#netbsd install party this weekend, anyone? 🎉

@nina_kali_nina The time has come 😅

@nina_kali_nina I am seriously considering it..

@oliverboehme we should make it official. Bae is installing NetBSD on a router this weekend, and I'm thinking of maybe trying AlpineBSD if health allows

@nina_kali_nina One of these weekends I want to get NetBSD running inside a vm on 9front. It's the software stack we deserve.

@nina_kali_nina My windows partition, that I have not booted into for years, will bring snacks.

@cararemixed 9front docs say vmx can boot OpenBSD, so it probably shouldn't be too difficult to make it work with NetBSD too

@nina_kali_nina That's my thought. I just haven't tried it yet. Weekend activities soon. Though probably not this weekend but November. Maybe it's time to do a Berlin install party if someone wants to host.

@nina_kali_nina I want to computer less, nina 😭

@nina_kali_nina got confused and went back to freebsd last time I tried. Will try harder this time.

@nina_kali_nina every time i looking at installing *BSD, it ends up on reading something like this:
https://netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-power.html
suspend-to-disk ("hibernate", not currently supported on NetBSD)

@nina_kali_nina unfortunately, my Intel video chipset (Kaby Lake GT2) isn't yet working properly with the installer (black screen) but once it does I'm in.

@Wintermute_BBS this is strange! I have a Kaby Lake GT2 desktop, and it is working okay (there are a few tricks to it; I have to reboot once to make it work after the first power up). It's also working well on a far newer Intel I have, including Gen 11 with hw accel and Gen 12 with sw render

@shinmera Can I interest you in my desktop operating system then.... It has files, folders, dip pens, pretty paper, stickies...

@Officeplant good luck!

@sijmen if you're on desktop, sw render is probably going to be mostly okay for daily driving it, but on laptops your mileage may vary; I have a gen12 laptop that has very inconsistent FPS rateunless it's running in 720p.

@mittorn nod nod, yeah :( there are workarounds for power saving, but not for suspend to disk. A cold boot takes less than a minute for me, so I'm not particularly bothered to power the thing down completely

@nina_kali_nina that's interesting to hear. Maybe I can set compatibility options in the UEFI or something like that.

@Wintermute_BBS nod nod! It might be worth using the kernel option to disable the i915 driver during the installation, using uefi framebuffer, and then reconfigure the kernel with i915drm options tweaked, too

@nina_kali_nina for most people this is ok, but for me it's is mandatory.I cannot imagine using desktop without hibernation: it allows save processes as is without interrupting work, debugging sessions, etc...
The saddest part is that implementing s2disk is not something that can be done easily: it needs support full save/restore in every existing driver and good testing, otherwise it will be unstable. And unstable hibernation is worse than missing: you expecting your data will be preserved: but it lost.
Probably, for NetBSD it should be possible to use hibernation image restore in bootloader (i remember there was some code in u-boot), but every driver needs support it anyway

@nina_kali_nina I tried that by issuing userconf disable i915drmkms before booting the installer but that didn't help

@Wintermute_BBS huh! That's weird, would be interesting to see how it doesn't work

@nina_kali_nina I'll try

@nina_kali_nina I'm currently upset because I've learned I can't have my root file system on LVM, unless I put the whole thing into a "miniroot" in RAM. AFAICT NetBSD doesn't yet have an equivalent of pivot_root, so initramfs support is tricky. I'm going to have to steel myself for a lot of paper cuts like that I think.

@davidrevoy please let me know if you'll need any help! I suspect getting the tablets working would be especially difficult; I still have not fully figured out my own setup yet

@evgandr enjoy!

@kbm0 yeah... there's gcd-miniroot, I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds quite promising as per https://wiki.netbsd.org/security/cgdroot/

@nina_kali_nina A couple of weeks ago, I failed at getting a usable NetBSD setup with sway working on my Pi3, but perhaps things are better in x86 land. I'll just spin up a VM and see how it goes. Or a dualboot setup perhaps.

@lu I guess emulation is the easiest!

@nina_kali_nina Nah, don't wanna wipe my 9front install.
But maybe on my other Thinkpad with the bad hinge.

@nina_kali_nina Ooh I expect that could easily be adapted to contain the LVM tools. Gives me something to aim at.

