Share your NetBSD experience (for FreeBSD users)

What would you do with those smartphones if you could install NetBSD? 🤔🫣
Well, provided that the Wi-Fi works, similar to a Raspberry, such a device could be a little server in the private home network serving as ftp, dlna, samba server or whatever, accessible and configurable through ssh from your PC. As those smartphones all have a slot for micro SD cards, I guess enough additional space for storage could be achieved. Just an idea.
 
Note: Battery-powered devices ready to catch fire if you keep them plugged in permanently.
Thanks for the info, but could someone answer the original question, please? Or has nobody ever tried to flash NetBSD to a smartphone, or can at least rule out it's not possible in the first place?
 
Thanks for the info, but could someone answer the original question, please? Or has nobody ever tried to flash NetBSD to a smartphone, or can at least rule out it's not possible in the first place?

7. We will not allow technical/support questions about any operating system other than FreeBSD anywhere on this forum. That includes the Off-Topic forum. Always ask technical/support questions about other operating systems on the forums or mailing lists associated with those operating systems.
 
I don't have a problem installing everything from the start and configuring the system
(on NetBSD i was also compiling some apps from pkgsrc)
What makes me crazy is the crazy slow pkg download speeds !
This is insane !

Bumping up this thread :)

Long time FreeBSD user here.
I am moving away from FreeBSD. Sort of.
I will be watching, but focussing more on NetBSD.

The thing is this.
FreeBSD nowadays works very well on desktop. Kudos to the FreeBSD team. If you have a mainstream hardware (HP/DELL/LENOVO) that is in the market for last 2-3 years, then FreeBSD will work wonderfully.

Now the reason for chipping in here.
My primary work is IoT applications and Edge computing.

There I find that NetBSD has better support for peripherals.

So, I made a trade off.
Desktop ? Windows is fine to get things done. Even Debian which I have in dual boot mode.

Since, I have to get my products out, I need a platform where junior firmware engineers can start off with quick prototyping.

FreeBSD is breeze to install and setup.
But for a widely used tinkering board like Raspberry Pi (lot of people have mentioned in the thread here), FreeBSD does not have support for Bluetooth, WiFi, DSI, CSI.
Even the SPI support is not there.

FWIW, FreeBSD Bluetooth is broken even of mainstream AMD64/x86-64 platform.

NetBSD is a pain to install.
But once that is done, I found most peripherals working except SPI.

If I were to prototype a outdoor sensing platform on Raspberry Pi or any such widely available ARM SoC, I really don't care about CSI and DSI.
So, here the deal breaker was lack of radio networking support.

Most smart sensors in the market work with Bluetooth Low Energy.

I'm getting down to writing a NetBSD SPI driver that can be accessed from user space daemons. I can live with that.

So, it will be a slightly outdated NetBSD desktop working with half a dozen ARM SoC running NetBSD.
I wish it were FreeBSD.

I don't know.
It doesn't make any sense to me why FreeBSD Foundation wants to lose the IoT market.

But as I mentioned FreeBSD will be on constant watchlist.
 
I don't like the fact that, with pkgsrc, I have to manually change the umask from 027 to 022 when running`make && sudo make install`. Otherwise I end up with binaries I can't execute.
 
Well, what generally helps to speed up your Internet connection is to use 8.8.8.8 as DNS rather than the DNS given by your ISP which is preconfigured in your router. Maybe give that a try?
 

Unlikely to help with speeds of downloads from the pkg mirror infrastructure, but thanks.

Fastest for me, today, at home, is Frankfurt at 5.8 MB/s:

Code:
root@mowa219-gjp4-zbook-freebsd:~ # date ; fastest_pkg -v
Mon May  6 10:07:10 BST 2024
pkg0.nyi.freebsd.org: 100%
pkg0.nyi.freebsd.org: 4.0 MB/s
pkg0.fmt.freebsd.org: 100%
pkg0.fmt.freebsd.org: 2.7 MB/s
pkg0.bbt.freebsd.org: 82%
(28, 'Operation timed out after 5001 milliseconds with 6113313 out of 7453912 bytes received')

pkg0.bbt.freebsd.org: 1.2 MB/s
pkg0.fra.freebsd.org: 100%
pkg0.fra.freebsd.org: 5.8 MB/s
pkg0.bme.freebsd.org: 0%
(7, "Failed to connect to pkg0.bme.freebsd.org port 80 after 38 ms: Couldn't connect to server")
pkg0.bme.freebsd.org: 0.0 B/s
pkg0.bra.freebsd.org: 82%
(28, 'Operation timed out after 5002 milliseconds with 6144329 out of 7453912 bytes received')

