5 ms·

Research carried out using NetBSD

104 points by Bluestein 2mo ago

bch 2mo ago
Microsoft brought up an new processor[0][1][2] with NetBSD... [0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=52407 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=524... [1] https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/emips/ https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/emips/ [2] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/an-online-scheduler-for-hardware-accelerators-on-general-purpose-operating-systems/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/an-onli...
- tosti 2mo ago
  There's the Installing Linux on a dead badger HOWTO, but NetBSD actually runs everywhere for realsies. It's also lovely to work with and has the nicest man pages imho.
  - andai 2mo ago
    lol, how am I only hearing about this now? Installing Linux on a dead badger https://strangehorizons.com/wordpress/non-fiction/articles/installing-linux-on-a-dead-badger-users-notes/ https://strangehorizons.com/wordpress/non-fiction/articles/i... > Default partitioning: /root goes in the spinal cord and brain stem, /swap and /soul go on the left hemisphere of the brain, and /usr, /var, and /home go on the right. If you're working with a badger with damage to one of those areas, you can repartition one or the other brain hemisphere, but as noted in Step 2, using a brain-damaged badger is not recommended and may interfere with successful installation.
    - bch 2mo ago
      > lol, how am I only hearing about this now? You're one of today's lucky 10,000! [0] [0] https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
3eb7988a1663 2mo ago
How usable are the BSDs as a GUI daily driver? Like 99% of Linux applications work out of the box or more like 50%? With new CVEs being discovered in ancient bedrock code on the daily, it seems prudent to switch to a NetBSD/OpenBSD/Qubes system for the next few years until some vulnerabilities might get smoothed over.
- __patchbit__ 2mo ago
  NetBSD 11 with Firefox 151 from pkgsrc on a custom CTWM is a usable daily driver for Emacs daemon mode GUI/TUI and console tmux simultaneous use. Remote in from a Windows or macOS desktop.
  - Bluestein 2mo ago
    CTWM Claude's Tab Window Manager - https://www.ctwm.org/index.html https://www.ctwm.org/index.html
    - izabera 2mo ago
      that's one confusing title in $currentyear...
      - Bluestein 2mo ago
        It took me one serious doubletake ...
- BSDobelix 2mo ago
  I use FreeBSD on all my machines for everything sinc about 11 years GUI is I3/X11/AMD-Card everything works, but please test it yourself, it's like with linux, you just know what's not/is working if you use it daily for all your edge-cases (maybe your scanner, maybe your barcode-scanner your Bluetooth-Stuff your wireless etcetc) Overall i really love FreeBSD for everything computing (Pi/Laptop/Workstation/Servers). And the community is great...wanna make a port/src-patch?...just send it to the bug-tracker, no rituals needed ;)
galleywest200 2mo ago
I wonder if the popularity of NetBSD for research has to do with how easy it is to compile a version of NetBSD with favorable licenses. You can opt to build it yourself and exclude anything that is not 2-clause BSD licensed, as some drivers and such are if I recall correctly.
laidoffamazon 2mo ago
Makes me wonder - in the year of Astra and Fable what prevents people from building bespoke BSDs for their hardware rapidly now?
- yjftsjthsd-h 2mo ago
  What kind of customizations would you want that requires that degree of change?
  - laidoffamazon 2mo ago
    Wifi drivers, display drivers, maybe graphics drivers...
    - IcePic 2mo ago
      The problem with missing drivers is not "typing code fast enough", it is knowing that you need to poke 5 into [base-address + $0562] within 5 milliseconds of receiving an IRQ or something stupid like that which good docs would tell you why and how, but most/many vendors will not hand out docs on how to program their chips at that level. They will have docs on how to paint rectangles on an existing surface using the gfx card, but not on how to actually start it at poweron or something along those lines. If you can't make it start painting a screen and waking up the monitor at boot, it is of very little use that you can paint rectangles in the dark. So even if you can divine that a binary windows driver sometimes writes a 5 into that register at certain times, you will have a far harder time figuring out how and when it is needed to actually do that, and the source you get will be super hard for anyone else to understand if its all magic numbers getting written into "random" locations, compared to say, "wificard.driver.radio_enable = ACTIVATE_RADIO;" even if it compiles into writing 5 to offset $0562. Such reverse-engineered sources are super hard to keep working in the long run, when someone rewrites how and when IRQs are delivered to devices or whatever major is happening in the kernels so this leads to drivers no longer working even if they did have a short period of use.
    - snvzz 2mo ago
      If we had: - A standard driver API with some traction. - Drivers running in userspace. It would not be the problem it is.
sbseitz 2mo ago
Some real copium lmao ;)
fithisux 2mo ago
Time for donation. Thanks for the reminder.