@nina_kali_nina @shinmera
I would prefer a workbench where I can build things to a desktop meant for paperwork

@nina_kali_nina I will likely be getting the Wifi to cooperate. 😂

I know the card works, it was functional during the install, but something is sad

@nina_kali_nina Thank you! I'll try on a Lenovo Yoga 370 ( this one https://www.davidrevoy.com/article976/lenovo-yoga-370-on-gnu-linux-technical-companion-article ). I upgraded this year to a similar model ( a Lenovo ThinkBook 14S Yoga ) so the 370 is free for my experimentation and not a drama if I fail. I'll be just happy to just run something else, and dip a toe on another computer world. 😊

@davidrevoy sounds like the hardware generally should be well supported, with the likely exception of the built-in WiFi, if it's also Intel. Tethering from a phone should work, and so should cheap USB WiFi modules

NetBSD 10.0 has full acceleration with Intel integrated graphics up to Tiger Lake [editor's note: 11th generation], (…) There is no change in the supported GPUs in 11.0.

@nina_kali_nina hell yeah!! I got the jump on it a little today but I got Issues to Resolve that may well take a whole weekend

@nina_kali_nina I'm so scared though, there's a very high chance I try to get netbsd and get overwhelmed and cry and give up

@elly there's kernel compilation for dummies and the code base isn't difficult to navigate; took me only an hour or two to get things compiling and having a kernel debugger + cores. I had a plan to look deeper into Gen 12 support, but as you know, everything is on fire, so I've been busy with other stuff 😓

@sijmen

@nieuemma I hope it'll work out, feel free to tag me for moral support!

@nieuemma maybe start with a virtual machine to get comfy with it in a safe way? Unless you have a computer you don't use

@nina_kali_nina maybe. I haven't tried using virtial machines in a whole, I'm not eben sure what software is good or not anymore. I'd need something that plays nicely with my current alpinelinux/sway on my laptop.

I also don't know if I could even keep using sway on BSD or not. If I couldn't, I don't know what I'd do, maybe I'd end up being command line only but that would be a bit hard.

@nina_kali_nina OK let's do this I procrastinated enough and linux is not getting better.

@nieuemma it looks like there's a sway port in the packages!

As for the emulation, if you're on Linux, qemu, with or even without kvm, is the way to go. IIRC they have decent anti-AI policies (or used to have until recently)

@lu @nina_kali_nina I got it to boot with no fuss on virtualbox.

But I want it on a real computer close to me or I will never use it enough to stick to it.

@f4grx @lu not a bad idea to see if your favourite software works on it! Especially if you have a live image

@nina_kali_nina @lu I'm not afraid of software, we can get that to work.

I'm more afraid of the actual puter witchcraft, ACPI and S3 sleep. This, if broken, is very hard to fix, and for a daily laptop, that makes it practically unusable.

I'm not sure netbsd developers would be patient enough to support random machines they dont have access to.

@nieuemma also, if you're attached to Alpine, there's a very new thing that is explicitly anti-AI and based on NetBSD kernel: https://sr.ht/~sircmpwn/alpinebsd/

@nina_kali_nina I absolutely love using alpine. I really got back into computers years ago with archlinux, and once I found alpine it was like starting over again (in a good way). The happy fun feelings of setting up my own system and having it work just the way I want came back again.

@nina_kali_nina

might give it a run off a usb stick

I just spent 2 days fixing ubuntu after a release update...I'll never learn apparently

@nina_kali_nina @mittorn If you look at my whining lately, sooo much desktop stuff is outright broken in NetBSD, still. But it's never gonna get better if folks don't use it more. I think it's worthwhile to have an install around to try to get where you need it and whine or fix things as able to keep the momentum.

@nina_kali_nina I have a lenovo yoga I could try it on too.

@nina_kali_nina I'm in!

@nina_kali_nina Is this something that can be reasonably done remotely, supporting each other? Or more that everybody is resolving to do it this weekend?

@nina_kali_nina I'm game - gives me all the seratonin highs of switching to Linux from Windows in 1998.

I already have the bootable disk but its doing a kernel panic because of my internal graphics card.

I'll try disabling it in the BIOS and try again in the weekend.

@felichsdakatze there's a live system, though it's a bit difficult to find 👍

@sijmen @f4grx oh no!!

@nina_kali_nina
Ok, so how do I make a bootable USB drive? Using all the same tools I used to put mint on a Chromebook...just goes straight to Ubuntu.

