Share your NetBSD experience (for FreeBSD users)

sidetone

sidetone

For FreeBSD users, and those who've ever used FreeBSD, share your NetBSD experience. Including, if you've used NetBSD for complementary use with FreeBSD, such as needing hardware support for access.

Keep in mind: Thread why-is-freebsd-not-more-like.66591. For other discussion and technical help about NetBSD, use daemonforums.org, unitedbsd.com or NetBSD mailing lists.


Trying NetBSD
I've tried NetBSD before 2016, but had trouble with the network card, so couldn't continue. The network card had to be physically removed for it to boot up. I don't remember if that was the wireless card which didn't work with it, which I needed at that time.


NetBSD as a desktop
My first time using NetBSD successfully on the desktop was in February or March of 2018 until May or June of that year. It was likely the 7.1.2 release in mid March, or 7.1.1 of the end of the previous year.

NetBSD, by default, mounts the kernel and pty on their own filesystem.

NetBSD pkgsrc uses a file rather than an ncurses menu for configuring its ports. It has less ports, but they're sturdy and seemed less complicated or simpler. Their dependency choices were set from a file, rather than from an ncurses menu.

My desktop froze up a lot from Internet browser's runaway processes. This hasn't happened on FreeBSD, until more recently, as it became a frequent occurrence with Firefox: this was largely fixed by limiting the amount of RAM of the (login) user account which this program ran under.

Native audio only allowed 1 application to play at a time on NetBSD. It used EsounD (Enlightened Sound Daemon; ESD) or PulseAudio more often than oss or sndio. Former member Sensucht94 showed me a link which shows how to use ESD to take audio from multiple applications, and output it for the speaker.

At the time, I've heard that the 8 series (including while it was current) of NetBSD uses an improved native sound server which allows multiple sound sources to play at the same time.

Their ttys file was simple, as it used xdm_enable="YES" for turning on xdm. It has been reported that FreeBSD could also be configured with this, but I haven't gotten it to work like that.

The desktop of NetBSD was in very low resolution. If this was the default that could have been adjusted, I didn't know how to.

Since then, it has been said that the Video display and sound system on NetBSD have been improved.


The time I've used NetBSD for legacy and specialty hardware support
I used NetBSD, in an attempt to use legacy and specialty hardware in 2022, after my computer broke. The attempt was to get a 32bit PC with IDE cables with an old SATA card to access a SATA harddisk. It was a RAID card, which use was attempted in JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks) mode.

The /dev/ directory was overwhelming to use, because it listed all possible devices, whether they were loaded or not, instead of autoloading drivers when needed.

In this, the people in the NetBSD IRC rooms were friendly and eager to help.

It turns out, that my RAID card was bad. Then, tried another solution of using a USB to SATA cable, for my laptop on FreeBSD, which the harddisks were damaged and important data couldn't be accessed.


Related:
According to https://freebsdfoundation.org/wp-co...nterface-Device-HID-Support-in-FreeBSD-13.pdf, NetBSD and OpenBSD have had the improved HID stack for a while, that is recently being implemented in FreeBSD.


Related threads:
 
When I switched from commercial Unix pizzaboxes to PCs I initially picked NetBSD. However, the VM system was much slower than FreeBSD's. I had to data mine files much larger than RAM at the time and it turned out to be a dealbreaker.
 
The only time I tried to use NetBSD is to run on Sun Sparc Enterprise T5240. It's sun4v architecture and FreeBSD only supported sun4u so having heard a lot of times that NetBSD would run even on my toaster I tried to boot it. And it didn't work, does not support sun4v as well (only OpenBSD did, but did fail in other ways). So my first and the only attempt was a failure and I didn't look back :D
 
With your permisssion...

I have tried to learn NetBSD about two or three times. The amd64 installer refused to display in my Spanish language as it did before (it was reported). Wi-Fi driver was crashing during package installation (known fatal firmware error and no fix).
I have a vague recollection of the times I've tried it: Xfce showed a low resolution, the packaging is less atomized, and it was outdated. I remember that pkgin was fast and the system configuration files were very simple, but I'm not sure.
I wanted to see if the NetBSD kernel would make a difference in response speed. The failures did not allow me.
 
It's not technical or support questions about it. I've already made a redirection to the appropriate places elsewhere for that issue, and put the link to that rule in the opening post. Anyone who asks for help or support has to go to those links, or anywhere that's not here.

