 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1140, 22 September 2025 |
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Welcome to this year's 38th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
On the whole, most Linux distributions run fairly well these days. Linux hardware support is typically wide-ranging and stable, the desktop environments are functional, and the applications provide a vast range of functionality. There are some exceptions, some small projects which struggle due to a lack of testing and some niche projects which focus on one specific area sometimes fall short. However, generally speaking, mainstream Linux distributions are both reliable and capable. Getting a Linux distribution working with our hardware and performing all required tasks rarely poses a challenge. This week Jesse Smith seeks to mix up his work week by installing an alternative open source operating system and seeing if he can make it perform every task, for work and play, that comes up. Read on to hear more about this deeper dive into a non-Linux platform. Then, in our News section, we talk about AlmaLinux enabling an extra repository for improved package compatibility. We also talk about Haiku improving disk access performance while Mageia deals with a service outage, and GNOME releases version 49 of its desktop environment. Our Questions and Answers column this week talks about AI, why some distributions include it, and how to avoid distributions which include it by default. Plus we are pleased to share the release of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
This week's DistroWatch Weekly is presented by TUXEDO Computers.
Content:
- Review: An alternative OS for work and play
- News: AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access, Mageia deals with service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support
- Questions and answers: Avoiding the spread of AI services
- Released last week: Murena 3.1.1, SparkyLinux 2025.09, Mauna Linux 25, Omarchy 3.0.1, Security Onion 2.4.180, Tails 7.0, IPFire 2.29 Core 197, DietPi 9.17
- Torrent corner: KDE neon, SparkyLinux, Tails
- Upcoming releases: Pop!_OS 24.04-beta, FreeBSD 15.0-ALPHA4
- Opinion poll: What are your thoughts about NetBSD?
- Reader comments
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| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
An alternative OS for work and play
In recent weeks I have enjoyed exploring some lesser-known open source operating systems. At the end of August I was playing with Tribblix and then, a short time later, I found myself trying to get Debian's Hurd port running. These experiences got me thinking that, for the most part, getting my tasks accomplished with Linux distributions is a bit too, well, easy.
Not that Linux distributions aren't interesting, many of them are, but (in most cases) if a Linux distribution works well enough to install and launch a desktop environment then I know I will be able to get on-line, consume multimedia, perform my work tasks, and maybe do some gaming. There isn't much of a challenge involved and so I tend not to go into the gritty details of my trials.
On the other hand, when I try out non-Linux operating systems my approach is different. In those situations I'm usually just testing to see if the operating system will boot, get on-line, and maybe perform some basic tasks. I don't expect most non-Linux open source operating systems to do everything I need my computer to do; I just want to see if they can perform some basics, in any environment (either on real hardware or in a virtual machine).
At the end of August I decided to try a slightly different approach. I wanted to see if a lesser-used, open source system could be used to do everything I currently do on Linux. I wanted to see if another operating system would not only get on-line and perform some common tasks, but whether could it be used to accomplish all of my (admittedly niche) day-to-day work?
I put out a request on Mastodon for suggestions of lesser-used, open source operating systems. I quickly received a handful suggestions for Linux distributions, such as Void and Bodhi Linux, but I wanted something not Linux based. And I'd reviewed the suggested Linux distros fairly recently. Tribblix was another suggestion, but I had just finished writing a review for it.
A few people suggested Haiku; it was probably the crowd favourite of the non-Linux suggestions. It seemed to have enough of the third-party software I use to be functional, or at least it offered close alternatives (Icedove instead of Thunderbird, for example). I'd used Haiku previously a few times and was impressed by it performance, though consistently disappointed by the fact it was not set up to be a multi-user system. Still, Haiku looked like it would fit the criteria. I downloaded the latest beta snapshot of Haiku and quickly found it would not boot on my laptop. It would show a splash screen and then crash, dropping to a debug prompt. I talked with someone about this afterwards and they suggested the Haiku crash sounded like a compatibility issue with UEFI, but by then I had moved on in my search.
Someone suggested NomadBSD, but it's not meant to be installed, it's run from a thumb drive and therefore not suitable for this trial. Redox OS and ReactOS were mentioned as candidates. The former I've used recently and it doesn't boot on my laptop. Redox OS is an interesting project and it's making rapid progress, but it's still a long ways short of being something I could use on a daily basis. Meanwhile, each time I've tried ReactOS it hasn't been stable for more than a few minutes at a time, making it unsuited for trying to use it as a work system. I felt like the options were narrowing quickly.
NetBSD was the next most popular option and the project showed a lot of promise. I've used NetBSD previously, though not for long and not in any depth, so it would provide a learning experience. The project has a good collection of third-party software, and it looked like most of my needs could be met using the official repository. I soon confirmed that NetBSD's x86_64 (amd64) build would boot on my laptop and was able to launch the system installer. It looked like I had a good match for my experiment!
I'd like to mention before diving into my experiment that the NetBSD guide is quite helpful and worth bookmarking if you plan to run this portable operating system.
Day #1
I wrote NetBSD to a thumb drive and booted the portable operating system. NetBSD automatically launches its system installer and brings up a series of text-based menus to guide us through setting up the operating system. We are asked to pick our language from a list and our keyboard layout. The installer then asks if we are performing a fresh installation or an upgrade.
NetBSD's installer asks us to select a disk or partition where it can be installed. It then offers to set up partitions inside the given space. (On BSD a section of the disk is a slice and the sub-sections inside it are partitions.) The installer suggests setting up a single, large root filesystem and a swap partition. We can alter this layout and the sizes as desired.
Something I noticed on a few pages of the installer was text for menus/prompts did not always display in the proper places. Sometimes text wrapped around the screen or one line overwrote a previous line. This made it hard to read menu options on some screens.
The next screen asks us to pick software categories to install. The options are: Full, Without X11, Minimal, and Custom. I decided to take the Full collection since I planned to do a lot with this system. The term "Full" in this case is still minimal by Linux standards, providing a bare command line environment and a tiny X11 window manager. As a result it took less than two minutes to copy the entire operating system to my hard drive.
Once its files have copied, NetBSD asks us to perform some configuration tasks. We're asked to make up a password for the root user, enable networking, and choose our timezone from a list. We're given the chance to enable the pkgin binary package manager and the pkgsrc source-based ports system. I tried to enable pkgin and the installer showed it was running a command (using pkg_add) to fetch the binary package manager, but then nothing happened. The installer locked up and I had to use Ctrl-C to cancel the operation, returning me to the list of configuration tasks. I tried once more after confirming, in another terminal, that I was connected to the network, DNS was working, and I was able to ping remote servers. Again, the pkg_add command to fetch pkgin failed and I put aside this step for the time being.
I was given the chance to enable some background services, including NTP and OpenSSH (network time synchronization and secure shell access). I enabled these and the xdm service which provides a graphical login screen. I was also asked to make up a username and password for a regular user account.
The installer concludes by telling us to read the INSTALL document (it does not say where this is located - in a home directory, manual page, e-mail, or on-line). It also suggests we read the afterboot manual page.
NetBSD 10.1 -- Finally, a graphical interface!
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The first time I launched my new copy of NetBSD 10.1 the operating system booted slowly. I could see pauses in the start-up messages indicating OpenSSH was launching and the network time daemon was fetching time information. Eventually NetBSD presented me with a simple, graphical login screen. Signing into my account launched a minimal window manager (ctwm) with a terminal (xterm) open and a clock near the top of the screen. I found there were virtually no other desktop applications installed, other than the xeyes widget and a calculator.
NetBSD ran csh as my terminal shell (we are offered our choice of shells during the install process). By default I could not use my arrow keys to retrieve commands I had previously run in csh when I was signed in as a regular user. When I signed in as the root user, shell history worked and when I tried running the bash shell as a regular user the shell's command history worked.
The default screen resolution was a touch off, set too low, but this could be changed by running the xrandr command line tool and passing it my laptop's screen resolution: "xrandr -s 1920x1080".
Early on I wanted to add more software to my system. Since setting up pkgin had failed during the install process, I checked the on-line FAQ for instructions. It suggested using the built-in pkg_add command to fetch the more capable pkgin package manager. Once I had confirmed I could resolve domain names and ping remote computers I ran the following commands as the root user to fetch the pkgin package manager and install it:
# export PKG_PATH=https://cdn.NetBSD.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/$(uname -p)/$(uname -r | cut -d_ -f1)/All
# pkg_add pkgin
Nothing happened. Nothing at all. The command simply froze with no output. I cancelled the command (with Ctrl-C) and tried again. This time I ran the pkg_add command with the verbose (-v) flag and, once more, nothing happened. Next, I downloaded the pkgin package manually and tried to install it locally. This worked, eventually, though the process was quite slow.
NetBSD 10.1 -- Exploring software packages with pkgin and editing a text file
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Since I then had the pkgin package management installed I used it to try to refresh the NetBSD repository information and perform a search. This took an unusually long time. It worked, but the first refresh and search took seven minutes. There was a similar pause whenever I tried to install a package, such as Firefox or Thunderbird, where pkgin would pause for a few minutes.
At this point in my trial I was happy to be running a minimal system that was pleasantly light on resources. The base install had required just 1.5GB of disk space (plus swap space) and my graphical interface was using only a few hundred megabytes of RAM. On the other hand, package management was nearly unusable and this meant (since the system was so minimal by default) that it was likely to take several hours, maybe days, to fetch all the programs I would want.
I browsed some NetBSD forums and found similar reports of slow package management and network traffic, though not many solutions. Eventually, I discovered a Reddit thread which explained NetBSD seems to expect an IPv6 connection. When one is not available, the system will wait for IPv6 to timeout before falling back to IPv4. We can either try to force an application to use IPv4 (usually by passing the "-4" flag to affected applications) or change the system configuration in /etc/rc.conf to prefer IPv4. I went with the latter option, which worked, and was able to start installing applications quickly and then browsing the web from my new NetBSD system.
I soon had Firefox, Thunderbird, a text editor, the bash shell, and LibreOffice installed on my system. However, I could not run any of them as a regular user, only when I was signed in as root. This seemed strange as my regular user's PATH variable included the directory where new packages were installed (/usr/pkg/bin). I found that logging out of my regular user account and signing in again fixed the issue. I suspect that some sort of check for the directory (or programs in the directory) is run when we sign in and, if nothing is found, that directory in our PATH is ignored.
