NetBSD: Will It Stand As A Light Desktop?

[uid313]

Sure, NetBSD moves slowly, and yes, some things could *definitely* use improvement (why in the world do they not have DRM modesetting yet?), but there are some definite advantages to NetBSD, namely, clean, portable, simple code. Maybe the project needs a good fork right now, but it seems a shame to let quality code like that rot, and NetBSD is still in common use (embedded Apple products, NASA, etc) where a simple OS is needed for something that needs to be reliable.

I know that NetBSD used to have a great reputation for its portability.
But isn't Linux even more portable than NetBSD these days?

Yeah, it would be a shame to let quality code rot.
I hope the best of NetBSD could be pushed to FreeBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFlyBSD and Linux.

[cb88]

Linux might be more portable ... but not all released versions work on all targets which it seems on netbsd that is genereally the case with a few exceptions like SMP being buggy on sparc even though the arch itself works just fine with a UP kernel.

I would imagine that DRM isn't implemented for lack of man power ... and lack of a clean portable implementation that doesn't require a rewrite to be included... were drivers designed on BSD instead at least Linux could import the BSD code no problem however it doesn't go the other way really.

[0xBADCODE]

But isn't Linux even more portable than NetBSD these days?

Linux both far more portable, much more flexible AND supports much more custom peripherals & devices which you could (and would) encounter in non-x86 worlds these days. For example: http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ - a dozen of ARM, MIPS and even x86 things supported. And of course ant SoC offers a bunch of custom peripheral devices in board, etc. Now good luck to get NetBSD running on all these and then good luck actually doing something meaningful as you would soon figure out you need a lot of drivers and it's not like if they're present in netbsd.

Nightmare mode: do it on par or better than Linux does (else it stands no chances on market anyway and hence counts as toy only).

Furthermore, to make things more funny, most eval boards of CPUs which are enough to boot Linux usually coming with Linux SDKs as this really allows to get things running fast and with lot of features.

[0xBADCODE]

Linux might be more portable ... but not all released versions work on all targets which it seems on netbsd that is genereally the case with a few exceptions like SMP being buggy on sparc even though the arch itself works just fine with a UP kernel.

Ahh, these BSD guys always fail to recognize it's not always smart to have fully blown and 100% identical system for all tasks. That's why they lost virtually all embedded market to much more flexible penguins. Who are not inclined on enforcing The Only One True Way Of Doing The Things unlike BSD people but rather provide some boilerplate (kernel, etc) to start with. Then you can adjust it to specific task without ton of headache. That's what allowed penguin to conquer virtually anything, from access points to mobile phones. Lack of flexibility has made a lot of species to disappear from this planet. However some of them still haven't learned that lesson :P