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I'm a huge *BSD fan, and I know one of the amazing things about NetBSD is that it's been ported to everything.. but an OS which is ported everywhere but runs no
by frellus 4y ago
I'm a huge *BSD fan, and I know one of the amazing things about NetBSD is that it's been ported to everything.. but an OS which is ported everywhere but runs no where in production feels like a really quirky project to me.
Likewise, OpenBSD, FreeBSD will have some adoption (vs Linux, Windows) on the server front, but I worry they won't win the hearts and minds of developers unless there is a solid and modern laptop solution -- this obviously requires developers who are able to get things working.
Before everyone jumps in and says they're running *BSD on their laptop, I'm talking about a modern laptop, and being able to develop on it. I recently tried to install FreeBSD onto a modern laptop (Dell XPS) and it totally failed in every way possible. No power/sleep control, fans blasting, CPU burning through my desktop, and I hadn't even gotten to the wifi and video support to get X working. On Reddit I was essentially told it wasn't worth the pain.
- anthk 4y agoEach BSD has nothing to do which each other.
- rjsw 4y agoI'm a NetBSD developer but I don't have a recent x86 laptop, it is only in the last year that packages like Firefox and LibreOffice have got too big to run on my old laptop and I have started to think about buying a newer one, everything works fine on the old one. People fix the problems that they see, but if developers don't have a need to buy new stuff for themselves then newer systems won't get support.
- anthk 4y agoLariza (webkit2gtk4 browser, head to https://uninformativ.de https://uninformativ.de or gopher://uninformativ.de from Lynx ) runs fast enough under OpenBSD i386 base Intel Atom n270 netbook with 1GB of RAM and an Intel 945 iGPU with GL 1.4. Take that as a reference.
- xvilka 4y agoI recently thought it would be awesome to have DragonFly BSD working on Raspberry Pi (or any other modern ARMv8 machine) but it's not implemented yet - there is a small code bounty[1] but I would be happy to extend it for a couple $k. If you would be willing to help or know someone - feel free to contact me or leave a comment. [1] https://www.dragonflybsd.org/docs/developer/Code_Bounties/#index9h2 https://www.dragonflybsd.org/docs/developer/Code_Bounties/#i...
- jmclnx 4y agoI wonder what your definition of a "modern laptop" laptop is ? I have a T420 with NetBSD on it and it runs perfect (on it now), I doubt I would see a difference with a modern laptop, no matter what the OS is. My other Laptop is a Thinkpad W541, it is pulled apart so I can thermal paste and clean it, that has BSD on it too. These both cost far less then what a brand new Laptop would cost and they serve me perfectly. But I am not a gamer, except for games like nethack, so maybe running fancy 3d games may be tough, but for everything else, these are fine.
- anthk 4y agoSlashem is cool, too. And IF games like Anchorhead or All things devours. On 3D games, I run OBSD under an Atom n270, 1GB RAM, crappy GMA. Scummvm supports Blade Runner and much more. Soon the Resident Evil 1-3 games will run under that. MPV and yt-dlp are capped to 420@30, but it opens 720@30 h264 vids fine. So, no need for GL > 1.4.
- frellus 4y agoBy "modern" I am thinking: * something which an IT department would likely hand out for a Windows 10 user * good screen size (13"+), good resolution/brightness to work off * certainly oesn't have to be a gaming laptop, certainly, but something which is performant * a model released in the past 3 years maybe? * weight != a brick Not trying to be contentious, it's just my viewpoint -- and I'm probably a minority; I'd just say that probably the BSD user base would grow if there was a focus like this
- antod 4y agoMy personal definition of a "modern laptop" would be having USB-C ports. Bonus points for Thunderbolt 3 or later.
- t-3 4y agoMy 2021 XPS 13 runs OpenBSD flawlessly, and has since I got it (ok, I did need to fix one line of a case statement in iwx.c for a few months).
- frellus 4y agoThis is really encouraging -- can you share your specs / model number (I know XPS 13, but there is usually a model number as well). Cheers!
- t-3 4y ago9310. i71185G7 16G RAM, it came with Ubuntu, but I immediately replaced the SSD with a 1TB Samsung (and put the SSD in my Pinebook Pro).
- frellus 4y agoThanks! Sweet! I might pick up the same.
- t-3 4y agoI can't really recommend it, the keyboard is really bad, the keyboard backlight makes the keys harder to read, the backlight (on the LCD monitor anyway) is both too dim in the sun and too bright in the dark. Battery life is pretty good though (10-12 hours on Linux, ~8 on OpenBSD).
- anthk 4y agoCheck Solene's obsdfreqd for OpenBSD. Follow the instructions and install it.