I was almost finished my first day of the trial at this point. I installed doas to assist me in performing admin tasks from my regular user account. Then installed the dbus service and the xfce4 meta-package in order to set up the Xfce desktop environment. There is a guide on setting up Xfce, though it mentions editing some files which either don't exist or which are empty which was a little confusing. So, rounding out my first afternoon with NetBSD, I had a working desktop, some basic applications, and a working package manager. It had taken about three or four hours to get this far, but the basics were working.
NetBSD 10.1 -- My first look at Xfce on NetBSD
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Day #2
After I had installed Xfce I discovered a weird issue the next morning. If I tried to login from the graphical login page, my sign-in would fail and return me to the xdm login screen. However, when I signed into my account from a text terminal I could run startx and sign into the Xfce desktop successfully. It's a minor inconvenience, and something is clearly wrong with my setup that causes the session to fail from xdm. However, since there is no error and signing in and running startx manually works, there isn't much with which to troubleshoot the problem.
I did look in the .xsession-error file in home directory and it reports a graphical session is already running and that is causing the xfce4-session process to fail, but the problem isn't triggered from the text console. I decided to put that aside and focus on other things.
My next hurdle was discovering I could not shutdown or restart my computer from within the Xfce desktop. This was fixed by adding my regular user to the operator group. This could be done by editing the /etc/group file and, from then onward, I could shutdown the system from Xfce without providing a password.
I found Firefox was a bit sluggish. It worked and I could stream video with it, but the performance was poor. I installed Epiphany (also known a GNOME Web) and it worked. Epiphany was faster, but some websites were not compatible with it. I had to balance performance against functionality, and switch browsers depending on which website I was visiting.
NetBSD 10.1 -- Running Firefox to browse the Web
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Earlier I mentioned installing Thunderbird and it is one of the few desktop applications I use consistently. It's been the home of my e-mail, calendar, and RSS feeds for over a decade. I often switch desktops, text editors, and web browsers, but Thunderbird is one of the few constants. The version of Thunderbird provided by NetBSD is a bit newer than the version I was running before this trial and I ran into some frustrations with the new interface (connection settings changing their values when I switched between fields, for example), but I got connected and was able to use the application.
NetBSD 10.1 -- Checking e-mail in Thunderbird
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Early in my second day I started wondering about updates to the base system. I could use pkgin to handle third-party applications, but I wanted to check for updates to the underlying core system. It had been a while since I last ran NetBSD and couldn't remember the process (and was aware it might have changed anyway). I found a few pages of documentation which explained how to perform upgrades to new major versions of NetBSD, but little information on applying patches to an existing version.
Though I didn't find any specific documentation about applying binary patches to an existing system, from what I could piece together on forums it looks like the user can simply download new package sets from the NetBSD download mirrors, then unpack the tarballs in their root directory. I checked to see if any new sets or security advisories had been published recently. According to the NetBSD website there have been no security patches for version 10.1. NetBSD 10.1 was published in December 2024. This suggests no problems have been found in the eight months since 10.1 was launched. I'm not sure if this is a positive result from having a minimal, clean base system or a side effect of not enough people looking for vulnerabilities. Either way, I had no new package sets to install.
Next, I turned my attention to multimedia capabilities. There is no audio mixer on NetBSD's Xfce desktop by default so that was something I wanted to address first, to see if my audio controls were muted or set to full blast. I found this guide on adjusting volume from the command line and then installed a simple audio level utility. I found I could stream audio and videos through Firefox. Locally, I was able to install a media player for enjoying video and audio files. These tools all worked well, with the exception of the mixer application. It was the only application on NetBSD which reversed my mouse movements (implementing natural scrolling rather than classic scrolling). This meant I had to scroll up to lower the volume and down to raise it. Otherwise multimedia worked smoothly on NetBSD.
NetBSD 10.1 -- Adjusting the audio volume
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By the end of the second day I had the desktop applications I wanted for work, I could shutdown NetBSD from within the desktop, and multimedia was working. I could check e-mail, browse the web, and edit spreadsheets. One limitation I had run into was Xfce on NetBSD provides only a light theme, there are no dark themes. We can install one manually or, as an alternative, most applications allowed me to adjust their specific themes to suit my preferences.
Day #3
This was approximately the point in my experiment when I would normally say "This is enough functionality for most people." By the end of my second day I had a functioning web browser, an office suite, multimedia, and package management was working. However, I wasn't doing my regular overview of an operating system for "most people", I was specifically looking at NetBSD to see if it could handle all of my computing needs. From here on in, things get a little more complicated because I write code, I script, I run virtual machines, and I analyze the ISO files of Linux distributions. This means I need to be able to mount ISO files and extract information from them, run Linux distributions in a virtual machine, and run scripts in multiple languages to gather data.
NetBSD 10.1 -- Testing the Epiphany web browser
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One of the tools I use on a regular basis is dpkg, a low-level package manager for Debian. This tool is useful for getting package data from the ISO files of Debian-based Linux distributions. NetBSD has a copy of dpkg in its repositories and it's even a version newer than the dpkg which shipped with Debian 12. However, NetBSD's package of dpkg does not work. It fails silently, with no error, when asked to list packages in the database on a Linux filesystem. I tested dpkg from MX Linux on the same filesystem and confirmed the dpkg database was valid and MX Linux was able to extract its information. NetBSD's copy of dpkg seems to be missing a critical piece. The rpm package manager is also in NetBSD's repositories, but I did not have occasion to use it this week.
To extract the information from ISO files it helps to be able to mount them. On Linux this can be accomplished with a simple mount command, but NetBSD's mount implementation does not know how to mount an archive. On NetBSD the mount command complains the ISO file is not a block device. FreeBSD's mount command has a similar limitation and I've learned to work around it. NetBSD's wiki has a page on how to mount an ISO file.
NetBSD 10.1 -- Mounting an ISO file
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To further complicate matters, most Linux distributions place a compressed archive inside their ISO files. These compressed archives are usually in the SquashFS format. While Linux can mount SquashFS archives directly, NetBSD cannot. Instead, on NetBSD we need to install SquashFS utilities and then unpack the SquashFS archive into its own directory in order to read its contents.
This may seem abstract so I want to do a side-by-side comparison. On Linux, if I wanted to extract the package data from a Debian-based distribution then I would download its ISO can run the following commands:
mount distro.iso iso
mount iso/archive.squashfs disk
dpkg --root disk -l > package-listing.txt
umount disk iso
The whole process, when scripted, takes about two seconds. On NetBSD the same attempt looks like this:
vnconfig vnd0 distro.iso
mount -t cd9660 /dev/vnd0a iso
unsquashfs iso/archive.squahfs
dpkg --root squashfs-root -l > package-listing.txt # (this step fails)
rm -rf squashfs-root
umount iso
vnconfig -u vnd0
The process takes about two minutes, mostly because we need to wait while the unsquashfs command runs and unpacks the internal archive.
All of this means I can open and explore the ISO files of Linux distributions, but getting their packaging information directly doesn't work on NetBSD. Instead, I need to look to other, slower approaches. Even the steps in the process which do work take several times longer on NetBSD than they do on Linux.
Another tool I use occasionally which, while not strictly necessary, speeds up my efforts is sshfs. This is a tool for mounting remote filesystems over an OpenSSH connection. This makes browsing and editing remote files easier when the remote computer has OpenSSH enabled, but no traditional network file shares. The sshfs tool is in the NetBSD repositories and I was able to install it. When I tried to connect to a remote computer sshfs reported it could not mount the remote directory. I could use secure shell to connect to the remote machine, so I knew OpenSSH was working (on both my local NetBSD client machine and the remote server), but something was preventing me from mounting the filesystem.
NetBSD 10.1 -- Accessing files through sshfs
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I tried running sshfs in debug mode to see any error messages and the tool reported it could not access /dev/puffs. The NetBSD documentation explains this a bit. The documentation says we should confirm puffs support is enabled in our kernel. (I checked and this feature is enabled in modern versions of NetBSD.) This left file permissions as a likely issue and I confirmed /dev/puffs is accessible to root only. When I ran sshfs as the root user I was able to mount the remote filesystem. This is different from most Linux distributions where FUSE-backed filesystems are typically mounted by regular user accounts rather than root. Anyway, another piece of the puzzle fell into place and I confirmed sshfs worked on NetBSD.
On the third day I tried playing a few games, such as chess and Battle For Wesnoth. These turn-based games worked well enough. Performance was limited when I tried any sort of interactive game, I don't think NetBSD's video drivers were up to the task of rendering more interactive games.
NetBSD 10.1 -- Finishing my day with chess and LibreOffice
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Day 4
By the fourth day my trial was settling into a routine. Some tasks were taking longer than usual, but NetBSD was functional enough for day-to-day computing. I was starting to notice a few quirks though. For example, each time I used the Epiphany web browser I ended up with a core dump file in my home directory. There were packages available for running PHP and Python scripts in NetBSD's repository, but no Thonny code editor (which I use for transferring code to embedded devices).
NetBSD 10.1 -- Booting MX Linux in QEMU
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Since I regularly test new features and distributions in VirtualBox I had hoped to find it available, but it is not in NetBSD's repositories. The operating system does provide a package for QEMU though and there is a documentation page for setting up and running QEMU. Running QEMU worked, to a point. I could boot guest operating systems with it and they would run, but desktop systems tended to be slow. This meant I could use QEMU to boot a distribution and get its package information or see which kernel it was running. However, running a full desktop system with GNOME or Plasma was not practical.
I was beginning to realize that, if I was going to use NetBSD on a regular basis, I'd need to transfer any distributions I wanted to test to a thumb drive and then reboot my laptop. Using my usual archive extraction methods and virtual machines was not going to be practical. This was a workable solution, but it greatly slowed down my progress. On days when several new distributions were released it could mean adding hours of work or, more accurately, periods of waiting to my day.
NetBSD 10.1 -- How I'd like to spend more of my day
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Conclusions
By Day #5 I felt I had a pretty good feel for what would work and what my limitations were on NetBSD. The portable little operating system was, in some ways, more capable than I had anticipated. On the other hand, it had some limitations and problems that were more debilitating than I had foreseen.