104 points by Bluestein 2mo ago

bch 2mo ago

Microsoft brought up an new processor[0][1][2] with NetBSD... [0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=52407 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=524... [1] https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/emips/ https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/emips/ [2] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/an-online-scheduler-for-hardware-accelerators-on-general-purpose-operating-systems/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/an-onli...

tosti 2mo ago
There's the Installing Linux on a dead badger HOWTO, but NetBSD actually runs everywhere for realsies. It's also lovely to work with and has the nicest man pages imho.
- andai 2mo ago
  lol, how am I only hearing about this now? Installing Linux on a dead badger https://strangehorizons.com/wordpress/non-fiction/articles/installing-linux-on-a-dead-badger-users-notes/ https://strangehorizons.com/wordpress/non-fiction/articles/i... > Default partitioning: /root goes in the spinal cord and brain stem, /swap and /soul go on the left hemisphere of the brain, and /usr, /var, and /home go on the right. If you're working with a badger with damage to one of those areas, you can repartition one or the other brain hemisphere, but as noted in Step 2, using a brain-damaged badger is not recommended and may interfere with successful installation.
  - bch 2mo ago
    > lol, how am I only hearing about this now? You're one of today's lucky 10,000! [0] [0] https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/

3eb7988a1663 2mo ago

How usable are the BSDs as a GUI daily driver? Like 99% of Linux applications work out of the box or more like 50%? With new CVEs being discovered in ancient bedrock code on the daily, it seems prudent to switch to a NetBSD/OpenBSD/Qubes system for the next few years until some vulnerabilities might get smoothed over.

__patchbit__ 2mo ago
NetBSD 11 with Firefox 151 from pkgsrc on a custom CTWM is a usable daily driver for Emacs daemon mode GUI/TUI and console tmux simultaneous use. Remote in from a Windows or macOS desktop.
- Bluestein 2mo ago
  CTWM Claude's Tab Window Manager - https://www.ctwm.org/index.html https://www.ctwm.org/index.html
  - izabera 2mo ago
    that's one confusing title in $currentyear...
    - Bluestein 2mo ago
      It took me one serious doubletake ...
BSDobelix 2mo ago
I use FreeBSD on all my machines for everything sinc about 11 years GUI is I3/X11/AMD-Card everything works, but please test it yourself, it's like with linux, you just know what's not/is working if you use it daily for all your edge-cases (maybe your scanner, maybe your barcode-scanner your Bluetooth-Stuff your wireless etcetc) Overall i really love FreeBSD for everything computing (Pi/Laptop/Workstation/Servers). And the community is great...wanna make a port/src-patch?...just send it to the bug-tracker, no rituals needed ;)

galleywest200 2mo ago

I wonder if the popularity of NetBSD for research has to do with how easy it is to compile a version of NetBSD with favorable licenses. You can opt to build it yourself and exclude anything that is not 2-clause BSD licensed, as some drivers and such are if I recall correctly.

laidoffamazon 2mo ago

Makes me wonder - in the year of Astra and Fable what prevents people from building bespoke BSDs for their hardware rapidly now?

yjftsjthsd-h 2mo ago
What kind of customizations would you want that requires that degree of change?
- laidoffamazon 2mo ago
  Wifi drivers, display drivers, maybe graphics drivers...
  - IcePic 2mo ago
    The problem with missing drivers is not "typing code fast enough", it is knowing that you need to poke 5 into [base-address + $0562] within 5 milliseconds of receiving an IRQ or something stupid like that which good docs would tell you why and how, but most/many vendors will not hand out docs on how to program their chips at that level. They will have docs on how to paint rectangles on an existing surface using the gfx card, but not on how to actually start it at poweron or something along those lines. If you can't make it start painting a screen and waking up the monitor at boot, it is of very little use that you can paint rectangles in the dark. So even if you can divine that a binary windows driver sometimes writes a 5 into that register at certain times, you will have a far harder time figuring out how and when it is needed to actually do that, and the source you get will be super hard for anyone else to understand if its all magic numbers getting written into "random" locations, compared to say, "wificard.driver.radio_enable = ACTIVATE_RADIO;" even if it compiles into writing 5 to offset $0562. Such reverse-engineered sources are super hard to keep working in the long run, when someone rewrites how and when IRQs are delivered to devices or whatever major is happening in the kernels so this leads to drivers no longer working even if they did have a short period of use.
  - snvzz 2mo ago
    If we had: - A standard driver API with some traction. - Drivers running in userspace. It would not be the problem it is.

sbseitz 2mo ago

Some real copium lmao ;)

fithisux 2mo ago

Time for donation. Thanks for the reminder.