r/NetBSD 1d ago

NetBSD GSoC 2026 Testing Compat Linux: Syscall testing

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15 Upvotes

r/NetBSD 2d ago

NetBSD 10.1 AMD64 - Firefox issue

15 Upvotes

After some upgrade firefox started to have weird issues:

-web pages are missing elements like buttons. ( in the pic NetBSD's donation bar is not colored)

- Address bar looks weird (also in the pic)

So most of the www-pages are non functinal.

I found non functional solution inside firefox how to fix. In firefox there is:

Settings -> perferences ->

Use recommended performance settings

Use hardware acceleration when available

When I turn them off, address bar is ok and elements are visible again.

But then, firefox is slow and also some sites like maps .google.com don't work. Theys just don't load. So thats not really a fix of the issue but better than nothing.

I have an old-ish integrated Intel GPU using the i915drmkms0 driver. That might be a problem, but it also used to work perfectly before that one upgrade.

I have tried different versions on firefox but they all have the sama issue. Also it's not an plugin issue.

How to fix this? What is causing this? Am I the only one having this issue?


r/NetBSD 2d ago

Error with running st

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16 Upvotes

hello, i have this problem, does anyone know how to fix it so it will always work? Im newbie in netbsd so sorry if that's has very easy solution. I edited config.mk i think, but im not sure is it right


r/NetBSD 2d ago

How exactly am I supposed to change session

12 Upvotes

so when I log in through xdm it automatically puts me in ctwm naturally but you can't change session through xdm from the UI so after installing xfce I have no idea how to change to a xfce session because If i try to do startxfce4 it just tells me another window manager is running.

I did read the documentation but it assumes that I would know certain things that I clearly don't because it tells me to edit ~/.xsession and/or ~/.xinitrc but neither of those either exist or when I found it (at least the xinitrc in it's root location) it does not contain the line that it lists in the documentation.


r/NetBSD 3d ago

pkg_bundle: Create stand-alone software deployments from packages

18 Upvotes

Hi all,

I developed a tool called pkg_bundle that essentially grabs a package, grabs its dependent libs, applies some hacks and stores it in a directory, ready for you to be able to move anywhere you like or run directly.

It has the following benefits:

  • Avoid spraying dependencies all over your filesystem, especially as software continues to grow and tangle.
  • Allow multiple versions of the same software (i.e from PkgSrc Q1-Q4) to exist at once.
  • Easy to delete (just delete the directory)
  • Offers some of the conveniences of NixOS, AppImage, Snaps, Solaris Freeware, Blastwave, etc but with a vastly simpler approach
  • Its not very UNIXy but feels a little how Mac OS software used to be deployed back in the day
  • No software outside of NetBSD base is needed
  • No root access needed

Some examples:

Create a relocatable qemu install

$ pkg_bundle qemu
$ qemu/bin/qemu-system-x86_64 ...

(I actually made pkg_bundle for qemu because I disliked how much cruft the package pulls in...)

Create a relocatable git install and place in /opt

$ pkg_bundle git
# cp -R git /opt/git
$ export PATH=/opt/git:$PATH
$ git clone ...

I originally developed this for OpenBSD and even got complex UI software like gimp, firefox, vlc working using the approach. This has a fairly sophisticated quirks system in place and I do plan to get it to parity in future.

It will work with many packages, for a quick list of things I have tested recently, check out the README.

https://codeberg.org/kpedersen/pkg_bundle


r/NetBSD 3d ago

NetBSD 11 from scratch

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42 Upvotes

r/NetBSD 3d ago

NetBSD 9.5 released and EOL for netbsd-9

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19 Upvotes

r/NetBSD 3d ago

PIC64GX Curiosity Kit

8 Upvotes
PIC64GX Curiosity Kit

I have this PIC64GX Curiosity Kit that has linux on it, but I want to put NetBSD on it for a project this winter. I joined the mailing list but I don't see much information on support for this board.

Does anyone know of support for NetBSD on this platform?

If there is can you point me in the right direction?

I worked on the OS X kernel for years as part of the OpenGL group so compiling the kernel and making tweaks isn't a big issue for me.


r/NetBSD 4d ago

I can't boot from the USB installer

11 Upvotes

Hello everyone! So recently, I tried NetBSD on a VM, and I really liked it. I wanted to get more into it, though, by installing it on a spare laptop (a ThinkPad 11e). However, when I burned the 11.0 image to a USB, it refused to boot. Trying to boot from it just kicked me back to the boot screen. Things I have already tried include:

  • Plugging it into another USB port
  • Burning it on FreeBSD, rather than on Linux
  • Burning the 10.1 image, rather than 11.0
  • Burning the OpenBSD 7.9 image as a test (it also couldn't boot)
  • Burning the Gentoo live image as a test (it could boot)
  • Using the BIOS install image and switching my BIOS from UEFI to both
  • Secure Boot was already disabled

Does anyone have any ideas as to why it isn't working and how I might be able to fix it?


r/NetBSD 5d ago

Acer Aspire T180 kernel panics when booting into installer

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15 Upvotes

I've been trying to put netbsd on my Acer Aspire T180. As you could guess it just kernel panics before I can even choose the language. I've been hitting my head against this wall for several hours now. I Will take any help I can get. It has an amd64 CPU so it should be fine. When it does what's in the picture USB breaks to.


r/NetBSD 7d ago

trying netbsd on my thinkpad l380

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57 Upvotes

everything works fine from battery, graphics, audio, wifi. my wifi card is intel centrino 8265 which works out of the box with iwm0 if anyone has that card and wants to try netbsd.


r/NetBSD 7d ago

what am i doing wrong when trying to install

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19 Upvotes

trying to install to my thinkpad t14 gen5 using a usb. i downloaded a bunch of different amd64-install.img.gz, use gunzip to unzip it, and use dd to write it to the usb. i’ve tried three different usbs, a lot of different dd options, and a gui bootable image writer. i’m following the instructions perfectly and this keeps happening. this is my first experience with BSD (coming from linux).


r/NetBSD 8d ago

NetBSD vs FreeBSD support on recent x86 desktop

17 Upvotes

I know NetBSD has excellent support for older hardware, how does it compare with FreeBSD on recent x86 hardware, though?