My biggest issue with NetBSD was probably hardware support. I didn't mention this near the start of this review as I didn't want to get bogged down in the details, but NetBSD has a few issues in this area. NetBSD is highly portable and it has been made to work on many CPU architectures - NetBSD famously runs on anything from servers to toasters - but it lacks hardware support for devices attached to those CPUs. In particular, wireless networking support is limited and my laptop's wireless card did not function.
This is a known issue and, from what I've read, a common problem for NetBSD users. It almost brought my trial to a very early stop. Luckily, for me and this experiment, I am accustomed to using various methods to get on-line. Anything from phone tethering to Ethernet cables to open source friendly USB wireless cards are in my toolkit. However, with the exception of one gamer I know who uses a network cable plugged directly into his router, I'm the only person I know of who uses anything other than wireless networking. Friends, colleagues, even my grandmother uses wireless and none of them are likely to have an Ethernet cable or open source USB dongle amongst them. My point is: NetBSD has a known weak point in wireless support and this is likely a deal breaker for most people.
People who can get over that first hurdle will likely find their next problem being sparse documentation. Throughout this review I have mentioned NetBSD's documentation and guides and they can be useful. They are also often out of date and thin on details. NetBSD is an operating system which requires a lot of manual work and does not provide much handholding. In these sorts of situations good documentation is essential. Unfortunately, NetBSD's documentation tends to act more as a quick reference for people who already know their way around the operating system rather than providing detailed information for newcomers or people who need to troubleshoot. Instructions are sometimes vague, don't mention specific files we will be using, or assume we know where to find things such as files, repositories, and package sets.
Those were the main stumbling points I ran into, especially early in my experiment. I will say NetBSD does have some strong points in its favour. The operating system is pleasantly small and clean. Almost everything is handled through simple commands and editing text files. What documentation there is tends to be written in clear language, and the package repository is well stocked. Some more obscure software is missing, but the main items, the basics people are likely to use on the desktop or for development, are present.
If I were setting up a simple, general purpose workstation or a server (ideally plugged into a network cable) then NetBSD would probably be a good solution for me. It's clean, simple, and stable. It is the kind of operating system you can set up and forget about until it's time to upgrade in a year or two. (New NetBSD point releases are published around once a year, though they do not appear to have a fixed schedule.) However, getting NetBSD set up and performing all the tasks we want initially can be a challenge.
Throughout my trial virtually anything I wanted to do was never as simple a just "install the package and run it". There was almost always some troubleshooting steps involved, some extra service to enable, a configuration file to edit, a setting to fix. Mounting a FUSE resource has permission problems; using QEMU requires enabling a module; a SquashFS archive can't just be mounted, it needs to be unpacked; Xfce ran from the command line, but not when launched from xdm; networking functioned, though very slowly until IPv6 was disregarded. It's possible to make all of these things work, often with just a few tweaks, but my point is that on most Linux distributions these items work automatically. Even on some operating systems closer to NetBSD, such as FreeBSD, these tasks tend to work without the user performing extra steps.
I suppose NetBSD was the ideal operating system for this self-appointed challenge. Virtually everything functioned, or there was a workaround available, but the operating system made me work for it. I probably spent an extra six or seven hours this week just trying to find ways to perform tasks I'd usually consider basic functionality on a Linux distribution. Usually, in the end, the tasks did work and I could celebrate the achievement, until it was time to try to install the next application or enable the next service and then the process would start over again.
After five days I was happy to return to Linux where even the less hand-holdy distributions tended to do what I wanted with minimal fuss. At the same time, I very much appreciated this chance to explore NetBSD in more depth than I have in the past. It's a platform I've only played with briefly in the past and mostly on a surface level. Getting into its nuts and bolts, squeezing more functionality (and sometimes unusual functionality) out of the operating system was a fun challenge. It has certainly given me more confidence in my ability to work with NetBSD, especially in small server or embedded environments where, in the past, I might not have considered using it in favour of more mainstream options.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an HP DY2048CA laptop with the following
specifications:
- Processor: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 512GB solid state drive
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Wireless network device: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 + BT Wireless network card
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Visitor supplied rating
NetBSD has a visitor supplied average rating of: 7.1/10 from 14 review(s).
Have you used NetBSD? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access, Mageia deals with service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support
The AlmaLinux team have announced they are enabling an add-on package repository for AlmaLinux OS which will make acquiring third-party software easier. "As part of our efforts to continue improving the experience for AlmaLinux users, we are enabling the CRB repository by default. This reduces the friction in using software from Fedora Extra Packages from Enterprise Linux (EPEL).
What is the CRB repository? The CRB repository is an extra collection of packages that have not been historically made available by default for enterprise Linux distributions. A lot of the packages are primarily useful for developing software, but CRB also includes requirements for a number of popular packages (such as the KDE Plasma Desktop) that are not needed for the core enterprise Linux solution set." The extra repository should avoid errors about missing dependencies when installing new software.
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The Haiku operating system gained some significant performance improvements when accessing storage this week, thanks to hard work by developer "waddlesplash" who took on the challenge of making disk operations faster. The results are impressive: "git status has long been, for large repositories, a much slower operation on Haiku than on Linux. There are a lot of reasons for this, but the most significant one is lock contention in disk caches.
Last month, waddlesplash spent a bunch of time refactoring the disk block and directory entry caching logic in the kernel to be able to use atomic operations rather than exclusive locks in the most common cases (reading an already-cached block, and inserting a new entry into the entry cache.) These sorts of changes are tricky to write and tougher to test (any bugs in them that aren't immediately obvious will likely be due to race conditions, and can usually only be found by analyzing code carefully, as all other means of trying to catch them generally change timing enough that they won't occur).
The results are clearly more than worth the trouble, though: in one test setup with git status in Haiku's buildtools repository (which contains the entirety of the gcc and binutils source code, among other things - over 160,000 files) went from around 33 seconds with a cold disk cache, to around 20 seconds; and with a hot disk cache, from around 15 seconds to around 2.5 seconds." Information on this and other changes to Haiku are available in the project's August newsletter.
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Approximately a month after the Arch Linux team reported their infrastructure was suffering from a denial of service attack, the Mageia project is reporting some of their servers are off-line. While unconfirmed at the time of writing, the issue appears to be increased traffic from bots. "As you can see, our blogs are still up and running. However, the servers hosting most of the rest of our infrastructure, like the forums, wiki and bugzilla, are not. I assume we are under attack from bots again, but that needs to be confirmed by one of our sysadmins." The Mageia team is aware of the issue and looking into the cause.
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The GNOME project has released GNOME 49, the latest version of the popular desktop. GNOME 49 introduces several changes, in particular the old video player (Totem) and the old document viewer are being replaced. "In GNOME 49, Showtime replaces the long-standing Totem as the default GNOME video player app, bringing a sleek, modern experience built on GTK 4 and Libadwaita instead of Totem's aging GTK 3 base. The new Video Player prioritizes a distraction-free viewing experience: its chromeless window hides controls during playback and fades them back in only when needed. It supports essential features like adjustable playback speed, multiple audio and subtitle tracks, rotating video, and screenshot capture - all the core functionality users expect. Papers replaces the long-serving Evince as the default Document Viewer. Originally based on Evince code, Papers delivers a modernized design built with GTK 4 and Libadwaita, instead of Evince's older GTK 3 foundation." Additional changes are covered in the project's release announcement.
* * * * *
Cong Wang has posted to the kernel mailing list, introducing multikernel support. "This patch series introduces multikernel architecture support, enabling
multiple independent kernel instances to coexist and communicate on a single physical machine. Each kernel instance can run on dedicated CPU cores while sharing the underlying hardware resources. The multikernel architecture provides several key benefits: improved fault isolation between different workloads; enhanced security through kernel-level separation; better resource utilization than traditional VM (KVM, Xen etc.); potential zero-down kernel update with KHO (Kernel Hand Over)." This approach not only provides potential for running applications isolated from the normal host kernel without the overhead of a virtual machine, it also could provide distributions with a way to upgrade kernels without rebooting the computer and without hacks such as live kernel patching.
* * * * *
These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Avoiding the spread of AI services
Avoiding-the-bots asks: I'm hoping to avoid AI and don't want to use any distributions infected with it. Which distributions are likely to not include AI?
DistroWatch answers: While some people have found uses for AI agents, either as tools or toys, there are a lot of issues surrounding the use of AI. AI agents scape huge amounts of data from the Internet, send identifying information to the companies running them, and frequently report incorrect information as facts. This makes most forms of AI a legal, security, and privacy nightmare, not to mention the environmental concerns.
In short, I sympathize with you wanting to avoid any operating systems with AI agents and tools baked into them by default.
The good news, for people wishing to avoid having AI tools in their operating system, is most Linux distributions and the BSDs do not have a strong motivation to include AI tools. Figuring out which distributions are likely to bundle or recommend AI packages is usually fairly straight forward: AI software is usually a characteristic of commercial software.
There are a few reasons for this and one of the big ones is how a distribution's leaders measure success. Commercial distributions ultimately measure success by whether or not they are profitable. These days the hype around AI has become a big selling point with software vendors using the term "AI" to sell all sorts of services and concepts. On the flip side, a lot of companies are asking for AI services in the products they buy. It's similar to how the term "blockchain" was attached to everything software-related about 10 years ago - companies were afraid of being left behind and software vendors pushed the blockchain concept into any product they could create.
The motivations for creating a non-commercial distribution are different. Projects which are not commercial exist for a variety of reasons - the love of creating and sharing software, providing a useful platform, collecting donations from end-users, striving to build a better operating system, or even striving to build a better world. What all of these motivations have in common is a non-commercial project is likely to be more successful by caring for (and catering to) its end users rather than to corporate clients or a sales team. Most users, particularly Linux (and other open source users), tend to avoid software that is known to collect information on them, report home, introduce security vulnerabilities, or provide inaccurate information.
I think it's fair to say most of us do not wish to be spied on or lied to. As a result, solo developer and community-run projects typically have more motivation to avoid packaging AI than including it. Or, at the very least, there is strong incentive to offer AI only as an add-on rather than as a core feature.
