NetBSD 11 desktop on a Raspberry Pi 4 (neongd.com)

67 pointsby jaypatelani2 days ago20 comments

rustyhancock an hour ago

As the saying goes. Of course it runs NetBSD.

They have a nice wiki page around running on Arm which might be helpful (and subpages for the main boards).

https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/evbarm/

I set it up on an Arm SBC last year and I have to say it did not seem as involved a process as that blog post. I hope it hasn't become more complicated.

MobiusHorizons 15 minutes ago

> pkg_add pkgin

NetBSD noob question: what’s going on with this command? Is pkg_add not a package manager? If you already have pkg_add why do you need pkgin? I am familiar with `pkg` on FreeBSD, and `pkg_add` on OpenBSD, but they are both perfectly good enough on their own, I never wanted to install another package manager.

rustyhancock 6 minutes ago

If you're familiar with Debian tools pkg_add is like dpkg in this case it's used to install the package containing pkgin which is like apt.

Pkg_add simply installs binaries you ask it to and dependencies but can't do searches or broader package management like pkgin.

forinti an hour ago

I've been trying NetBSD 11.1 on an RPi1 these last few days.

It takes a long time to install anything and I don't expect to surf the web on it, but it's nice to have this OS as an option.

I wanted to try out openconnect-saml on it, but the install failed because of lack of RAM/swap. I have managed to run xfreerdp over openconnect on it though (FreeBSD had better performance).

justin66 20 minutes ago

What's the boot time like with that setup?

hoppp an hour ago

The pixel art font is so bad I can only read the code snippets

boxed an hour ago

But it's not AI slop! /s

aframemodular an hour ago

yes, the irony

1313ed01 an hour ago

Read the original gemini version then. I have not looked at it, but gemtext has no support for setting fonts at all, so it can not use a font you dislike unless you set that up in your gemini client.

throw432196 37 minutes ago

Yeah, exactly. I gave up very quickly.

ClikeX 32 minutes ago

I read this before opening the page, and I figured it couldn't be that bad. I instantly felt my eyes straining to read the introduction.

conradfr 27 minutes ago

Reader view in Firefox does the job.

MobiusHorizons 11 minutes ago

It looks like a pretty standard bitmap font to me. Very legible to my eye. What’s wrong with bitmap fonts?

mrkn1 41 minutes ago

funny, most people, when they free up a Raspberry Pi, install Home Assistant or Pi-hole.vThis guy installs NetBSD 11.

He spends half the tutorial getting Wi-Fi working, then installs a modern desktop environment styled after a desktop environment from 1993.

next level nostalgia

coredog64 24 minutes ago

He's got me thinking I could recreate something that looks like 4dwm and put my NetBSD Pi into a defunct O2 case. A "good" O2 from 96-97 would have been 200MHz w/ 256MB of RAM and a 1600SW display (1600x1024).

skrellm an hour ago

"Get Balena's Etcher (if you don't have it)"

You lost me there. Why are ppl still using this electron monstrosity when there are so many better alternatives? (Like dd, WIN32Imager, USBImager, DiskImager, etc.)?

I mean, Etcher is bigger than the entire NetBSD image, what the hell?

justin66 19 minutes ago

dd and Etcher do not exactly have the same target audience.

aframemodular an hour ago

Can one point me to the lines of code in the Linux kernel that contain AI slop?

LordLotherak 37 minutes ago

They're probably commenting on Linus Torvald's decision to accept commits that may or may not have been assisted with agentic coding in part or whole, getting accepted/rejected on a merit basis instead.

(Apparently that's too much gray area for some zealots)

not_a_bot_4sho 26 minutes ago

Are they in the room with us right now?