NetBSD

Reader supplied reviews for NetBSD Average rating 7.1 from 14 review(s) Version: 10.1 Rating: 10 Date: 2025-08-15 Votes: 56 I Started with Windows like most people, it was such a pain with neverending VC++ redistributable or .Net framework installation needing more than 40 mins before trying a program and neverending checkdisk after an abrupt shutdown (because BSOD,crash or shortage).After i came to Ubuntu, user-friendly but far cleaner to use than Windows, i needed some time to find equivalent software, choose between the possibilities and fix small bugs with some softwares but after that i had the most responsive and stable system i ever had.Now i'm on Debian Stable, Same than Ubuntu but a step higher and i'm happy with it. I tried to understand BSD and why i could need it and now with NetBSD, i understand. A totally clean, understandable and efficient system compatible with as much hardware and software it is possible while keeping these purposes. being POSIX compliant (the standard making possible to compile a good/clean C software written 40 years ago like a libc or bsdutils, we are far from the problem of a software written for windows XP and broken for 7 and later). NetBSD is modern too, for example, it seems easy to write a clean code in C for an asynchronous server with kqueue (think about a clean node.js in C /FastCGI). NetBSD is the real descendant of the UNIX spirit. all this speech to say that, for a pure computer expert (those writing reliable, efficient, concise and clean C code, using system calls, POSIX compliant, easy to maintain and understand 40 years later) that i'm not but i hope i will be one day, NetBSD is the graal (only with a computer degree and a strong motivation). note: the last NetBSD 10.1 is compatible with graphics acceleration of recent Intel CPU (the intel driver for Linux being probably far easier to port than AMD/NVIDIA ones), so, NetBSD could be used as main OS on desktop (i'm sceptic on laptop because of wifi firmware but i never tried ...) and to develop with OpenGL (for examples games or any 2D/3D apps). note2: how to not laugh when we see people running netBSD 10.1 on the Nintendo Wii. Thanks to the NetBSD team who are amazing engineers and the most pleasant geeks at the same time (the NetBSD toaster). Version: 10.1 Rating: 10 Date: 2025-08-10 Votes: 70 I had never tried installing and using NetBSD, although I have used both FreeBSD and OpenBSD. I decided to give it a try on my testing laptop, a ThinkPad T61 with 8GB RAM and 500GB HDD. I honestly didn't think it was going to be as smooth and pleasant of an experience as it was. After the intial installation, you are given the option to configure all the usual things, such as locale, networking (including wifi), adding users, etc. The words that kept coming to mind during the installation and configuration to me were "simple" and "clean." I don't believe that many users know that there is an option in both FreeBSD and NetBSD to install a full desktop environment after an initial base installation. This is achieved in NetBSD by simply (as root): 'pkgin install desktop-installer' and then running 'desktop-installer.' I chose to install Xfce, but frankly I have been using the default window manager, ctwm, for the most part. I was surprised that everything just works in ctwm, including tap-to-click, adjusting volume with the ThinkPad volume keys, etc. One thing I do need to configure is edge and two finger scrolling, but based on my experience so far, I'm guessing that won't be too hard. The NetBSD package manager, pkgsrc, is truly a thing of beauty: simple, fast, and effective. And portable, too: it can be used in BSD, Linux (I have used it in Slackware), and macOS as well. I believe it is one of the best package managers in the open source world. So far, using NetBSD has been a wonderful journey of exploration. I keep finding myself saying, "this is the way things should be." Everything is very clean, simple, and light. Booting into ctwm, RAM usage is about 175MB, and Xfce around 300MB. Based on my experience so far, I would be more inclined to choose NetBSD than both FreeBSD and OpenBSD; to me it is that good. I get that great, old-school UNIX feeling, like a kid in a candy store, that I used to get 30+ years ago when I first started discovering UNIX and Linux, only the installation/configuration is much simpler. If you are considering trying the BSDs, I feel like you cannot go wrong with NetBSD. Version: 10.1 Rating: 10 Date: 2025-07-10 Votes: 67 Best and always-to-be-best BSD. Forget FreeBSD, forget OpenBSD. Obey pkgsrc, obey the orange flag. In all seriousness, NetBSD is, in my opinion, the best operating system in general. Sure, you don't need an operating system that runs on the Wii, or a SPARCStation, or an HP 9000, or a Mac Quadra 650, or a PowerBook G4, and yet it exists. And guess what? It runs almost perfectly. Either way, NetBSD is not for most people, even experienced Linux users. Things are drastically different, and most Linux software does not work on NetBSD, including many popular/necessary software such as NetworkManager. And still, NetBSD is one of the best operating systems of all time. WiFi support still sucks though. See all 14 reader reviews of NetBSD...