We can see this divide already, though it's still early. Very few not-for-profit and community-run distributions have included any AI-related tools so far, with a few exceptions. However, SUSE, Canonical, and Red Hat have either promoted AI computing or packaged AI tools for their customers.
For people looking to avoid AI services and packages, your best bet is probably to stick with non-commercial projects.
* * * * *
Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Murena 3.1.1
The Murena team have annouonced a update to their mobile /e/OS platform. The new version, 3.1.1, focuses on bug fixes and minor improvements to the user experience. "Users of the new Fairphone (Gen. 6) will especially benefit, with key features like Mobile Data and VoLTE now enabled by default. The /e/OS Camera has also been enhanced to support 50 MP photos, and installation of /e/OS is now fully supported via the /e/OS Installer. Live Caption becomes more user-friendly as caption text can now be repositioned for better readability and accessibility. For families using /e/OS, Parental Control includes a crucial update. A clear warning now reminds parents to save the security code they define, as there's no way to recover it if forgotten. Third-party app compatibility has been improved on several devices, including the Fairphone 3, 4, 5 and the new Gen. 6. This ensures a smoother and more consistent app experience across these models. Good news for CMF Phone 1 users: /e/OS 3.1.1 brings key fixes that improve your daily experience. USB-C wired audio now works properly, switching between front and back cameras is smooth again, and Wi-Fi calling with sim.de is fully functional. We've also corrected the Murena boot logo display for a cleaner startup look. System updates include a new browser version, an updated microG, and faster fake location switching in Advanced Privacy. App Lounge and Calendar behavior have been refined, and tablet navigation and setup flows are now smoother." The release announcement offers additional information.
SparkyLinux 2025.09
Paweł Pijanowski has announced the release of SparkyLinux 2025.09, the latest release of the project's set of Linux distributions based on Debian's "Testing" branch: "There are new SparkyLinux 2025.09 ISO images available of the semi-rolling line, code-named 'Tiamat'. Changes: packages updated from the Debian and SparkyLinux testing repositories as of September 14, 2025; Linux kernel 6.16.7 (6.16.7, 6.12.47-LTS and 6.6.105-LTS in SparkyLinux repositories); Calamares installer updated to version 3.4.0, installation on an encrypted disk has been restored; Firefox 128.14.0-ESR (143.0 in SparkyLinux repositories); KDE - QuiteRSS replaced by Akregator; LXQt - QuiteRSS replaced by Liferea; GCC 15 (GCC 14 removed); all SparkyLinux graphical components updated to the new testing version. Important: installation on UEFI machines requires an active internet connection; installation via Calamares (menu icon 'Sparky Installer') is recommended on UEFI machines." Here is the full release announcement.
Mauna Linux 25
The Mauna Linux project has announced the release of Mauna Linux 25, a major update of the Brazilian project's desktop Linux distribution, based on Debian's "Stable" branch. The new release delivers a brand-new "GNOME" edition, alongside the well-established Cinnamon, LXQt, MATE and Xfce flavours: "We are pleased to announce the new version 25 of Mauna Linux. Mauna Linux 25, code-named 'Polaris' is based on and is fully compatible with Debian 13.1 'Trixie'. In this new version, we bring the GNOME Desktop, in addition to several updates from both the Debian team and Mauna. The star of this new version is the GNOME 48 desktop, which so many have requested and is now available to everyone. Gnome 48, codenamed 'Bengaluru', arrives with a set of minor new features or improvements, with a focus on user comfort. There are several new features in GNOME 48: notification grouping - it is now possible to stack notifications when they come from the same application, similar to what already happens on Android or iOS; improved image viewer...." See the release announcement for more details.
Mauna Linux 25 -- Running the Cinnamon desktop
(full image size: 990kB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
Omarchy 3.0.1
David Heinemeier Hansson has announced the release of Omarchy 3.0, a significant upgrade to the project's Arch-based Linux distribution featuring the Hyprland tiling window manager and designed primarily for software developers. Unlike the previous releases, this one provides a much larger ISO image, suitable for offline installations. "Omarchy 3.0 is a major upgrade for new installations and a wonderful level-up for existing users. The new ISO image doesn't require internet at all and you can install it in less than two minutes. You can now also install Omarchy on most pre-M MacBooks with support for keyboards, WiFi, and the T1 and T2 security chips. This is a decade-long hardware portfolio that we're trying to cover as well as we can out of the box. Existing installations can upgrade as per-normal using Update, Omarchy. New installations should download the fresh, all-inclusive ISO image before beginning, this is a 7 GB ISO image that includes the entire system for offline installation. Note: Ghostty compatibility requires Ghostty 1.2.0, which is still not released on the Arch repository. New super-fast installation ISO image: add everything needed for new all-inclusive ISO image that doesn't need internet...." Continue to the release announcement for further details.
Security Onion 2.4.180
Doug Burks has announced the release of Security Onion 2.4.180, an updated build of the project's Linux distribution designed for threat hunting, enterprise security monitoring and log management: "Security Onion 2.4.180 is now available and includes several new features, updated components and many quality-of-life improvements. Cancel your own long-running SOC query - Security Onion can now alert on offline agents, if you run a query in Security Onion Console (Alerts, Dashboards, Hunt) that takes a long time, you now have the ability to cancel your own query by clicking the X on the spinner animation. Enable static hostname mapping without reverse DNS lookups - you can now enable static hostname mappings without having to enable reverse DNS lookups. This release updates several components including Elastic 8.18.6, Suricata 7.0.12, Zeek 7.0.10. The Elastic and Suricata updates resolve security issues so we highly recommend upgrading. In the recent 2.4.170 release, we added a new hypervisor feature for Security Onion Pro customers. This release improves on that by allowing you to run the hypervisor on a manager." Read the full release announcement for further information.
Tails 7.0
A major update of Tails, a Debian-based portable Linux distribution that protects against surveillance and censorship, is now available. Tails 7.0 is based on the recently-released Debian 13 and includes GNOME 48: "We are very excited to present you Tails 7.0, the first version of Tails based on Debian 13 'Trixie' and GNOME 48 'Bengaluru'. Tails 7.0 brings new versions of many applications included in Tails. Tails 7.0 starts 10 - 15 seconds faster on most computers. We achieve this by changing the compression algorithm of the Tails USB and ISO images from xz to zstd. As a consequence, the image is 10% bigger than it would be with the previous algorithm. While testing this change, we noticed that Tails on USB sticks of poor quality can also start 20 seconds slower than on quality USB sticks. If you are in a place where counterfeit electronics are common, we recommend that you buy your USB stick from an international supermarket chain, which should have a more reliable supply chain. Included software: replace GNOME Terminal with GNOME Console; replace GNOME Image Viewer with GNOME Loupe; update Tor Browser to 14.5.7...." Continue to the release announcement for more information.
Tails 7.0 -- Running the GNOME desktop
(full image size: 147kB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
IPFire 2.29 Core 197
The IPFire project has released a new update for its operating system for firewalls and routers. The project's new version, IPFire 2.29 Core Update 197, introduces an upgrade to OpenVPN and makes running under light loads more energy efficient. "IPFire will now by default clock down its CPUs. When previously all CPU cores have been running on full clock speed by default, we were able to keep latency to a minimum as they were always ready to process any packets. As modern processors have massively improved how quickly they can clock up and down and CPUs with many cores being widely available, we have now decided to change this based on our benchmark results. Where supported, we will use Intel P-State or otherwise fall back to the new schedutil governor which has recently been introduced into the Linux kernel and has proven to not increase any packet forwarding latency in our benchmarks. When clocked down, systems will reduce their power consumption and therefore lowering the amount of emitted heat. The cpufrequtil package which used to implement this feature has been dropped as it is no longer needed." Further details are offered through the project's release announcement.
DietPi 9.17
The DietPi project, which produces a set of extremely lightweight Debian-based distributions designed primarily for single-board computers, has announced the release of DietPi 9.17. Based on Debian 13, the new version comes with a long list of enhancements: "The September 20rd, 2025 release of DietPi version 9.17 comes with faster and less disk space consuming DietPi backups, a Roon Server early access toggle, solved SPI storage flashing issues, and more. Our images are now shipped without ext3/ext4 journal and instead the dietpi-fs_partition_resize script creates it after the root filesystem has been expanded. This allows smaller images, but more importantly a properly located and sized journal, depending on the final root filesystem size and layout, potentially enhancing performance." Read the full release notes for a complete list of enhancements and bug fixes. DietPi is available for a many popular devices and platforms, including Raspberry Pi, Odroid, PINE64, Radxa, Allo, ASUS, NanoPi, Orange Pi. It is also provided as a live or installation image for standard x86_64 computers and for some RISC-V boards.
* * * * *
Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 3,293
- Total data uploaded: 48.3TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
What are your thoughts about NetBSD?
This week our Feature Story talked about NetBSD, a highly portable operating system which, with some work, can be made to do a wide array of tasks. We'd like to hear your thoughts about NetBSD - do you use it, do you like it, have you tried it in the past. Those of you who do run NetBSD, leave us a comment and tell us what you appreciate about this operating system.
You can see the results of our previous poll on using BCacheFS, an advanced filesystem, in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Do you or have you run NetBSD?
| I am currently running NetBSD and like it: | 65 (5%) |
| I am currently running NetBSD and do not like it: | 4 (0%) |
| I have run NetBSD in the past and enjoyed it: | 175 (12%) |
| I have run NetBSD in the past and did not like it: | 188 (13%) |
| I plan to run NetBSD in the future: | 146 (10%) |
| I have not run NetBSD and have no plans to try it: | 847 (59%) |
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|
| Website News |
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 29 September 2025. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Weekly Archive and Article Search pages. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews/submissions, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, donations, comments)
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If you've enjoyed this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly, please consider sending us a tip.
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • AI everywhere (by Rossano on 2025-09-22 00:46:47 GMT from Italy)
Fedora and Fedora Rawhide will introduce AI in 2025. We are in big trouble: AI everywhere.
