<![CDATA[Anyone here has experience doing a "Wi-Fi box" in NetBSD?]]>Anyone here has experience doing a "Wi-Fi box" in NetBSD? I wonder how big is the overhead. Both in user effort and computer resources.

When I was younger I used to run a *very slow* virtual machine with Windows XP while daily-driving Linux. So I could interact with government webpages, banks, University software, etc. Anything that I couldn't do in Linux was done in this winXP VM.

Now I'm getting close to do something similar. A light VM with linux to do anything that I can't in NetBSD.

I still don't truly daily-drive NetBSD: I'm writing this tooth from my Linux Mint laptop, for example. To use the Wi-Fi from this machine, I still need a Linux driver, but I'm starting to pet the idea of a small VM + PCI passthrough to setup Wi-Fi, and use that VM as a router.

Something tells me that battery life will be even shorter than it is now. But it would be better to hear that from people who have actually done something like that.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/topic/4b7be395-0e77-44ff-ba30-55458bea2202/anyone-here-has-experience-doing-a-wi-fi-box-in-netbsdRSS for NodeFri, 17 Apr 2026 07:37:25 GMTTue, 14 Apr 2026 14:38:19 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to Anyone here has experience doing a "Wi-Fi box" in NetBSD? on Tue, 14 Apr 2026 18:12:46 GMT]]>@release_candidate My dual-boot thinkpad gets about equivalent battery life under Linux and NetBSD. NetBSD doesn't suspend properly (though it does on an older thinkpad that is netbsd-only), which I should probably try to debug at some point.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://functional.cafe/users/tfb/statuses/116404411858419230https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://functional.cafe/users/tfb/statuses/116404411858419230Tue, 14 Apr 2026 18:12:46 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Anyone here has experience doing a "Wi-Fi box" in NetBSD? on Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:23:17 GMT]]>@release_candidate You can also get such dongles for under $2 on eBay.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.sdf.org/users/netbsd/statuses/116403745426518287https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.sdf.org/users/netbsd/statuses/116403745426518287Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:23:17 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Anyone here has experience doing a "Wi-Fi box" in NetBSD? on Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:17:39 GMT]]>@release_candidate Just get an urtwn. It's $10 from any computer shop. Look for anything from D-LINK/TP-LINK that calls itself a 11n device and is USB 2.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.sdf.org/users/netbsd/statuses/116403723284345591https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.sdf.org/users/netbsd/statuses/116403723284345591Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:17:39 GMT