//edit
finally got a bootable USB happening...but its not "live". Did I miss it in the downloads?

@felichsdakatze the live USB is well hidden in the downloads - e.g. https://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/images/11.0/NetBSD-11.0-amd64-live.img.gz

On the first boot the image will configure the system and reboot right away. The second boot will give you an installed base system booting into text mode. Then you can start X with startx, configure things to your taste with sysinst and eventually do something like pkgin in xfce4

@steeph I'd say it absolutely can be done remotely, perhaps asking for peer support on Fedi with a hashtag

@nina_kali_nina I don't know. I haven't tried NetBSD yet because it didn't completely work out of the box on any box I've tried it on. I imagine the troubleshooting would be much easier if others can look at and type on the machine directly.

(I'm not trying to argue against your suggestion! I just think an install party in person would be an even more helpful idea for potential users like me.)

@steeph oh, absolutely, in person party would be great, but I have no idea how to organise one. And it probably won't be this weekend

@nina_kali_nina @sijmen I quickly decided that I was never ever touching btrfs again. Life is too short for this kind of self inflicted problem.

@nina_kali_nina I don't remember for every person on here where they are from. But I'm pretty sure you're not in the west of Germany (or east of France). If you are, I know people and a location with experience with Linux install parties. I'm sure a cooperation would be easy and welcome.

@nina_kali_nina
Thanks, am downloading, will try again tomorrow.

@nina_kali_nina I'll bite

@mayke @nina_kali_nina that sounds like someone needs to be defanged XD

@Abstract_Mage_Annastasia @mayke nah I don't mind

@nina_kali_nina going straight to TempleOS 😝

@gurkenlabs why not! Or PC/Geos. Tbh at this point pirated Windows 2.0 is probably going to be more ethical than most options

@ltning it does :)

@nina_kali_nina I'm in. Just tried it a bit in a VM and it seems like I could work with it. I figured out how to switch the window manager but any more experiments inside a VM seem like a waste of time. So real hardware must be the next step.

@ivanhoe good luck!!!

@nina_kali_nina I'm interested

@panzone91 good luck! 👍 Feel free to tag me if you need help

@nina_kali_nina i fall to the final boss (cli installing the gui)

@Kierkegaanks do you need help? 😇

@nina_kali_nina Eyyy! I just got FreeBSD CURRENT going, git pulled, saw the claude in the commits for myself, and installed NetBSD instead. Current NetBSD nearly built with build.sh. No NFSv4, backed off to NFSv3. Two iSCSI implementations! Rump kernels and micro-VMs, here i come!

@nina_kali_nina I was really interested on it, but it seems that it's still stuck at X11

Other than that, any idea how Steam, Proton and Nvidia drivers work there?

@luana there's experimental Wayland project, but I haven't got it running yet.

Nvidia drivers are noveau, means 2d only acceleration, with 20xx being supported, not sure about newer ones. There's no 3D acceleration outside of Linux or FreeBSD on Nvidia due to their non free blobs :(

Steam doesn't work, as of now, because wine-wow64 is still a work in progress, wine64 isn't good enough to run Steam, and 32 bit Steam isn't a thing anymore so wine32 is not helping. But there's wine-9 binary packages and wine-11 patches.

I've been running Steam+Proton in Qemu with hardware CPU virtualization and software GPU rendering, which limits the type of games that are playable.

@jaredj enjoy! Any particular reason to build from source? Lots of fun, I hope?

@nina_kali_nina

It's sitting at a login prompt...progress!

@nina_kali_nina

New day, new desktop.

Umm, is something supposed to be here? I can get a popup menu, go to applications, but clicking anything else does... nothing. Oh I found a b&w Tetris in terminal utils. WiFi?

This is pretty close to my experience with RHL back in the before times. Getting started to actually start X and not crash and burn, but then not being able to actually do much.

@felichsdakatze it's very minimal out of the box, yes. If you start sysinst, there'll be a menu utility to configure WiFi (if your WiFi is supported), and then add binary packages. If that succeeds, you can install a package with a desktop environment (e.g. LXQt or xfce, there should be Mate and Kde and GNOME but I haven't checked what versions) and go from there

Good job getting it running though!!!

@nina_kali_nina

Thanks very much. I just bugged out back into Ubuntu to read up...thanks for the answer I'll boot back in and have a look.

