If that's your first target for removal, I'd wager a large amount of money that you're [unfamiliar](https://man.netbsd.org/compat_freebsd.8) with the NetBSD code base.
I only really have experience talking directly to the kernel abis, i.e. the stuff in netbsd/sys/kern/syscalls.master. I'm using sem_open / sem_wait / etc. as my futex replacement. What abi should I be using? https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan/blob/master/third_party...
This is part of the contract all new committers are required to sign. Becoming a NetBSD committer requires membership of the NetBSD Foundation and there's an understanding that trust is expected.
The article is wrong, it has branding disabled (so it identifies as Nightly), but it's stable Firefox. And the linked article indicates that one compositor can be used.
It's "big in Japan". Used on many ISP routers there, for example Internet Initiative Japan's "SEIL" family, as well as most workstations in a few Japanese universities.
pkgsrc enjoys mild popularity in the scientific computing community, a lot of NetBSD use is probably in education - Cambridge University uses it for their thin clients too.
This is exactly the type of hardware where NetBSD shines - it's often best to install it on something from a few years ago where driver support has matured to a fine vintage. Very good OS for preventing old hardware from being binned.
Nice to hear this, thanks. I wonder what the framebuffer experience is like with current NetBSD. I researched this (framebuffer on Linux vs OpenBSD vs NetBSD) a while ago, since I would need a framebuffer PDF reader.
It feels like at this point, Linux has the most choice out of the box, when it comes to software for displaying images/pdfs on the framebuffer? I use fbpdf on Linux, which is not available on NetBSD. Then again, it is based on libmupdf, which is available, so maybe I should get my (shaking) hands dirty. :)
I like it very much how NetBSD encourages user-side modifications of the kernel, e.g. for changing the console font or underclocking the cpu. Every time I read the NetBSD documentation, I feel tempted to install it, because the docs are so well structured and written. Very welcoming, even for (curious) non-CS users like me.
For that reason, using NetBSD may possibly be more educational than using Linux, in the long run? Due to heavy reliance on the official documentation, you'll have a more structured understanding of how stuff works -- as compared to trawling web forums of various Linux distros and sometimes blindly copy-pasting solutions or hacks provided by others. In that sense, a good base documentation encourages more acknowledged use and going to the details from early on. (Obviously, there are Linux distros witch excellent documentation, too, like the Arch wiki.)
That said, I am rather pleased with Tiny Core Linux. Their current release is something like 12.x, and I've been in their boat since version 6.x. It is a really simple, well thought out distro, excellent for older hardware; somewhat similar in that sense to the BSDs. But, yeah, sans that documentation. :)
Seems like sixel would be an excellent solution, thanks very much for that pointer.
However, I can always convert PDFs to images and go forward from there, I guess. It's not a bad workaround. The fbi image viewer is available for NetBSD's X Window system; not sure about the framebuffer port. https://www.kraxel.org/blog/linux/fbida/
"Like ls, but for images. Shows thumbnails in terminal using sixel graphics. /.../ Because lsix uses ImageMagick pretty much any image format will be supported.
However, some may be slow to render (like PDF), so lsix doesn't show them
unless you ask specifically."
All in all, woah, lots of fascinating reading and links here -- since I was not much aware of sixel before: https://github.com/saitoha/libsixel
The sixel format itself seems to match really well with the NetBSD philosophy (among other things, keeping old hardware running via low-demanding, essentials-only software). Thanks again for that pointer.
> I may have some useful hardware sitting around here at the house. Some of it may be 20 years old. How can I tell whether any of it will be useful to this project?
NetBSD developer hat on
It will likely be very useful, martin would particularly like CardBus and PCMCIA hardware, though he's kind of overwhelmed by requests right now.
If you can find some way to get the chipset identifier (maybe check dmesg, usbdevs/pcidevs if your operating system provides such a command), that's the useful information that he needs.
All active Unix-like operating systems aim to implement the new interfaces as they're defined.
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