and now a third release candidate was announced today⦠ā Read more
NetBSD 11.0-RC2 Released For Testing
The big NetBSD 11.0 release continues on approach with NetBSD 11.0-RC2 having been released as the latest test candidate⦠ā Read more
NetBSD 11.0-RC1 Available For Testing With Enhanced Linux Emulation
The first release candidate of the big NetBSD 11.0 release is now available for testing⦠ā Read more
NetBSDās Kernel Supports Lua Scripting But Donāt Look For Rust In There Anytime Soon
For those not fond of the increasing use of the Rust programming language within the Linux kernel or FreeBSDās considerations for Rust in its kernel, you can perhaps find refuge within NetBSD. One of the NetBSD developers has explained why you likely wonāt be finding Rust code within the NetBSD kernel anytime soon⦠ā Read more
@shinyoukai@neko.laidback.moe Yes; however the interpreter is also platform dependent and relies on making raw syscalls. This is so the runtime semantics remain the same between the two execution modes.
Iāll see if I can add support for linux/amd64 and netbsd/amd64 for the VM at least.
Shin'ya M. > ./bin/mu
panic: native backend does not support syscall platform netbsd/amd64
goroutine 1 [running]:
git.mills.io/prologic/mu/internal/native/arm64.init.0()
/home/shinyoukai/mu/internal/native/arm64/emitter.go:45 +0x7bf
ā¦that was supposed to be the interpreter?
@prologic@twtxt.net well I ran into a panic() in netbsd/amd64 so thereās that
os.UserCacheDir(), it seems that the Go devs hasn't acknowledged the $XDG_DATA_DIR yet
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org You could always take a peek at the Go source
Posted from mikuru/0.0.3 @ NetBSD amd64
In the NetBSD host, where http://status.chaotic.ninja is running (left out the TLS for now), I patched Gatus to use mattn/go-sqlite3
Side effects of having a NetBSD server: I can use it to build things for my computer (also running NetBSD)
```-/oshdmNMNdhyo+:-`
y/s+:-`` `.-:+oydNMMMMNhs/-``
-m+NMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMNdhmNMMMmdhs+/-`
-m+NMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMmy+:`
-N/dMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMds:`
-N/hMMMMMMMMMmho:`
-N/-:/++/:.`
:M+
:Mo
:Ms
:Ms
:Ms
:Ms
:Ms
:Ms
:Ms
:Ms
shinyoukai@madoka-usb-mk2
-------------------------
OS: NetBSD 10.1 amd64
Host: Exomate X352 (MP PV)
Kernel: NetBSD 10.1
Uptime: 8 hours, 46 mins
Packages: 172 (pkgsrc)
Shell: sh
Display (CPT1BBD): 1024x600 @ 60 Hz in 10"
Terminal: vim
CPU: Intel(R) Atom(TM) N450 (2) @ 1.67 GHz
GPU 1: Intel Device A011 (VGA compatible)
GPU 2: Intel Device A012
Memory: 761.14 MiB / 955.69 MiB (80%)
Swap: Disabled
Disk (/): 5.20 GiB / 26.84 GiB (19%) - ffs
Local IP (iwn0): (classified information)
Battery: 28% [Charging, AC Connected]
Locale: C.UTF-8
Iāve rebuilt ntfy with the web interface, though it took me an hour or so of JavaScript dependency hell and a certain library whose native interface doesnāt have support for NetBSD
On Linux:Step 1. Clone ntfy repository as usual
Step 2.
export NODE_ENV=productionStep 3.
make web-buildStep 4. Make a tarball with the generated assets and copy it over
Step 5. Repeat the above mentioned first step
Step 6. Unpack the assets into
server/Step 7. Build backend with
make cli-linux-serverStep 8. Done
https://github.com/TritonDataCenter/pkgsrc/wiki/pkgdev:creating build a netbsd pkgsrc package
A critical look at NetBSDāsĀ installer
NetBSD is an OS that I installed only a couple of times over the years, so Iām not very familiar with its installer, sysinst. This fact was actually what led to this article (or the whole series rather): Talking to a NetBSD developer at EuroBSDcon 2023, I mentioned my impression that NetBSD was harder to install than it needed to be. He was interested in my perspective as a relative newcomer, and so I promised to take a closer look and write about it. While ⦠ā Read more
Harpoom: of course the Apple Network Server can be hacked into running Doom
Of course you can run Doom on a $10,000+ Apple server running IBM AIX. Of course you can. Well, you can now. Now, letās go ahead and get the grumbling out of the way. No, the ANS is not running Linux or NetBSD. No, this is not a backport of NCommanderās AIX Doom, because that runs on AIX 4.3. The Apple Network Server could run no version of AIX later than 4.1.5 and there are substan ⦠ā Read more
https://github.com/outpaddling/desktop-installer freebsd netbsd openbsd postinstall script
Exploring the (discontinued) hybrid Debian GNU/kFreeBSD distribution
For decades, Linux and BSD have stood as two dominant yet fundamentally different branches of the Unix-like operating system world. While Linux distributions, such as Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora, have grown to dominate the open-source ecosystem, BSD-based systems like FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD have remained the preferred choice for those seeking security, performance, and licensing flexibility. ⦠ā Read more
NetBSD on a JavaStation
Back when Java was still a new programming language, Sun had the idea of building a computer specifically designed for Java, unique processor running byte-code as its native machine code and all. This whole endeavour proved to be more complicated than Sun had hoped, and as such, they eventually abandoned the idea of a Java processor in favour of plain SPARC. When the JavaStation shipped, it was a regular SPARC workstation without a hard drive, running something called JavaOS from fla ⦠ā Read more
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-75TQMbar1Y #NetBSD for the advanced minimalist. A interesting talk to get work done with only a $100 #pinebook
386BSD hates me (& NetBSD does too)
Listen now (18 min) | The Lunduke Journal of Technology Podcast - Feb 15, 2023 ā Read more
Linux, Alternative OS, & Retro Computing News - Aug 27, 2022
Linuxās birthday, Windows 95ās birthday, NetBSD, Zelda 3 in C++, & new Dell Linux laptop ā Read more
http://www.mewburn.net/luke/papers/rc.d.pdf netbsd rc.d
Stop caring about how -e works: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/tech-userlevel/2016/02/29/msg009700.html