2 • BSD Family (by Redy Basuki on 2025-09-22 01:32:20 GMT from Indonesia)
If BSD has completed like Linux, I would love to use it daily. I've tried some backdays and really need so much time to setting up, and the main problem is hardware support, and cannot use it for daily use. I don't know for nowadays, haven't tried it again.
3 • AI (by Bobbie Sellers on 2025-09-22 03:01:06 GMT from United States)
The problem may not be with individual distributions but with widely used
tools like Thunderbird and Firefox. There should be a clear and easy
way to turn AI off and presumably on again for those who feel the
need.
Oh and PCLinuxOS now has 2 versions using KCE'a Plasma 6
<https://ftp.nluug.nl/os/Linux/distr/pclinuxos/pclinuxos/iso/>
both the full release and the Darkstar are at version 2025.09.
New users or those who have been away for some time
are advised to get the multilingual installation document at
the same URL.
bliss- Dell Precision 7730- PCLOS 2025.09- Linux 6.12.48-pclos1- KDE Plasma 6.4.5
4 • Why is it named NetBSD? (by InvisibleInk on 2025-09-22 03:18:45 GMT from United States)
Why is it named NetBSD, if WiFi support is so abysmal?
5 • NetBSD - custom kernel to load firmware and pkgsrc build for intel video firmwar (by shep on 2025-09-22 03:39:21 GMT from United States)
Currently setting up NetBSD 10.1 and had wsfb graphics.
Cannot link to Google AI results but use:
"NetBSD install intel video firmware" as search terms.
Seems you have to build a custom kernel that will load firmware, build the firmware in pkgsrc (not availble as a package) and enable firmware loading in rc.conf.
6 • NetBSD review (plus more) (by lobster on 2025-09-22 03:54:59 GMT from United Kingdom)
Outstanding review and good plan.
I found it very useful.
Having tried numerous BSD and always found them too slow/different to expectations. Also regularly and frequently tried and really liked some some of the potential candidates such as Haiku and ReactOS, with largely the same results. The warnings which were not suitable for my time will be heeded. ;-)
BSD is not for me. )-:
I have tried and used some pretty weird OS, including ones to run from single 3.5 floppies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX
...or by mad people (can not remember name - it was truly unique but command line mostly and for one persons usage.) Wot a trip into the mind of a crazy paranoid genius
Nowdays I must have a base of usability. Immediately. Too forgetful and 'grumpy old git' to faff and flounder for days. So Bravo Jesse.
See you on Mastodon sometime. Thumbs up from me and the distro hopping frat party...Not that I have ever been to one [...lobster rambles off into suset...]
7 • NetBSD review (by 0323pin on 2025-09-22 05:02:42 GMT from Sweden)
Thanks for reviewing NetBSD, I'm glad you found the answers to some of your issues along the way, though not all.
Disclaimer: I run NetBSD current (development branch) with rolling source packages (required to do pkgsrc development) on my laptop which, I can connect to WiFi basically anywhere.
I appreciate there are limitations when it comes to WiFi and a new stack will hopefully land soon.
Also, I appreciate there are holes in the documentation and that some of it is outdated but, we have limited resources and cannot cover everything. To me, updating packages is priority. Unfortunately, I don't have more time to give.
Just a note, that you can use QEMU to run a desktop, you need to use nvmm. If you try running QEMU on Linux with kvm disabled, you will have a similar experience to what you describe in your review.
8 • BSD Family (by borgio3 on 2025-09-22 07:20:25 GMT from Italy)
In this very moment i'am on GhostBSD, that i use since 2023, alternating with LMDE.
I do with Ghost all that i do with LMDE.
9 • GhostBSD (by Tim on 2025-09-22 08:29:21 GMT from Australia)
I've been happily running GhostBSD on a desktop and laptop for about 3 years now and haven't looked back.
It runs wine just fine (but not Codeweavers Crossover). I use wine to run two programs which have native Linux versions (BeyondCompare & MasterPDF). freeBSD and therefore GhostBSD can run LInux programs, but not all. I have the LInux version of Vivaldi running.
With the laptop, the keyboard backlight is not available but everything else works. I thought the CD drive wasn't working but VLC ran a DVD without problems yesterday.
It's all very stable but if an update does go wrong there are ZFS backup environments to roll back to.
The desktop uses ZFS mirror RAID so that provides extra backup.
10 • Alternative OS to try (by betwixt on 2025-09-22 09:18:56 GMT from United Kingdom)
If you want to try a really different multi-tasking OS that can run some Linux programs but isn't Linux based, take a look at MinuetOs (https://menuetos.net/). It shows what an individual but ingenious software author can do when they get really creative. It has good graphics, networking, web browsing, text editing, games and is entirely written from scratch in assembly language. It is a bit quirky but an amazing achievement.
11 • Poll (by dragonmouth on 2025-09-22 10:55:33 GMT from United States)
I was thinking of trying NetBSD but after reading Jesse's experience, I will pass on NetBSD and try another BSD.
12 • SysLinuxOS 13 not found anywhere (by Martins on 2025-09-22 11:10:21 GMT from Portugal)
SysLinuxOS 13 announced here but not found on the distro web site nor in the SourceForge web site.
13 • NetBSD (by Jesse on 2025-09-22 12:36:14 GMT from Canada)
@4: "Why is it named NetBSD, if WiFi support is so abysmal?"
i suspect you're joking, but NetBSD existed before most people had ever heard of wifi. I thin it's named this because it was developed from people around the Internet.
@7: "Just a note, that you can use QEMU to run a desktop, you need to use nvmm. "
I did use nvmm which is why I linked to its documentation in the review. Performance was still poor.
14 • Alternative OSs (by Josh Smith on 2025-09-22 12:42:48 GMT from Australia)
The only alternative OS -- to Linux, macOS and Windows, that is -- that I've tried on my actual hardware (i.e. not in a VM) was FreeBSD. I don't regret it from a learning perspective -- as I did learn a lot from the experience -- but it was not a pleasant experience. I experienced similar issues with wifi drivers. It taught me that Linux, macOS and Windows are the only operating systems suitable for physical PC hardware.
15 • NetBSD and wifi (by bones on 2025-09-22 12:50:41 GMT from United States)
I run NetBSD on two laptops: a ThinkPad T61 and a Panasonic CF-MX5 Let's Note. Wifi works great on both. Granted, both use Intel wifi chips, which enjoy wide support in both Linux and BSD. Having recently left using Linux in favor of BSD, I have found NetBSD to be incredibly simple, stable, and clean, a very well designed OS.
16 • NetBSD (by Keith S on 2025-09-22 13:06:23 GMT from United States)
Jesse, I was surprised that you don't know anyone else who has an Ethernet cable in their laptop bag lol. It's like carrying a keychain can opener or a pocket knife. You never know when you might need it.
I tried NetBSD years ago on a desktop but had a really hard time getting it to work so I abandoned it. As a huge OpenBSD fan, it was very disappointing. Their documentation was atrocious compared to OpenBSD. (But then, everyone else's documentation is horrible compared to OpenBSD.)
Even as a fan, though, I can admit when there are serious problems. Sadly, OpenBSD recently failed me on my 10-year-old HP. A few boot cycles after installation, Fvwm wouldn't launch because X/xenocara wouldn't start. I needed that old machine to do certain tasks immediately, so I put antiX on it and it worked flawlessly.
I haven't had time to troubleshoot it, and actually just put Windows 10 back on that particular machine because of a new problem with GPS hardware that has arisen for me and that I haven't been able to solve using wine or Play on Linux.
My newer laptop has been running MX Linux for four years now without trouble. It has been very reliable except for a few hiccups when I switched to MX 23. I agree with @6 lobster above, as much as I enjoy fussing with OSes, these days I have much less patience for going down the rabbit hole when something doesn't present an fix quickly.
17 • BSD hardware support (by Beepbox on 2025-09-22 13:34:11 GMT from France)
@14 Sadly, hardware support in BSDs hasn't changed much in 20 years since I've tried to install FreeBSD on a computer (old IBM with Pentium II, no WiFi of course) from few CDs I bought in a book shop, where nothing has worked correctly, from the monitor to the Ethernet card.
I recall that booting a live CD with Ubuntu 5.x and KDE 3.x was a bliss compared to this.
There is some efforts to get better hardware support by taking the Linux code, and recently FreeBSD team has done some progress to get a better laptop support, and even get KDE 6 running on Wayland, but BSD are mostly ran on servers.
18 • QA section (AI in distros) (by anamezon on 2025-09-22 14:02:54 GMT from Finland)
maybe it's time to add a AI-related dropdown option on the Search webpage of Distrowatch ... people looking for a AI-free distro to hop on will be very grateful to have this selection criterion
19 • NetBSD (by John on 2025-09-22 15:07:29 GMT from Canada)
I think the review is fair and accurate. Interesting about IPv6, I got luck with that :)
I use NetBSD is on a spare Laptop without any issues. Mainly I use it to test things I develop and keep my head in alternatives. Doing that I have found a few issues that Linux and even in rare cases, OpenBSD even missed.
But I think the review points out a big issue, NetBSD has a very small team and I am amazed that it can get as much done as they can. To me NetBSD is a fun, lite system to use, plus once working the way you want, you get a nice sense of accomplishment :)
Curious why you had issues with pkgsrc, I have found it to be amazing and I wish may other systems would move to it. But yes, on first NetBSD install I think a tweek is needed to get it working on first try. I needed add something like this to root's ~/.shrc (using sh as a root shell) and login as root to install binary packages.
ARCH=`uname -m`
PKG_PATH="https://cdn.NetBSD.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages"
PKG_PATH="$PKG_PATH/NetBSD/$ARCH/10.0_2025Q2/All/"
export ARCH PATH PKG_PATH
Once you have pkgin installed, remove the settings.
To me, NetBSD is closest to the old proprietary UN*X that existed years ago, plus it is not anal about Licenses as other OSs are. IIRC, you can set pkgsrc to install only items under specific license(s).
20 • NetBSD (by Jesse on 2025-09-22 15:10:49 GMT from Canada)
@19: "Curious why you had issues with pkgsrc, "
I'm curious why you think I had issues with pkgsrc. I didn't mention trying to use it in the review. I did use pkg_add and pkgin, which are different tools. As I mentioned in the review, the problem was the package manager trying to use IPv6 and timing out since I wasn't on an IPv6 connection.
