NetBSD-9.0 as a desktop on i386

Is anyone here using NetBSD-9 as a desktop on an i386 platform?
If so,
-what WM/DE are you using?
-how has your experience been so far?

Please include all details you find relevant, and/or tweeks needed to make it work.
Thanks!

doug213

i used to use it on an old 32bit intel atom.. i seem to remember it worked good, i think i used ratpoison and it worked fine but that atom was a little underpowered for 1080 video.. lower res media worked fine..

hd_scania

Aren’t i386 ~ i686 being depreciated? And isn’t arm64 rising up?

hd_scania That might be true but, I'm interested in possible issues people are having.
I don't own any 32bits hardware, so I can't test things on.

doug213

maybe, but thats a damn shame.. i have a crapload of 32bit machines here at home.. i would actually buy and use a new 32bit machine as a daily driver, but no new 32bit machines are available

JuvenalUrbino

As I mentioned elsewhere already, I use NetBSD/i386 almost daily on a Acer TravelMate 426LC from 2001, equipped with:

Pentium 4M (x86) 2.4 GHz
512MB DDR SDRAM
50GB ATAPI HDD
ATI Radeon 7500
AC'97 SoundBlaster Pro
Realtek 8139 10/100 Ethernet Controller

Using Sun OpenLook (actually the so-called 'Xview' port for x86 Linux) on it, with wm/olvwm. Given the limited specs, I must say I'm really satisfied with the overall stability, performance and usability, as well as the factually Tier1-level kind of support NetBSD still provides.

JuvenalUrbino ...and this is NetBSD-9? No X crashes?!

JuvenalUrbino

pin 8.2 with radeon(4) actually 😉. Are you experiencing crashes on 9?

Greywolf

If I had the space (current desktop is a Windows box for several reasons), I'd probably be running WindowMaker.

There's no well-functioned window manager out there that can beat it for efficiency. It's small and it is fast.

My last speed comparison on various startup X environments was long ago, and I didn't have a Beastie box to compare with.

All times below are from hitting Return after the last character of the password to the time the desktop was fully up and functional, including a command-line window on the desktop. Intel Core Duo processor, 16GB RAM, which, for 10 years ago, was pretty beefy.

Windows 7: 40s
Linux/KDE: 32s
Linux/GNOME-2: 32s
Linux/GNOME-3: 35s
Linux/WindowMaker: a second and a half.

No kidding.

Greywolf WindowMaker...
There's no well-functioned window manager out there that can beat it for efficiency. It's small and it is fast.

Stacking window manager with ability for semi-automatic tiling management

Your call 😉
I'll keep using spectrwm

spectrwm is a small dynamic tiling and reparenting window manager for X11. It tries to stay out of the way so that valuable screen real estate can be used for much more important stuff.

Greywolf

whif I get a NetBSD desktop running again, I'll look into various other solutions. I like the customisability, multiple desktops, and dock/clip concepts of WM...but I am open to other options.

Greywolf Ok, keeping this out of topic 😆
An image is worth a thousand words or, so they say...
Tiling is probably not for everyone but, since I start using it I can't do without it 😉
Everything on my system is control by key bindings, see bellow. The list grows all the time... yes, you can still use the mouse if you really want to but there's nowhere to click, spectrwm doesn't provide titlebars. The only application where the mouse is useful is inside firefox.

EDIT: Forgot these on the picture,

# Default Programs
program[lock]		= slock
program[term]		= xterm
program[menu]		= dmenu_run $dmenu_bottom -fn $bar_font -nb $bar_color -nf $bar_font_color -sb $bar_color_selected -sf $bar_font_color_selected

yeti

I wish EXWM (Emacs as WM) were more stable. *sigh!*