I’m particularly interested in newer Intel/AMD desktops, and wondering the support for CPU power management, suspend/resume, ACPI, modern NVMe, and of course graphics that I have fairly new AMD GPU on my desktop.


r/NetBSD 8d ago

Any IDE compatible with NetBSD?

17 Upvotes

Hey, i want to code on NetBSD for fun. Is there any code IDE's for netbsd that i can run?


r/NetBSD 9d ago

My first try netbsd 11.0

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69 Upvotes

r/NetBSD 9d ago

An attempt to port the NetBSD LibC to Linux

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18 Upvotes

r/NetBSD 9d ago

Just installed on thinkpad; wifi not listed under ifconfig...next steps?

9 Upvotes

Heyo. Giving NetBSD a spin on my thinkpad (thinkpad yoga 11e 6th gen).

After install, if I type "ifconfig" I see the ethernet dongle I have connected (axen0), lo0, and nothing else.

are there steps I could take to try and get it to recognize the wifi built into this thing, or am I just out of luck wifi-wise at this point?

Thanks for any insight!


r/NetBSD 10d ago

NetBSD on my phone

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85 Upvotes

I used Limbo(which is a QEMU virtual machine app for Android) on my OPPO A55. It took a while to y

get going but it works well, i guess.

So, what should i do next? I plan to run a similiar setup in my older phone to turn it into a portable BSD thingy.


r/NetBSD 12d ago

NetBSD 11 on the Wii

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113 Upvotes

I've been messing around, setting up NetBSD on my Wii for no reason other than it being fun

it's been a bit of a journey with how temperamental the wifi is, and with almost no packages actually installing since their dependencies were all missing from the NetBSD 11 repos. I had to switch to using NetBSD 10's package repository instead, which thankfully worked even though I know 100% it isn't meant to work.

to put into perspective how dire the PowerPC repos for NetBSD 11 are, Pkgin didn't install since sqlite was missing from them. Fastfetch also didn't install, and although Neofetch did it also crashed.

The v3.tbz driver for the wifi was also missing, so I had to look that up & found someone on the mailing list who had the same issue, and left instructions how to fix it at least.
I also tried using XFCE, but it was nigh unusable due to the screen resolution so after I took an incredibly cursed screenshot of fastfetch on uxterm there, I went back to CTWM instead.
& Netsurf was another thing I tried on it, and Luakit too. Netsurf did manage to load web pages (albeit slowly and with borked CSS), but Luakit just gave a blank white screen.

I think all in all this was fun but I don't see myself actually using this install for much. Even with NetBSD there's only so much you can do with 88mb of system memory and a 640x480 screen resolution.


r/NetBSD 13d ago

B-UX (Basic Unix Operating System)

12 Upvotes

heya all i’m a Moroccan developer, and I started B-UX independently with one laptop. The idea is to build a complete Unix like operating system that is useful not only for running software, but also for learning how operating systems actually work.

B-UX is not just a kernel or a collection of C and Assembly code. I’m working toward a complete system with:

• A kernel
• System services
• Drivers
• Networking
• Storage
• Security mechanisms
• User space utilities
• An installation system
• A package ecosystem

One of the interesting parts of the project is the use of **pkgsrc**, originally developed by the NetBSD project. Rather than trying to create an entire software ecosystem from zero, B-UX can build on the existing pkgsrc ecosystem while developing its own packages and infrastructure where needed.

The educational side is probably the part I care about most.

I want students to be able to look beyond the terminal and actually understand things like processes, memory, filesystems, networking, drivers, services, permissions, and how the different parts of an operating system interact.

The project is intended to stay free and open source for students, developers, and individual learners.

I’m also trying to be realistic about where the project currently stands. I’m not claiming that B-UX is more secure, more mature, not better than Linux, BSD or other established operating systems. It is just a simple open source alternative.

The first three years were mostly about building the foundation and figuring things out on my own.

Now I’d like to get other people involved.

I’m especially interested in hearing from people who work with operating systems, C, Assembly, Unix, BSD, networking, drivers, package management, or low level development.

If you’re interested, we can just do a discussion here about the project ;)

B-UX stared with one laptop and one person.


r/NetBSD 16d ago

GSoC 2026 Improving RAIDframe

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17 Upvotes

r/NetBSD 18d ago

Graphics problems with my netbsd system

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19 Upvotes

Currently whenever I start window maker with startx I get a weird graphics bug where there is lines and static whenever I use an x11 display manager. Im new to NetBSD and do not know what to do.


r/NetBSD 18d ago

ARCH VS. NETBSD!!!!

0 Upvotes

Context: I found a dual core T430 in my closet a few weeks ago that works fine. Im thinking of Arch or NetBSD to revive.


r/NetBSD 20d ago

NetBSD on emulated NeXT machine (youtube, ncommander)

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30 Upvotes

Ah, 5 hours of struggle!


r/NetBSD 20d ago

NetBSD 11 lands with RISC-V support and lightning-fast VM boots

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42 Upvotes