NetBSD

What hackers pick instead

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Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 198 comments. Each links to the original.

1. Today's hardware is much more complicated and I wouldn't expect NetBSD to work well on anything but the most basic hardware.

   Mixed · Oct 2026 · in “AlpineBSD”

2. NetBSD while working on a Dreamcast also has very interesting and it runs in unexpected places like the ISS

   Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “NetBSD 11.0 Released”

3. except for Ethernet card, Wi-Fi card, touchpad, ACPI suspension, external monitors via the docking station

   Mixed · Oct 2026 · in “AlpineBSD”

4. NetBSD is a good example: it supports a wide range of hardware, has a relatively straightforward codebase

   Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Permacomputing”

5. Pre-compiled packages for i386 are still available for all versions of NetBSD including the current one

   Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Floppinux – An Embedded Linux on a Single Floppy, 2025 Edition”

6. The kernel support for Lua seems awesome but that's not the same as running a full desktop environment.

   Mixed · May 2026 · in “Reflections on NetBSD 11”

7. I find it easier to understand and customize, and it keeps a lot of this stuff out of the landfill.

   Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “NetBSD 11.0 Released”

8. I often consult NetBSD's source tree for when I want good examples that aren't as complex as GNU's

   Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Linux Applications Programming by Example: The Fundamental APIs (2nd Edition)”

9. the design is so clean and the documentation complete that I never felt the need for outside help

   Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “NetBSD 11.0 Released”

10. It's a great OS for learning. The manual pages go in great depth to explain what to do and how.

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “AlpineBSD”

11. that's a safe platform if you would like to do some system programming with modern knowledge

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “NetBSD 11.0 RC1”

12. Yes, NetBSD and OpenBSD work fine on the 2005 T42 but as you say video performance is low.

    Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “Floppinux – An Embedded Linux on a Single Floppy, 2025 Edition”

13. NetBSD is known to support like 60 architectures - many of them low end embedded systems

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Vulkan is now available on NetBSD”

14. they still have tier 2 ports for Dreamcast, Sony NET WORK STATION, Zaurus, Sharp x68000

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “NetBSD GSoC 2026 Improving RAIDframe”

15. I'm betting it'll still be supporting 32-bit x86 long after the linux kernel drops it.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Tiny Core Linux: a 23 MB Linux distro with graphical desktop”

16. The NetBSD developers keep a great CHANGES document up to date with what’s new overall

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “The Loss of Changelogs”

17. most easily portable to every cpu arch & platform including old and new obscure ones

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “NetBSD and my life (2005)”

18. It's a pain to install, a pain to configure, a pain to add a proper desktop, etc.

    Mixed · Oct 2026 · in “AlpineBSD”

19. NetBSD is, however, the gold standard for an OS that runs on just about anything.

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “OpenBSD 7.9 Released”

20. NetBSD on that system will seem very zippy, plus you will learn some new things

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Used ThinkPad Buyer's Guide (2019)”

21. The documentation and careful modularity is, obviously, a huge bonus of NetBSD

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Tiny Core Linux: a 23 MB Linux distro with graphical desktop”

22. But NetBSD's claim as the most portable OS doesn't hold up these days.

    Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “AMD Am386 released March 2, 1991”

23. NetBSD's support for modern hardware isn't amazing compared to Linux.

    Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “AMD Am386 released March 2, 1991”

24. they will keep cross-compiling for old and obscure platforms even if nobody cares enough about them to test them

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “Using FireWire on a Raspberry Pi”

25. whether hardware (i.e. driver) support will be decent enough for everyday use is a completely different matter

    Criticizes · Oct 2026 · in “AlpineBSD”

26. years before NetBSD on their mailing list admitting that Linux outperformed

    Criticizes · Nov 2025 · in “Why use OpenBSD?”

27. It's a pain to install, a pain to configure, a pain to add a proper desktop

    Criticizes · Oct 2026 · in “AlpineBSD”

28. Even now the situation there is still rather dire even by bsd standards.

    Criticizes · Aug 2026 · in “NetBSD 11.0 Released”

29. At least FreeBSD, NetBSD (OpenBSD not by design, but that's understandable because of security) have their compat libraries on

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Debian Removes Free Pascal Compiler / Lazarus IDE”

30. Debian/Devuan, Fedora/RHEL/Alma/Rocky, Arch/Artix, FreeBSD/OpenBS/NetBSD are all anyone will ever need.

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Omarchy: Any User Process Can Escalate to Root”

31. it's a great time to pitch in a few dollars to help them cross the finish line for the 11.0 release

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “NetBSD 11.0 RC4: Final release candidate before 11.0”

32. With NetBSD and Macports, when I need to find a file I can predict where it is almost every time.

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Homebrew 6.0.0”

33. NetBSD specifically prohibits AI contributions as far as I'm aware of -and thank god for it!

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “NetBSD 11.0 Released”

34. NetBSD feels like a high quality, ancient relic from the University of California, Berkeley

    Mixed · Aug 2026 · in “NetBSD 11.0 Released”

35. At the time they had almost nothing which NetBSD didn't have, and I knew that really well.

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Yserver: A modern X11 server written in Rust”

36. I heard that NetBSD can also boot from ZFS, but I haven't worked out all the details yet.

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Show HN: I made a dual-bootable NixBSD (NixOS and FreeBSD) image”

37. NetBSD is THE ONLY operating system of which binaries are fully bit by bit reproducible.

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Using bubblewrap to add sandboxing to NetBSD”

38. NetBSD on the mailing list pointed out that Linux now runs on more toasters than NetBSD

    Mixed · Nov 2025 · in “A Love Letter to FreeBSD”

39. I will have an eternity to compile everything they provide in pkg archive from scratch

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Project Nomad – Knowledge That Never Goes Offline”

40. with the exception of NetBSD can't efficiently handle heterogenous core configurations

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Static Web Hosting on the Intel N150”