pkg0.bra.freebsd.org: 1.2 MB/s
pkg0.sjb.freebsd.org: 100%
pkg0.sjb.freebsd.org: 5.2 MB/s
pkg0.kul.freebsd.org: 100%
pkg0.kul.freebsd.org: 1.7 MB/s
pkg0.kwc.freebsd.org: 100%
pkg0.kwc.freebsd.org: 1.5 MB/s
pkg0.jinx.freebsd.org: 100%
pkg0.jinx.freebsd.org: 2.2 MB/s
pkg0.tuk.freebsd.org: 100%
pkg0.tuk.freebsd.org: 2.6 MB/s
pkg0.twn.freebsd.org: 0%
(28, 'Connection timed out after 5002 milliseconds')
pkg0.twn.freebsd.org: 0.0 B/s
pkg0.syd.freebsd.org: 84%
(28, 'Operation timed out after 5004 milliseconds with 6320513 out of 7453912 bytes received')

pkg0.syd.freebsd.org: 1.3 MB/s

Fastest:
pkg0.fra.freebsd.org: 5.8 MB/s


Write configuration:
mkdir -p /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/
echo 'FreeBSD: { url: "http://pkg0.fra.freebsd.org/${ABI}/latest", mirror_type: "NONE" }' \
        > /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf


root@mowa219-gjp4-zbook-freebsd:~ #

Actual speeds were far lower on Tuesday 30th April, I didn't keep a note of where I was at the time:

Code:
% pwd
/usr/home/grahamperrin/Documents/IT/BSD/FreeBSD/poudriere/pkgbase
% grep -i mb\/s 2024-04-30\ jail\ update\ mysteries.txt
[1/166] Fetching FreeBSD-libsqlite3-dev-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%    2 MiB   2.2MB/s    00:01   
[5/166] Fetching FreeBSD-kerberos-lib-dev-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%    5 MiB   1.6MB/s    00:03   
[9/166] Fetching FreeBSD-utilities-dev-lib32-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%    4 MiB   1.3MB/s    00:03   
[19/166] Fetching FreeBSD-src-sys-15.snap20240429220940.pkg: 100%   93 MiB   1.7MB/s    00:59   
[26/166] Fetching FreeBSD-zfs-lib32-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%    1 MiB   1.5MB/s    00:01   
[27/166] Fetching FreeBSD-dtrace-dev-lib32-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%    1 MiB   1.2MB/s    00:01   
[30/166] Fetching FreeBSD-utilities-dev-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%    6 MiB   2.0MB/s    00:03   
[32/166] Fetching FreeBSD-openssl-lib-dev-lib32-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%    7 MiB   1.8MB/s    00:04   
[37/166] Fetching FreeBSD-rescue-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%    6 MiB   1.6MB/s    00:04   
[47/166] Fetching FreeBSD-zfs-dev-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%    7 MiB   1.6MB/s    00:05   
[56/166] Fetching FreeBSD-clang-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%   46 MiB   1.6MB/s    00:30   
[60/166] Fetching FreeBSD-clibs-dev-lib32-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%   13 MiB   2.2MB/s    00:06   
[70/166] Fetching FreeBSD-tests-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%   18 MiB   1.5MB/s    00:13   
[71/166] Fetching FreeBSD-libarchive-dev-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%    1 MiB   1.6MB/s    00:01   
[75/166] Fetching FreeBSD-utilities-lib32-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%    2 MiB   1.1MB/s    00:02   
[78/166] Fetching FreeBSD-zfs-dev-lib32-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%    7 MiB   1.8MB/s    00:04   
[79/166] Fetching FreeBSD-ssh-dev-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%    1 MiB   1.4MB/s    00:01   
[89/166] Fetching FreeBSD-runtime-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%    2 MiB   2.6MB/s    00:01   
[97/166] Fetching FreeBSD-ssh-dev-lib32-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%    1 MiB   1.3MB/s    00:01   
[101/166] Fetching FreeBSD-openssl-lib-lib32-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%    2 MiB   1.7MB/s    00:01   
[103/166] Fetching FreeBSD-dtrace-dev-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%    1 MiB   1.3MB/s    00:01   
[113/166] Fetching FreeBSD-clang-dev-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%   15 MiB   1.6MB/s    00:10   
[120/166] Fetching FreeBSD-utilities-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%   11 MiB   1.9MB/s    00:06   
[121/166] Fetching FreeBSD-runtime-dev-lib32-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%    3 MiB   1.2MB/s    00:03   
[132/166] Fetching FreeBSD-unbound-dev-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%    2 MiB   1.1MB/s    00:02   
[133/166] Fetching FreeBSD-openssl-lib-dev-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%    8 MiB   1.3MB/s    00:07   
[136/166] Fetching FreeBSD-unbound-dev-lib32-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%    2 MiB   2.0MB/s    00:01   
[137/166] Fetching FreeBSD-runtime-dev-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%    4 MiB   1.9MB/s    00:02   
[145/166] Fetching FreeBSD-libarchive-dev-lib32-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%    1 MiB   1.5MB/s    00:01   
[150/166] Fetching FreeBSD-clibs-lib32-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%    1 MiB   1.6MB/s    00:01   
[163/166] Fetching FreeBSD-clibs-dev-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%   16 MiB   1.7MB/s    00:10   
[166/166] Fetching FreeBSD-kerberos-lib-dev-lib32-15.snap20240429151916.pkg: 100%    4 MiB   1.1MB/s    00:04   
Fetching data.pkg: 100%    7 MiB   1.5MB/s    00:05   
%
 
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