NetBSD 11.0

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

NetBSD 11.0’s release prompts a broad look at where the BSD family fits alongside Linux today, especially in terms of usability as a daily driver, hardware support, and long-term maintainability. Commenters highlight NetBSD’s strengths in portability and support for very old and niche hardware, its clean, cohesive design, and its pkgsrc ecosystem, while noting that Linux still dominates for performance, drivers, and mainstream desktop use. There is also debate over conservative choices such as compiler versions and filesystem features, reflecting a trade-off between rapid adoption of new technology and stability across many architectures.

NetBSD as a Daily Driver

  • Opinions vary: some think NetBSD is usable as a desktop daily driver, especially on supported motherboards; others say it’s still nowhere near Linux for general-purpose use.
  • Bluetooth support exists and has for ~20 years; its stack was shared with OpenBSD and is based on FreeBSD code.
  • OpenBSD removed Bluetooth on security grounds; some argue Bluetooth in general is fundamentally messy and insecure.

Legacy Hardware, Media, and Power

  • Strong emphasis on old and exotic architectures: NetBSD supports 486-era x86 and many non-x86 platforms; considered by some the “go‑to” OS for vintage hardware.
  • CD-ROM and even floppy install media are still relevant because many supported systems either lack USB boot or USB entirely.
  • Some argue keeping old systems running saves money and e‑waste; others counter that modern low‑power hardware is more energy‑efficient overall.

NetBSD 11.0 Features & Toolchain

  • Release notes highlight improvements to the npf firewall (e.g., layer‑2 and user/group filtering) and a MICROVM x86 kernel that can boot in ~10 ms.
  • There are hardware support improvements and new architecture support, including RISC‑V.
  • GCC in base is at 12.5.0; discussion notes:
    • Not about GPLv3 here; instead, the project stabilized a 12.5 branch and is cautious about newer GCC because of regressions on obscure architectures and stricter C conformance breaking existing code.
    • Newer GCC versions (e.g., 15) are available via pkgsrc.

BSD vs Linux: Roles, Strengths, and Weaknesses

  • NetBSD’s niche: portability (“runs on everything”), including embedded and research systems.
  • pkgsrc is praised as a portable, rootless-capable packaging system used on multiple OSes (including non‑BSDs).
  • Several comments contrast BSDs’ cohesive “complete system” approach and clean design with Linux distributions’ layering and complexity.
  • Others argue Linux is superior for “serious” or performance‑critical work due to broader hardware support, larger quirk databases, SMP evolution, and advanced I/O primitives (e.g., io_uring).
  • Some prefer BSDs (especially OpenBSD and FreeBSD) for security posture, simplicity, and lack of systemd; others see them as niche but valuable alternatives.