@felichsdakatze nod nod, understandable! NetBSD installs actually useful manpages, I recommend checking them out with apropos and man afterboot, could save you a reboot in a pinch.

@nina_kali_nina I feel like it might be possible to make changes that matter, and such changes are easiest to share if they're against current. also i just had a terrible problem with kerberized NFSv4 on FreeBSD, and it was super fun to insert debugging sleep calls into parts of the base OS, then just make install them, and gdb the login process :D

@nina_kali_nina
Sysinst wants to install to hard disk...I'm not sure I'm ready to nuke my old laptop yet.
Hang on...found WiFi...

Initial impressions is this could do with a bit more work on just relabelling things and reorganising so you can find stuff a bit easier.

@felichsdakatze yep, it's very rough around the edges at times 😓 unfortunately. I guess it's not easy to fix these things when the project's budget for 2025 was 10% of a silicon valley programmer salary

@nina_kali_nina
Yeah, these are soft complaints, really. It's probably going to be a VM thing only for me. Ubuntu us working, even on my newest laptop with Nvidia GPU (just never, EVER take an upgrade).

Despite setting up WiFi, it seems it didn't take. Hmm...

@nina_kali_nina @mayke average trans-woman behaviour i guess XD

@felichsdakatze I might be able to give a hint or two tomorrow if you could share ifconfig output. Ubuntu is a decent choice for an OS, hopefully next time you'll try NetBSD it'll be a bit more polished and can compare 👍

@Abstract_Mage_Annastasia @mayke you can tell I'm a bit of a masochist, obviously /lh

@nina_kali_nina @mayke who isnt lol ^^'

@nina_kali_nina @mayke i also have seen lightly biting partners being connected to neurodivergence

@nina_kali_nina
Yeah i give it a try... If my daughter gives me some free time xD

@nina_kali_nina in many ways

@nina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt @luana@wetdry.world i have a thinkpad from ~2010 with an nvidia gpu and the gpu drivers hang on that machine. makes me wish i could just get the blobs somehow on it, but i wouldn't have the slightest idea on the feasibility or legality of that

@nil @luana :( that sucks. If the GPU model is supposed to be supported it might be possible to figure out what's up with that if you have time and energy, but it requires, well, time and energy...

@nina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt @luana@wetdry.world the other major driver issue i have is with the wifi drivers for the 3945abg, which don't seem to work at all so i can only use that machine on a wired connection. i assume that installing netbsd on my current machine would have even worse compatibility, if it ran at all. i want to learn kernel development so i can at least try to fix the wifi driver but i wouldn't know where to start

@nil @luana maybe you could start with building the kernel from sources? There's quite a few useful hints about general kernel development on the NetBSD website, including kernel debugging and testing.

The driver support for Intel WiFi cards is limited, afair, due to missing implementation for one of the WiFi standards; it is present in OpenBSD though, so might be a point of reference

@nina_kali_nina how's Nvidia's GPU support? Non-existent or just messy?

@alphavegan for OpenBSD and NetBSD there's nouveau that can give 2D acceleration on 2060 and such, but no 3D accel and no new cards AFAIK. FreeBSD has hardware accel similar to Linux, but it is similarly tainted by AI if you care

@nina_kali_nina there is no escape from the slop, is there? 😞 Thanks for the info

@alphavegan yeah :( the biggest problem is browsers, with both WebKit/blink and Mozilla succumbing to slop. There are alternatives like Palemoon but they have far worse compatibility with modern web, might not pass Cloudflare checks, etc

@nina_kali_nina I'm so tired of this 😞

@alphavegan yeah :( I'm in therapy because of this. It's grim. But there's hope.

@nina_kali_nina shit, didn't know that, I'm so sorry, I hope i didn't make it worse

@alphavegan nah, it's okay, thanks! I feel like lots of hardcore IT folks on Fedi/Mastodon are feeling similar feelings of loss and grief

@nina_kali_nina You'd need to run windows steam? Weren't there some kind of translation layer to linux programs on BSD? Or is that just for FreeBSD?

@luana there is a Linux compat layer; I think many Linux games would work, but Steam itself is too picky, they basically require systemd. Considering that Proton is a flavour of wine, and remembering that I used to play modern games on Linux with wine back in 2015, I have hopes for wine

@nina_kali_nina Also: how different are the BSDs from each other? If there's NVidia drivers for FreeBSD (are they any good compared to the Linux ones?), could that not be used in NetBSD?