21 • NetBSD (by John on 2025-09-22 15:20:44 GMT from Canada)
@20
I thought I saw somewhere you had another issue with getting pkgin installed, I must have see that elsewhere since I did not see that in the review. It had something to do with using pkg_add.
22 • NetBSD (by Jesse on 2025-09-22 15:23:05 GMT from Canada)
@21: "I thought I saw somewhere you had another issue with getting pkgin installed"
Yes, I did. As I said in my previous comment, both pkgin and pkg_add didn't work properly at first due to the IPv6 issue. Neither of those tools are related to pkgsrc, which is the ports tool you referenced in comment 19.
23 • NetBSD and desktop environments (by juanbobo on 2025-09-22 15:35:29 GMT from United States)
I don't think many people are aware that on NetBSD (and FreeBSD, for that matter), you can do the basic installation, and then download and run a package called 'desktop-installer' which will then allow you to choose which DE you'd like to install, along with all the drivers, codecs, etc. that are commonly associated with desktop usage. This is a great way to get a fully functional BSD desktop quickly.
24 • OpenBSD? (by keithpeter on 2025-09-22 16:22:27 GMT from United Kingdom)
OpenBSD amd64 on a Thinkpad X250 has proved to be usable for me up to the 'day 2' level in the article. Perhaps Day 2+ as I use Octave as a really powerful graphical calculator, do some TeX and do a bit of sound editing with Audacity. Yes there is a performance hit, especially anything that needs you to copy large numbers of small files between internal and external disks. 8Gb Ram and a SATA SSD with xfce desktop gives me what I perceive as a very useable system.
Syspatch for base system upgrades, pkg_add -u for package upgrades, and boot off the new install.img for each new version (e.g. OBSD 7.6 -> 7.7). There is very good quality documentation but it is FAQ and man pages, so not task based.
25 • NetBSD (by Dan on 2025-09-22 17:31:36 GMT from United States)
Thank you for the review. I've always wondered about it, and have talked in passing over the past couple of years to people who use it regularly, but it always seemed a little daunting. The fact that it basically took you 3 or 4 days to get it all squared away kind of tells me what I need to know - that it's probably more than I want to get into. I've used Unix, linux, etc. for about 25 years; I can hold my own but I'm not an expert, just a good user. But in my early 50's, I'm not desirous of spending but so much time and effort into learning a new OS, going through difficult setups, tolerating things that aren't working, etc. like I used to be. There's too many good options now, and basically, if somebody doesn't make a pre-configured environment (i.e., live installable image) that I can test drive, I'm not going to mess with it. Maybe I'm just getting lazy, or maybe I've gotten wiser, or both. But anyway, I really hope somebody one day does that with OpenBSD and NetBSD, I really do. I'll be one of the first in line to try it out.
26 • BSD (by 3229 on 2025-09-22 18:47:14 GMT from United States)
Thank you , Jesse for you quite extensive review.
I too was nosing around for a different OS to run inside my Gnome Boxes last week
I have to say upfront, that even though i can hack my way around Linux to some degree,
i know very little about BSD or Solaris. With that in mind I took them for a spin.
Openbsd - for some reason my keyboard went kaput after the install
Netbsd was operational, I did note the resolution for my HDMI was quite limited, so I could not get the desired real estate needed. This was the same for the other BSD's
I played with Open Indiana, the Live version operates, But son of a gun - when I did the install, it kept rebooting into the Live version, not the installed version.
Maybe that was because I was In Gnome- boxes.
I did note that BSD / Solaris did not have UFW or PSAD available..... Maybe they don't consider them worth while,
In any case, it appears that the Linux Community is far greater than the BSD / Solaris
which gives greater support for Nvidia, different fire walls, etc.
I find the updates in SID, beneficial, especially when the bad guys exploit anything they can.
And yes, For me, Linux appears to work well for me.
27 • AI in distros (by Federico on 2025-09-22 20:26:39 GMT from Italy)
@18
"Maybe it's time to add a AI-related dropdown option on the Search webpage of Distrowatch ... people looking for a AI-free distro to hop on will be very grateful to have this selection criterion."
Absolutely yes.
28 • Alternative OS to try (by Pumpino on 2025-09-22 22:56:21 GMT from Australia)
@10: Another OS that could be considered is ChromeOS. It's technically based on linux and can run Debian in a container. I think of ChromeOS as the desktop environment (as opposed to KDE and XFCE), with my linux apps added to the shelf. When I click on Brave, Thunar or LibreOffice, they launch, just as though they were running in a linux distro. The downside is that the first time a linux app is launched after booting, it takes around six seconds for the linux container to start. However, after that, it's instant.
I wanted an ARM chip in my laptop for improved battery life, and Windows laptops with the Snapdragon chips apparently don't have good linux support at present. Getting the Lenovo 14 Chromebook Plus gives me 20+ hours of battery life and I get to use all of my linux apps. You don't have to use Google services like Chrome, Docs, Gmail, etc, if you don't want to.
29 • @16, Ethernet and can openers (by Wally on 2025-09-23 03:01:57 GMT from Australia)
"I was surprised that you don't know anyone else who has an Ethernet cable in their laptop bag lol. It's like carrying a key chain can opener or a pocket knife. You never know when you might need it." I know this was not directed at me, but I just find it amusing. I have an Ethernet cable somewhere, but I'd have to go rummaging in old storage bins, and I'm on a desktop. My old laptop quit a while ago and I haven't bothered to fix it. I buy my canned stuff with pull-tabs, so no need for a key chain can opener. I'll admit to being neglectful about a pocket knife. I grew up on NYC's lower east side in the 1960s, so I did carry a switchblade back then.
30 • @13 (by 0323pin on 2025-09-23 04:31:45 GMT from Sweden)
"I did use nvmm which is why I linked to its documentation in the review. Performance was still poor."
In this case, I'm sorry it has come to that point. I remember using it to stream Netflix on QEMU with a rather minimal Linux distro running Xfce.
nvmm developer jumped on another train and the tool has probably degraded. I no longer use virtualisation.
31 • GhostBSD again (by Tim on 2025-09-23 06:35:42 GMT from Australia)
GhostBSD generally 'just installs', just like most Linux distros. Only odd thing about the install is that it has to load the live preview into memory to install it (minimum 4gb required for that).
32 • FreeBSD (by Whattteva on 2025-09-23 11:16:39 GMT from United States)
While this OS isn't as esoteric as others you've mentioned. I have been running it on my server machine for the last decade or so. The combination of native ZFS support, pf, VNET jails, and just the overall simplicity of it makes me prefer it over any Linux distros.
33 • BSD Package Mirror...and other ramblings (by Lisa on 2025-09-23 11:17:41 GMT from Australia)
Thanks for this review. On OpenBSD at least, when setting up your package mirror, you don't have to stuff around with exporting a PGK_PATH; you can just put the mirror's URL into /etc/installurl, and you're ready to go.
The unity of OpenBSD, and clarity of its documentation, is a breath of fresh air, after the bloat of mainstream Linux distros.
I went with Open rather than Net a few years ago, because despite Net's goal of portability, Open was more reliable on my old PowerPC Macs.
I first got into BSD when Linux Format did a big write-up on FreeBSD in March 2006, and included Free, Net, and Open on their DVD. But LXF is so modern nowadays, they've dropped the DVD (but not the price...!)
Lastly, @29, I too buy tins with pull-rings, but I open them with a tin opener, regardless...!
34 • NetBSD use (by GTC on 2025-09-23 12:51:08 GMT from Uruguay)
I run it but not on my machines. Basically, I have an account on SDF.org so when I connect to its pubnix servers, it's netBSD underneath. I don't know if it counts as running it, but I used almost every day. Just console, tmux and text based software. No gui, and the software available is curated by SDF admins. So everything mostly works.
35 • Excellent NetBSD review (by NosyCat on 2025-09-23 13:02:33 GMT from Romania)
So that's why pkgin was freezing for several minutes on every single run before completing!
36 • If there's AI in the kernel itself... (by HAL 9000 on 2025-09-23 16:02:22 GMT from United States)
...it won't matter what distro you're using. All linux boxes will be running AI code. Sounds like it's just a matter of time:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/ai-is-creeping-into-the-linux-kernel-and-official-policy-is-needed-asap/
37 • BSDs (by Robert on 2025-09-23 16:49:00 GMT from United States)
It's been quite a while since I've given any BSD a chance, but I have tried several. So while I don't have any impressions recent enough to matter now, here's my experience anyway.
Most recently was PC-BSD (based on FreeBSD, since renamed TrueOS and then discontinued). I daily drove it for around 6 months in the early 2010's. It was decently usable without too much work, but there were quite a few papercuts. You often hear "Running FreeBSD is like running Linux from 5 years ago" and I'd say that the feeling was pretty accurate. Everything worked, it was just a little bit harder.
Late 2000's I was doing a lot of experimentation with different distros and OS's. During this time I tried base FreeBSD, Dragonfly BSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD. I did not dive deeply into any of them, and especially did not give a lot of time to NetBSD. All of them had some obvious selling point from the point of view of a desktop user, but not NetBSD. Sure, it's been ported to 30-50 CPU architectures or whatever instead of 10-20. So what? The only one that matters to me is x86(-64).
Anyway, that adage of "BSD is a few years behind Linux" really hurt them at this point in time. For one, getting an X session. By this point X autoconfiguration was common on Linux, but it was not working on BSDs. Even having had experience crafting xorg.conf files, this was still hard due to different device names and things like that. I did get an X session working on FreeBSD and maybe Dragonfly, but not NetBSD and I don't think OpenBSD either.
Also this predated the BSDs having any sort of binary package management. Everything was compiled from source using ports or pkgsrc. Ports worked pretty well, pkgsrc did not. But either way I was coming off a year or two of running LFS day to day and I very much wanted to get away from having to compile stuff regularly.
I don't remember a lot about the shell experiences for the most part. I do remember FreeBSD gave you tcsh (no install-time option), which was awful and very difficult to work with until I got bash installed. OpenBSD gave you ksh, which wasn't as full-featured or easy to use as bash but at least had the familiar Bourne-compatible syntax and I could work with it well enough. I want to say Dragonfly and NetBSD also gave you csh, but I can't say for sure.