It's sharing our experiences with NetBSD from a FreeBSD user perspective. Any technical problems with it, aren't questions here, and they're left as resolved as hung up or resolved elsewhere. Also, as many of us couldn't continue with NetBSD on that, even when it wasn't the fault of any operating system. I'm not using NetBSD right now, so any technical help or support won't help me on it.

hruodr said:
It is about bashing NetBSD, namely making FreeBSD better.
Click to expand...
It's not to bash NetBSD, but it is about making FreeBSD, NetBSD and other BSD's better. It's to point out: shortfalls from a technical standpoint, where it's good, where it's useful, about its community, and evidence how it likely has gotten better. There's technical comparisons that can be made. Even with its shortfalls, it's still good and has its use. I believe there's something to learn for FreeBSD and NetBSD by discussing our past experiences with NetBSD. It's also what FreeBSD users can expect if they try NetBSD.
 
i have a netbsd vm which i built do build custom kernels for another (slower) box
i have a wifi dongle that did not work on freebsd and worked on netbsd and i tried to see if i can fix the fbsd driver
what pissed me off is that netbsd tries to write on the installation media and vmbhyve does not support it
also it needed some shitty boot flags to boot efi in vmbhyve
in the end i found out that some usb delays fixed freebsd
so the diff is the usb code not the wifi driver code
also netbsd failed to probe the emmc in the test box (hp430 thinclient)
openbsd locked hard every other boot (on the testbox) and was generally more annoying that netbsd
i also tried netbsd on a pi zero w (wifi worked for a while then failed and needed a reboot to come back up)
i also used netbsd in the past on via c something based thin client to run nomachine nx client (which did not run on freebsd due to some unimplemented ioctl in linuxlator)

on the pi zero was -current because pi zero wifi was not supported on 9.x
 
Tried NetBSD (6 or 7) on bare metal one time, on my Compaq Presario 2100. Unfortunately I would have to recompile the kernel to get support for CPU frequency scaling, so I chose the FreeBSD way instead (IIRC not even FreeBSD supports that old Athlon now...).
 
netbsd does not work on "lastest pc hardware". Also ipv6 over ppp did not worked for me.
I tried dragonlfy but many ports are broken.
I mostly boot gentoo-linux or freebsd.
 
Hello, guys :) I have a question. Is NetBSD friendly with Nvidia card? I have Nvidia Gtx650, which work very well with 470 display driver. How about NetBSD?
 
I was thinking about trying NetBSD on a Raspberry or other small computer to have for basic use in retro graphics, as a very basic or back-up system.

A lot of people who've used various BSD's know enough about it to make a comparison from the perspective of the operating system they're using.


======================
Ogis said:
Hello, guys :) I have a question. Is NetBSD friendly with Nvidia card? I have Nvidia Gtx650, which work very well with 470 display driver. How about NetBSD?
Click to expand...
You're supposed to ask for NetBSD support on their venues, even find information with an internet search, not here. It if does work on there, it would be with the generic VESA driver, like all other cards that work with VESA, with no graphics acceleration. On NetBSD, the graphic resolution would likely be lower. You can ask them, or if you have a spare computer, you can try it.

Please, read the first paragraphs of the thread, and the rule https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/freebsd-forums-rules.38922/ which has been mentioned and discussed above a few times. Maybe you can share your experience about it later, if you can do it within the thread topic, or on other appropriate BSD forums.
 
sidetone said:
Please, read the first paragraphs of the thread, and the rule https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/freebsd-forums-rules.38922/ which has been mentioned and discussed above a few times. Maybe you can share your experience about it later, if you can do it within the thread topic, or on other appropriate BSD forums.
Click to expand...
Well, first read the title of the post you created and its description. I don't think I broke any rules of this forum.
Thank you.
 
Ogis said:
Hello, guys :) I have a question. Is NetBSD friendly with Nvidia card? I have Nvidia Gtx650, which work very well with 470 display driver. How about NetBSD?
Click to expand...
Yes, what about NetBSD?
Where is the thin line connecting this to FreeBSD? I would say this question is much better asked in a NetBSD place. We don't know, and I would like this thread not be derailed further or if will loose it's footing. And slip. And fall off the cliff.
 
I don't see any reason why one would want to choose NetBSD over FreeBSD, except for the need to get some fancy abandon hardware running. But in the case of the Raspberry 3 Pi, which is not so uncommon, I have to acknowledge that NetBSD has 2D/3D graphics acceleration, sound support and WIFI support also (I think), which FreeBSD does not have. On the other hand, NetBSD does not have Kodi, which is the main reason why I use a Raspberry Pi 3. So I am stuck with RaspbianOS at the moment, when I really would like to be able to use FreeBSD. It would be really nice to get 2D/3D graphics acceleration, sound and WIFI support for FreeBSD on the Raspberry 3/4!
 
Which FreeBSD download is that? I know it's for Raspberry Pi, but which one is the download name of that FreeBSD distribution? Is it arm or aarch? risc-v is interesting, which isn't for Raspberry, but there's similar boards which use RISC-V.

/usr/ports/graphics/drm-510-kmod % grep ARCHS Makefile
Code: 
ONLY_FOR_ARCHS= aarch64 amd64 i386 powerpc64 powerpc64le
ONLY_FOR_ARCHS_REASON=  the new KMS components are only supported on amd64, i386, aarch64, and powerpc64
If it's one of those, graphics acceleration should work on FreeBSD for that architecture. It needs configuration. The problem is with an older 32 bit Raspberry? When I tried NetBSD years ago, it didn't have FreeBSD's originated newer video drivers, so I've heard NetBSD's sound and graphics have improved since then. It's sounding like it has that now.

