NetBSD users, why do you use it over FreeBSD and OpenBSD?

The most noticeable problems with NetBSD (when compared to other BSDs) are the not really well-maintained and often lacking documentation, the steeper learning curve for beginners, the fact it lags a little behind in terms of wifi and acpi (suspend/resume, backlight..) support, the lack of userspace-level containerization system (FreeBSD has jails) excluding the alpha-state sailor, the eternal beta/testing-state affecting some features, the lack of a sandboxing suite (OpenBSD has pledge, FreeBSD has capsicum), less software available in repo (again, only when compared with FreeBSD). But hey, NetBSD can count on funds and manpower which are like 2 orders of magnitude more limited than the FreeBSD's and OpenBSD's !

JuvenalUrbino according to this wiki https://wiki.netbsd.org/security/intel_mds/

"You may also want to disable SMT/HyperThreading to address certain aspects of the vulnerabilities. Should you not be able to disable SMT/HT in your BIOS, you can put smtoff=YES in your /etc/rc.conf file."

Jay sorry, that was a mistake of mine, typed too quickly without thinking first; <variable>=off is clearly not proper rc.conf syntax. Thanks for pointing that out, my mind had completely ignored it, even when @pin quoted me. Gonna edit my post to hold it back from misleading forecoming readers

JuvenalUrbino happy to help out

I like the portability focus NetBSD has, there is even a version that runs on the Dreamcast console which is very cool Call me silly but I don't like the logo of FreeBSD and it seems too much like Linux which I already run. OpenBSD seems too dependant on one person and locked down. There are other BSDs too but I don't know much about them.

I'm a long time user of FreeBSD, BUT, I exclusively use NetBSD on small devices like the Raspberry Pi.
As others have stated, it's a smaller ecosystem, so it does suffer from lack of support for users. I would like to see them put up a better Wiki. If you subscribe to their mailing lists (as I do to some), they are quiet for months on end. Contrast this to FreeBSD where it's daily or hourly multiple messages and discussions.

I really like NetBSD's minimalist approach (by design or by lack of funding, it matters not). I like that they don't bother with ZFS (who really wants that on the desktop - it's a server file system but everyone goes ga-ga over it) and I like that they don't bother with sandboxing or jails. I just like their minimalism.

I personally do not like openbsd. If I want a secure OS, I'd use windows....

I use a lot of computers with architectures that aren't "popular" nowadays (for desktops and servers at least), so FreeBSD is right out. FreeBSD can run on most (not all) of my PowerMacs, but it can't run on my SGI Indy, or on Alpha, or on NeXT/m68k.

NetBSD supports these just fine and in general with NetBSD I don't have to worry about whether they will continue being supported like I might with OpenBSD (which discontinued the SGI port in 6.5). With NetBSD I can just run the same OS on everything I own, and it just works.

I also appreciate how clean the driver and platform code in NetBSD is, and I've had better experiences with the sorts of folks who use it when asking for help. Perhaps only because questions about troubleshooting relatively obscure hardware older than I am aren't seen as strange there.

Plus I know if I get the strange urge to port NetBSD to something like the Wii or some random MIPS router I found, and I ever actually finish the job, I can probably get the code accepted.

I'm not a NetBSD user (yet), but I do know my reasons why I would use it over FreeBSD, what I currently use at the moment.

The main thing that appeals to me about NetBSD in particular is its portability. Meaning I could in theory use the same OS on many devices and apply the same knowledge on any of them.

The 2nd thing would be the NetBSD developers and community. How should I say this, you folks are very kind and welcoming. It's mostly the opposite when in FreeBSD's community. The atmosphere here and in the NetBSD IRC is just noticeably much brighter and more pleasing.

The 3rd thing, after talking with @Jay, is that I realized that NetBSD's extreme portability would reflect its very good and flexible coding design. (I even wrote a rhythmic poem saying something about it). The architecture in the code is very phenomenal. So I get the impression the developers really care about their project.

I'm really trying to get NetBSD on my AMD Threadripper workstations. What's holding me back is the need for updated drm kms driver support in the kernel for my amdgpu cards. However I found more likely alternatives to use, such as the Raspberry Pi 4 and my Dell XPS laptop.

I'm hoping to have fun as I go on this journey, learning news things and making friends.

JuvenalUrbino
I agree with you about documentation, but this reflects the size of the project as you say. Also, very often you can get cross-information from FreeBSD. Yes, this does lead to a steeper learning curve, and on that basis, solely, I would always recommend a new person to *BSDs use FreeBSD initially. I just did a set up for a new FreeBSD user at work the other day, getting her setup running FreeBSD in a VMWare workstation for later migration to the ESXi. (Those two don't like each other but we go there).

But, having agreed with you there, I disagree with the rest. (Friendly of course). I don't want NetBSD to get jails, zfs, sandboxing etc. That's already done by FreeBSD and really it would be a waste of resources to even attempt them. I love that NetBSD still basically uses the same file system that 386BSD used. Rock solid. I think the endearing feature of NetBSD is K.I.S.S. :

bsdisbetter the alpha in question is currently nonfunctioning, temporarily not in my possession, and i don't know the model number, but hopefully all of the above is going to be rectified this weekend

i'd definitely say you should repurpose it! that hardware's fun to play around with even though, if we're being honest here, alpha was a terrible architecture for anything but pure number crunching.

the DS-10 should be a reasonably capable machine. i think you ought to be able to run quake 2 on that, so it passes my minimum bar for general usability

ky0ko but it can't run on my SGI Indy,

Oddly enough, my personal 'NetBSD story', which I hadn't told up to this point, starts when I was looking for an OS with concrete support for a Sgi Indy

I endorse your attitude, which not by chance seems tipically NetBSD-ish, and I can align with practically everything you said.

ky0ko or on NeXT/m68k

Are you really saying you own a NeXT station?

PS: I'm positive we met on Mastodon already

stratact need for updated drm kms driver support in the kernel for my amdgpu cards

Have you tried with -current? it provides initial amdgpu support, with the version in Linux 4.11 IIRC

JuvenalUrbino Have you tried with -current? it provides initial amdgpu support, with the version in Linux 4.11 IIRC

The thing is, a couple days ago on NetBSD Freenode IRC, the person named medfly told me that it's at 4.4 and with patches for i915. This person is also working on updating drm kms as well.

ky0ko do you happen to know how solid the sparc64 port is? I was planning to get a Sun Blade

stratact oh, my bad, 4.11 must be FreeBSD then, I apologize for themisleading info.

stratact This person is also working on updating drm kms as well.

Can't wait for it: I really hope it gets on par with Linux 4.1x, when IIRC nouveau got support for Pascal Nvidia GPU graphics (10xx)