I think out of my non-Linux OS experiences I'd have to say PC-BSD was the best, followed by OpenSolaris. Neither are relevant today.
38 • @4 Good one! xD + Why use server BSDs for desktop? (by BSDcurious on 2025-09-23 20:17:25 GMT from The Netherlands)
It's called NetBSD because it was originally created with servers in mind, which are still its priority even though its scope has expanded a lot since then and it can be used for desktops, mobile devices and all sorts of things.
My question is rather: Why do people want to use FreeBSD, or even less suitably NetBSD, as a desktop OS in the first place?
There are BSDs that are made specifically with desktop-use in mind, e.g. GhostBSD, MidnightBSD and NomadBSD. DragonFlyBSD also looks well-suited for desktop-use nowadays, though I've never used it myself so what do I know. And if you care more about security than ease of use, then OpenBSD and HardenedBSD are the obvious choices, regardless of being "server first".
So why do people want to use FreeBSD, and even more bizarrely NetBSD, on their desktops, never mind on mobile? Is it just tinkerers who enjoy the challenge and want to prove it can be done? Or are there valid reasons someone might want to do so?
39 • AI in Distros (by Bruce5 on 2025-09-23 21:53:01 GMT from United States)
@18, "Maybe it's time to add a AI-related dropdown option on the Search webpage of Distrowatch ... people looking for a AI-free distro to hop on will be very grateful to have this selection criterion."
@27, "Absolutely yes."
I would agree with this.
With the caveat that the qualifier for A.I. in the distro be that it is actually in the installed OS on your computer hardware.
Don't include/flag the distro if the AI is only used on their web support site, and not in the actual installed OS code.
40 • NetBSD (by wow. on 2025-09-23 23:49:25 GMT from Brazil)
I don't get as far as much surprised by some things.People are seriously expecting that NetBSD will behave like some form of linux desktop distro?
NetBSD works as a desktop OS. it is fast (those who say otherwise i am sure are using machines that may even be dual-socket), it is actually sane, it is memory lean, and it is made to be easy to switch to some other hardware without cost.
It is unix. why there should be complex installers, automounting and all horrid design decisions that linux has? what someone using netbsd wants is an actual desktop that is serious. like in the 2000s. clean, actually designed under computer science principles, elegant code and shipped configs.
And plus, it has a massive port collection in comparison to the cleanliness and the non VMS-isms linux distros people with money to place in new machines imported into the desktop unix-like world. Are you in the third-world? be happy! netbsd can allow you to use your i386 4gb ram machine or to underclock your 10 year old skylake box. You won't be forced to pay the new device tax!
41 • Why Linu and Not NetBSD (by Slappy McGee on 2025-09-24 01:05:36 GMT from United States)
@40 I'm afraid not much of what you say there is interesting to the user looking to Linux.. after Windows. Whether it was the beginning of the perceived issues with Windows, or the evolved issues with Windows, most come to Linux just wanting to see a familiar desktop that works, and games, and browses the insane internet.
Honestly that's about it. Of course there is a spectrum of sorts of users who, in varying degrees, do lean toward somewhat more of a techy headspace after a while. But let's be honest, we're here, most of us, because our first exposure to computing was Windows (probably 95 or 98, depending upon how old you are).
People will always chime in expressing their particular exception to that.. but most Linux explorers who want to get away from Windows, or perhaps iOS, are fine with what the Linux kernel does and what it stands for. AI coming? Now that's interesting.
42 • @40 • NetBSD, @41 Linux (by Tasio on 2025-09-24 08:03:54 GMT from Philippines)
@40, "Are you in the third-world? be happy! netbsd can allow you to use your i386 4gb ram machine or to underclock your 10 year old skylake box. You won't be forced to pay the new device tax!" Really? I am in the so-called third world and I haven't seen an i386 in ages, anymore than I see cars from the 80s and 90s being driven by people trying to avoid paying the new car tax. And even in antediluvian times, I didn't see many i386 machines that could handle 4GB of RAM. I also don't think under-clocking Skylake chips is something routinely done by users, third world or not. I'd go on, but I'll just leave it to:
@41, Good one!
43 • NetBSD (by John on 2025-09-24 14:44:57 GMT from Canada)
@40 does has a point, he did exaggerate, but he is right.
I have a Thinkpad T61 with 2G of memory, gotten from a relative when I found out it was sitting in a close for multiple years.
So, I put NetBSD on it and for my workflow I notice little speed difference when using my W541 w/Linux. But I hardly ever watch videos and rarely stream music. In the T61, no streaming at all.
I can even use Firefox128 on the T61, it uses about 900M. I avoid opening up tabs, but it works fine. I would not use Linux in this machine mainly because Linux is moving away from 32bit, plus it uses more ram than NetBSD. OpenBSD i386, the only browser option are dillo and links.
So, if you have a machine that Linux is getting heavy for and you cannot afford buying new, NetBSD is a great option. As noted, the only issue to work through is hardware. FWIW, older Thinkpads is a good bet to put NetBSD on. Plus you avoid polluting by throwing out an old Laptop.
44 • Installing NomadBSD (by Chris Whelan on 2025-09-24 15:07:35 GMT from United Kingdom)
@Jesse
Although NomadBSD is intended primarily to be used as a live USB OS, it actually works well installed too. The NomadBSD 'HandBooklet' has a section describing a HDD install.
It's the only BSD that I would ever consider doing anything with, other that trying it out.
45 • NetBSD (by DaveT on 2025-09-24 15:09:01 GMT from United Kingdom)
I used NetBSD for a couple of years. I used pkgsrc because I liked watching stuff compile... Sad I know!
I would be running it on my 2006 Intel iMac but there is an error in the Apple 32bit boot code that means the audio chip is mis-identified so no audio! Same problem on OpenBSD, it got fixed on linux about 2 decades ago so I have to run Devuan on it!
My daily driver is a laptop running OpenBSD, Devuan linux for the music composition etc stuff that OpenBSD can't do.
46 • Why are there many distros based FreeBSD, but none based on OpenBSD (by picamanic on 2025-09-24 16:06:51 GMT from United Kingdom)
As an interested outsider, I was wondering why so many distros are based on FreeBSD, but none on OpenBSD, despite the latter being described as the most secure BSD?
47 • Net BSD (by rhtoras on 2025-09-24 21:48:34 GMT from Greece)
I like this review but i'd like more details on some things. Why you chose XFCE Jesse or what are these components used for sound their alternatives and so on.
My experience with netbsd on a custom ryzen pc was not that good but on a HP elitedesk (intel 6th gen) mini pc was great. That's weird since NetBSD is advertised as an os suited for various systems and BSD in general works best with amd hardware. Anyways on this particular pc Net BSD worked starting ctwm and then i could add a desktop environment. My experience was ok with XFCE or Mate i don't remember which one was working best though. The whole installation including pkgin was quite boring i have to say but worked ok. Proper unix and i think i could use it daily drive. I then switched to OPEN BSD because i felt like it was the proper BSD. I want my os being light, slim and fast and Net BSD was not faster, lighter or slimer compared to openbsd. Of course nonsystemD linux is the fastest thing available, the slimest and lighter than a leaf trying to fall from a tree.
It's also nice to see in the comments (not only here) people switching between Void Linux, Devuan and OpenBSD. I like this way of thinking. I used the same route.
@46 There used to be some OpenBSD based systems i.e Liberty BSD or OliveBSD but nowdays only Fugulta exists. I suspect people trust only the official .iso and it's dev's and there is a reason behind this. BTW Fugulta works just fine but it's a oneman project if i am not mistaken.
As for @Jesse you could show us Midnight BSD or DragonflyBSD. ;)
48 • @, 43 • NetBSD (by Tasio on 2025-09-25 08:27:12 GMT from Philippines)
@43, "@40 does has a point, he did exaggerate, but he is right." Aww! Come on! Comparing an i386 to a Thinkpad T61 with a Core 2 Duo is a bit of a stretch. I can probably find some of those at a used PC shop, or online.The T61 came with Widows Vista, which was somewhat of a pig compared to XP, is 64-bit capable and RAM is expandable to 8GB. There are people out there running Windows 8 and 10 on T61s. Why not Linux? Check YouTube for videos.
49 • @38 - Why use server BSDs for desktop? (by bsduck on 2025-09-25 15:26:26 GMT from Switzerland)
@38
>There are BSDs that are made specifically with desktop-use in mind, e.g. GhostBSD, MidnightBSD and NomadBSD. DragonFlyBSD also looks well-suited for desktop-use nowadays, though I've never used it myself so what do I know. And if you care more about security than ease of use, then OpenBSD and HardenedBSD are the obvious choices, regardless of being "server first".
As a FreeBSD user I need to clarify a few things:
GhostBSD and NomadBSD are just custom builds of FreeBSD, they aren't better-suited for desktop use than plain FreeBSD, it's just a matter of convenience. You can compare this with Arch Linux and its derivatives, some people like the pre-built Manjaro, EndeavourOS, etc. while others prefer to build their own desktop according to their personal preferences.
MidnightBSD is a one-man fork of FreeBSD that doesn't bring much added value of its own and doesn't work nearly as well as the original. It's more of a hobby project than of a useful product for end users.
DragonFly is currently the least suitable BSD for desktop use. Hardware compatibility is lacking and really out of date, for example Intel and AMD GPUs are only supported up to 2019 models and Nvidia GPUs aren't supported at all. And it doesn't have any particular feature that would make it more suitable for desktop use than the other BSDs; on the contrary, its selling points are mostly relevant for high-performance servers or computer clusters.
I don't like GhostBSD, and I'm not interested in hardened systems that push security to a maximum at the expense of features, performance and convenience, so the obvious choices for me are FreeBSD and NetBSD. Both aren't "server BSDs" by the way, they're general purpose operating systems, just like Linux. They're base systems on top of which you can build whatever you want.
50 • Linux, BSD (by WayneMykel on 2025-09-25 15:44:10 GMT from United States)
@26 What you are seeing is many years of hard work. The badgering of various hardware communities developers for even the tiniest of tidbits providing information for drivers and a lot of folks that believed in the Linux microsystem all over the world putting together an OS for everyone.. Proprietary products are not important there are a world of variants to try. How about developing in alternative languages.
