A progress report on my "Migrate from MacBook to Net
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@nina_kali_nina
Back in the day, NetBSD did run on close to everything. And then some.I'm curious: What problems did you run into? And what window manager are you running there?
@musevg I'll get to this shortly, in this thread
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@nina_kali_nina and I guess more generally, it supports a diversity of the kind of hardware you have in a server or a router than what you have in a typical laptop
@lydiafacts yep yep!
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A-ha two: it is important to see beyond the "project branding"
A few days ago I got really frustrated by hardware virtualisation crashing the guest OS while running under NetBSD. "Oh COME ON, the NetBSD project should've done a better job at implementing their hypervisor; I have no issues whatsoever with KVM under Linux on the same laptop", I thought at first.
And then I ended up on a homepage of nvmm, NetBSD's hypervisor. It reads:
> Six months ago, I told myself I would write a small hypervisor for an old x86 AMD CPU I had. Just to learn more about virtualization, and see how far I could go alone on my spare time.
So, yeah, it is provided by "The NetBSD project", but is mostly results of a work of a single person.
And this changes everything, it's not "yikes, such a buggy thing, this corporation could've done better", it's "wow this person is legendary, I sure can work around my own limitations to leverage the results of their work, lots of respect".
A quick summary of the OSes I have on my laptop now, as a checklist:
-- Debian 12 "Bookworm"
[+] Graphical desktop (XFCE my beloved)
[+] WiFi
[+] