• NetBSD Overview: One of the oldest BSDs, released in 1993. Based on UCB 4.3 BSD, provides a small old-school minimal desktop. Smaller among niche BSD systems. More used BSDs are FreeBSD (focus on performance) and OpenBSD (security focused fork of NetBSD). Linux has the largest user base.
• NetBSD in Use: Personal doesn't know many places it's used. Void Linux was built by a NetBSD developer. sdf.org runs on NetBSD.
• Focus on Portability: NetBSD has a track record with 8 "tier-1" supported ports, 49 "tier-2" ports and 1 "tier-3" port. Kernel can be crosscompiled from Linux. Portable package manager Pkgsrc supports 19 OSes. It's portable due to being a pure old-school Unix with simple init scripts, configuration files, small tools and great kernel code.
• Portability in Unix: In "The Unix Philosophy" (1994), Mike Gancarz argued for portability over optimizing for existing hardware. Today, portability matters to maintain older hardware and reduce waste.
• Code Quality: NetBSD team emphasizes high quality, modular code for a portable system. It's easy to understand, hack and tweak, excellent for learning. They avoid partial implementations.
• Personal Experience: Was able to recompile kernel, change startup text color and apply patches. Synaptics driver was patched. Understands code and system. Opposes giving users little control over tweaking systems.
• Permacomputing: [100 rabbits] built their software philosophy from permaculture. Good system should be accessible, compatible, efficient, flexible and resilient. NetBSD fulfills these characteristics.
• Community and Hardware: NetBSD community celebrates older tech and extends system life. Example of someone using a 1994 Sparcstation 2 on /r/netbsd.
• Performance vs Others: Not as performant as FreeBSD and Linux but tries to improve where possible. Differs from OpenBSD in enabling hyperthreading for security concerns.
• Overall: NetBSD's philosophy aligns with the author's. Small, cozy, fast to set up, supports hardware out of the box with sane defaults and is hackable, teaching a lot.