I have been using Linux since 1997 thereabouts. Those were the times in Linux history when patience was required while user level of competence had to grow. So many changes improving the OS interactions that it almost makes the SystemD discussions almost mute by comparison.
That said, it shoudl be possible for the BSD's to take advantage of the compatibility that Linux has spearheaded.
Cheers
51 • Alternative OS as NetBSD? (by Mark J. Kropf on 2025-09-25 17:14:43 GMT from United States)
Is there any reason that GhostBSD is not part of the choice here, given that NomadBSD and NetBSD are mentioned. Is it not relevant to the review?
Could the GhostBSD with MATE be used for the purpose of a non-Linux system, even if it has been seen as more a Linux-capable system than its peers? It remains BSD in its general function even as it has been given the more simple set up to simulate Linux.
52 • You are forcing your hand. (by wow on 2025-09-25 18:12:50 GMT from Brazil)
#42 Let me start up with some facts you are, for some reason, ignoring:
The linux kernel has a massive amount of implemented code that is not necessarily removed from its performance impacts on anything which scales below 8 cores as much as you might believe. The scheduler is not focused on such kinds of scaling, and the actual optimizations never actually existed at all in mobile. Most of the phone ARM SoCs that ran them ran old kernels and only flagships historically ship with cutting-edge kernels. Modifications were made ad-hoc to suit the necessities. And these chips themselves are not at all slow. If you ever used linux in a core 2 duo with 2gb of ram (which i am supposing penryn), you would know that, from even around 2019, a distribution such as antix was already necessary to have the least adequate performance, and the use of a window manager. I did. And others did. But it was already a suboptimal performance.
Costs of the hardware you are saying to be extremely cheap are not as cheap as you imply (amd64), are not of wide availability at these prices, and i doubt that the pricing of the lowest end machines in the philippines are lower than in here, given that the economy is unfortunately not as strong. And the machines that are generally found that are amd64 have lower ram, ranging around 2g. The distribution of the cheapest affordable machines is generally split between i386 and amd64 machines. You also ignore the fact that, in 2g of ram, what matters is not strictly the amount of ram used by software, but the capabilities of the operating system to adequately share these resources and to actually be able to use swap space and the general speed of a SATA port to extend memory. This is something linux lacks some levels of capabilities and attempts to compensate by zram. CPUs of the period and before were not as good as today with compression.
BSD does not only scales better on such CPUs, but can better utilize of these slower ram chips, slower buses, slower GPUs. Even FreeBSD which is a linux chaser today can do it. Even OpenBSD that has many security decisions that slow old machines. But NetBSD is uniquely able to do this better (and those who know are the ones who run such machines) at much older machines than a core 2 duo. We are talking about netburst, pentium III-era machines, that still support browsers that are not compiled with SSE or SSE2. I understand most people who can afford newer machines, many gigabytes of ram, are completely satisfied, and that some believe very lightweight distros still do it well. But the times are shifting and the linux kernel is becoming more complex, the userspace is becoming more complex and heavier with or without SystemD. But some people believe with all faith that even wayland is actually a protocol and its compositors based on the protocol that can perform in earlier than 2008 machines very well under most desktop environments, or even that these desktop environments are actually designed without the high-end machines in mind. So i don't get, as i said, much surprised. But i get surprised at how some simply translate their reality to the reality of the ones who are forced to rely on extremely limited budgets in comparison to someone who can get anything above a six gen intel and a newer graphics card.
53 • general purpose BSD (by rhtoras on 2025-09-25 20:24:22 GMT from Greece)
@49 If Net BSD is considered a general purpose operating system then why Open BSD isn't considered one ? OK i can see what are your concerns but it works just fine and has the tools to bring a quite good desktop experience with a little tinkering.
54 • BSD's to consider (by Slappy McGee on 2025-09-26 01:32:02 GMT from United States)
Lots of discussion about BSD, Net being the one highlighted atm.
It would be irresponsible of me to not come in with a bit of a whisper of GhostBSD. It's pointed out up there in an earlier post that yes you must run the live environment to install. Perhaps the dev(s) at Ghost will change that with an update/upgrade at some point, but I do not see it as a negative at all.
GhostBSD is ready to be considered along with any Linux distro if what you want is a "just works" desktop with configuration tools etc very familiar to Linux users.
Not to mention no systemD.
55 • @52 • BSD-Linux much ado about very little (by Tasio on 2025-09-26 03:14:53 GMT from Philippines)
@52, "Let me start up with some facts you are, for some reason, ignoring:" And on and on and on. None or little of which would be of any interest to a user who just wants to turn his PC on, browse the internet, maybe do some writing, emailing, etc. Heck, I'm retired from running a PC shop, and all I want these days is a computer that is easy to set up and use. I may upgrade RAM and storage, and opt for a bigger monitor, but I couldn't care a fig about most anything you mention.
Prices: Since ThinkPads were mentioned I looked some up. I can get a 64-bit capable ThinkPad delivered to my home for under the equivalent of 45USD, or a Core i5 5th gen with 8GB RAM and Windows 10 Installed for around 80USD. If that's too much, maybe you can't afford the electricity to run it. The motorcycle courier who would deliver it to me would probably be carrying a smartphone that costs more than that, and so would the cashiers at the local stores. Which by the way, is what most people, rich or poor, use these days: smartphones, not PCs unless they are needed at school or at work, or if they are gamers, coders, or some kind of geeks playing with old hardware. My wife has a large tablet for watching movies, and a phone for everything else. Her laptop sat unused for for years, and somehow decided to crap out anyway. I'm not bothering with it. I'll donate it to a local shop. Cheaper and less effort to order a used and usable one capable of running 64-bit Linux, should I need one. As it is, I use a desktop at home and carry a phone when out. No laptop.
56 • Always prepared (by Keith S on 2025-09-26 04:31:53 GMT from United States)
@29, I completely understand! I was digging through one of my old laptop bags that I now use mostly for storage of shiny discs that have installation software for various OSes burned onto them when I came across a short phone cord neatly folded and held with a clean wire tie that looks as if it has never been undone. I'm sure I put it in there many years ago in case I ever needed a dialup connection, though I haven't had the hardware bits to make one work for decades. Also, fwiw, if anyone needs a copy of aptosid from around 2008, I have it available.
57 • General purpose BSDs (by bsduck on 2025-09-26 12:53:18 GMT from Switzerland)
@53 I didn't pretend otherwise, OpenBSD also is a general purpose operating system. I just don't enjoy using it because of its focus on security at the expense of performance and features. My comment was meant to counter the common idea among Linux users that BSDs are by nature server operating systems, while they're just as versatile as Linux.
58 • MX Linux question (by Pierre Johnston on 2025-09-26 15:45:01 GMT from United States)
From the main distrowatch main page this week:
The MX Linux team has announce the availability of the initial beta release of MX Linux 25. The project's upcoming major update, now based on Debian 13, is available in both "systemd" and "SysV" variants (for the Xfce and Fluxbox editions) and "systemd" only for the KDE Plasma flavour.
I just started using MX Linux os at the first of the year using SysV. In the above statement, does this mean they are doing away with SysV in the KDE flavor?
I don't even download a distro to check it out if it has systemd as the init. Sorry, that's just the way I am. I've tried learning Xfce and it's just too much for me and my learning disability (brain injury a year ago) for right now...and Fluxbox is 'way' out there.
As for BSD, seems like I can handle NetBSD. I have run FreeBSD before and enjoyed it. I might give NetBSD a try soon.
But I really do need an answer to the Mx Linux question.
Thank you
59 • @58: alt MX DEs (by picamanic on 2025-09-26 18:04:37 GMT from United Kingdom)
Yes, but you have to install MX with one of the available DEs like XFCE, open a terminal emulator window and install [eg] Mate or Cinnamon with APT or Aptitude package managers, but they are GNOME derivatives. There is no way to install KDE on MX without systemd [that I can see].
60 • @58 distros with KDE but not systemd (by picamanic on 2025-09-26 19:57:34 GMT from United Kingdom)
@58: if you are not set on MX, then Devuan or Void linux are distros without systemd that have KDE in their repos: if you are interested, I can say more.
61 • FreeBSD for server and desktop and gaming with GPU passthrough (by Jonathan Vasquez (fearedbliss) on 2025-09-27 01:16:07 GMT from United States)
I switched from Gentoo to FreeBSD for my server back in 2018, and switched away from Linux to FreeBSD completely back in 2022 (although there are some devices still running Linux in some way like my Android phone and some of my gameboy devices (Anbernic devices), and it's been a great experience. I used to be one of the OpenZFS Maintainers in Gentoo and was one of the first to get Linux installed on OpenZFS as root in a mainstream distro - specifically Gentoo, although people have done it before, I just made it much more easy to do so). FreeBSD having OpenZFS directly in the base system has been amazing and I was able to stop doing all of my previous work because of it. As the years went by I expanded my FreeBSD knowledge and started learning and using other technologies like jails, pf, poudriere, and bhyve. Everything about FreeBSD felt holistic, well thought out, and just mad logical sense. Things are not usually too complicated to do, once you understand more fundamental concepts about machines, networking, etc. I feel like my UNIX knowledge is building on top of each other, rather than becoming obsolete. The changes in FreeBSD don't also tend to be based on emotional reasons so there is a nice predictability of things and we follow the principle of least astonishment. So when you upgrade, you should experience what you expect you should be experiencing, this helps not make weird unintuitive changes.
Lastly, I've recently been able to get GPU passthrough working on FreeBSD through bhyve for a Windows 10 VM for gaming purposes. This has been a very good experience after I learned a lot, and I've documented it all for others to try and enjoy. Things will only get better from here and the VM has now become my primary way to play PC games. I only play Offline Single Player games, so it's been a really good experience for that. You can play multiplayer though, I just don't want Windows to have Internet in any capacity. It's my Wintendo lol (like old school SNES, N64, PS1, Gameboy), they never had Internet and are still fun to play even 25+ years later.
You can check out the blog post at my link, and I've also uploaded two videos on YouTube about it.
Number of Comments: 61
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