@luana the BSDs basically branched in different directions 20-30 years ago, and thus largely not compatible between each other. Having compatible source license means that some things find its way from one kernel to the other. NetBSD kernel is highly hackable, so maybe someone will come up with a way to run the blob from FreeBSD, though

@nina_kali_nina Hmmm, maybe in a Docker container?

I know that few years back people used to run Steam on Docker when SteamVR didn't work well in other distros yet, tho that's on Linux. The performance overhead of running a Linux container on a Linux host isn't too big afaik, tho no idea if that'd also be the case for a Linux container on NetBSD...

@luana yeah, this is one of the things I plan to research more. Currently podman with Linux containers will trigger emulation of the whole computer, with CPU emulation accelerated, no idea what it would mean for graphics, but probably nothing good.

@nina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt @luana@wetdry.world the reason Steam doesn't work is not related to systemd as far as i know. i'm currently running Steam perfectly on my OpenRC Gentoo install.

@sorrowl @luana 🤔 fair enough. The installer says that the requirements are basically the same as the requirements for Flatpak, which was something very Linux specific, but I don't quite remember what

@nina_kali_nina @felichsdakatze

https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-inst-media.html

is that what you mean? or is there a ready-to-boot image for a net BSD somewhere - I mean an immediately live boot image?

@pflegende @felichsdakatze there's ready to boot image, aptly called "live", for many platforms including amd64. It's just not linked from the downloads page.

@nina_kali_nina Don't have time this weekend but next weekend is four days so I'll do it then.

@nina_kali_nina @felichsdakatze

give it a try ...

https://archive.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-archive/images/11.0/NetBSD-11.0-amd64-live.img.gz

only 479.9M

On the Cu lines here it takes 10 Minutes.

Im sorry for w11.target 🤪

@nina_kali_nina Hey, thanks for inspiring me to finally do this thing. I appreciate it!

@nina_kali_nina @felichsdakatze

Don’t be alarmed—the live version of NetBSD comes with a very bare-bones setup. To install `curl`, you’ll first need to add `pkgin` ( #netBSD 's equivalent of `apt`) by downloading the package directly.

pkg_add https://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/x86_64/11.0_2026Q3/All/pkgin-26.4.0.tgz

is your friend.

So, bring a bit of patience along!

@nina_kali_nina Result of my install party week-end: I tried to tweak here and there, I was very curious. But I hit a wall that prevented any real tests, even on two machines (Lenovo Yoga 370, Purism Librem13) to even reach the blue sysinst menu of the manual.

I reported details about my issue here https://www.unitedbsd.com/d/1708-netbsd-trouble-booting-via-usb-pen-drive-netbsd-110-amd64-usb-image , if you have an idea how to workaround this, I'll be happy to keep tweaking and get a machine to toy with NetBSD 😊

@davidrevoy @nina_kali_nina Did you write the installation image to the disk or to a partition? It needs to go onto the disk device (eg /dev/sda not /dev/sda1)

@davidrevoy I've replied in the thread; hopefully the forum will let me know when there will be a new post

@nina_kali_nina Linked to from https://www.unitedbsd.com/d/1708-netbsd-trouble-booting-via-usb-pen-drive-netbsd-110-amd64-usb-image here (thanks, @davidrevoy !)

The upcoming weekend is going to be our summer / winter hybrid (not enough money to afford either).

But I already downloaded NetBSD to try in VirtualBox. The installation process in the wiki looks slightly terrifying (not my first net install but there's a Windows partition that I had to accept when buying refurbished ThinkPad T480). I found a page in the wiki with ThinkPads. Should be supported.

@nina_kali_nina @davidrevoy What I struggled with was finding out which packages are available.

I don't need a full DE (GNOME and KDE were bashed for using D-BUS as that one violated UNIX philosophy…)

Fluxbox got mentioned (next to some Golem?).
It's X11. So I have to bite that bullet regarding security.

Can I have AwesomeWM? (Not found in the wiki). QTile? (Same) Mate? (Found something but situation is not clear).

@RyunoKi @davidrevoy pkgin search can search for binary packet names and descriptions. It's not as convenient as a gui tool ;(

@nina_kali_nina @davidrevoy To sum up: I wish there was a page listing packages with a short description, link to the source and CI to understand the build process and the dependencies of that package.