FreeBSD has the best wifi driver compatibility of the BSD's, and sound should work regardless of architecture. It may all work on FreeBSD already, but needs to be configured. Wifi is difficult to configure on FreeBSD, but worth it.

It's bordering on the topic. So, NetBSD has better compatibility from video drivers that came from FreeBSD for other architectures? There's a possibility that it works on FreeBSD, and that it can be solved on these forums. If that's not it. You can ask about about Pkgsrc for Kodi on NetBSD's mailing list or IRC channel.
 
Back in 2007, I repurposed an old machine at work (that used to have win98 on it) into a FreeBSD-based email server with Sendmail and Dovecot. The machine did not boast very powerful hardware (it was a Gateway PC, after all, with a Pentium II), but once set up correctly, it did the job. The shop also had an even older machine that had Windows 3.11 on it... and I did some research on whether FreeBSD or NetBSD would be a better fit for that ancient hardware - with intent to install CUPS on it. That's as far as I got at that shop.
 
sidetone said:
Which FreeBSD download is that? I know it's for Raspberry Pi, but which one is the download name of that FreeBSD distribution? Is it arm or aarch?
Click to expand...
As far as I know, arm is for 32-bit and aarch64 for 64-bit devices. The Raspberry Pi 3 supports 64-bit, so you can use aarch64. I don't know which one I tried about a year ago (would that have been 13.0 or 13.1?), that did not have sound, wifi or 2D/3D acceleration. I don't know if anything has changed in 13.2?
sidetone said:
If it's one of those, graphics acceleration should work on FreeBSD for that architecture. It needs configuration.
Click to expand...
Can you be more explicit, please? The page https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics does not mention anything regarding the Raspberry Pi, also I don't see anything here:

Code: 
$ pkg search xf86-video
xf86-video-amdgpu-22.0.0_1     X.Org amdgpu display driver
xf86-video-apm-1.3.0_2         X.Org apm display driver
xf86-video-ark-0.7.5_11        X.Org ark display driver
xf86-video-ast-1.1.5_5         X.Org ASPEED display driver
xf86-video-ati-19.1.0_6,1      X.Org ati display driver
xf86-video-chips-1.4.0_2       X.Org chips display driver
xf86-video-cirrus-1.5.3_5      X.Org cirrus display driver
xf86-video-dummy-0.3.8_4       X.Org dummy display driver
xf86-video-i128-1.4.0_2        X.Org i128 display driver
xf86-video-i740-1.4.0_2        X.Org i740 display driver
xf86-video-intel-2.99.917.923,1 X.Org legacy driver for Intel integrated graphics chipsets
xf86-video-mach64-6.9.7        X.Org mach64 display driver
xf86-video-mga-2.0.0_3,3       X.Org mga display driver
xf86-video-neomagic-1.3.0_2    X.Org neomagic display driver
xf86-video-nv-2.1.22           X.Org nv display driver
xf86-video-openchrome-0.6.0_6  X.Org openChrome display driver
xf86-video-qxl-0.1.6_1         X.Org X server -- QXL display driver
xf86-video-r128-6.12.0_3       X.Org r128 display driver
xf86-video-rendition-4.2.7_4   X.Org rendition display driver
xf86-video-savage-2.3.9_7      X.Org savage display driver
xf86-video-scfb-0.0.7_1        X.Org syscons display driver
xf86-video-siliconmotion-1.7.9_5 X.Org siliconmotion display driver
xf86-video-sis-0.12.0_2        X.Org sis display driver
xf86-video-tdfx-1.5.0_3        X.Org tdfx display driver
xf86-video-vesa-2.5.0_2        X.Org vesa display driver
xf86-video-vmware-13.3.0_7     X.Org vmware display driver
xf86-video-voodoo-1.2.5_12     X.Org voodoo display driver
$
 
cabriofahrer said:
The Raspberry Pi 3 supports 64-bit, so you can use aarch64.
Click to expand...
That should work here for Intel and ATI (Radeon) graphics cards. You need the kernel module, which is graphics/drm-510-kmod for graphics acceleration. Does the board use a specialized graphics card that's not Intel or Radeon? It likely has Radeon or Intel. As for Nvidia, they provide their own drivers. If it doesn't have those, it may be plain VESA, which the driver doesn't have graphics acceleration.

aarch64 is in the graphics driver of drm-510-kmod for FreeBSD's kernel:
sidetone said:
/usr/ports/graphics/drm-510-kmod % grep ARCHS Makefile
Code: 
ONLY_FOR_ARCHS= aarch64 amd64 i386 powerpc64 powerpc64le
ONLY_FOR_ARCHS_REASON= the new KMS components are only supported on amd64, i386, aarch64, and powerpc64
If it's one of those, graphics acceleration should work on FreeBSD for that architecture. It needs configuration.
Click to expand...
The Xorg driver you listed is for Xorg and that's secondary, but install that after the kmod kernel driver is installed and the system is rebooted.

Thread howto-light-desktop-setup-2018-update.64623 is how to set up the drm kmod driver.


I bet the sound from it works here, it likely needs proper set up.
 
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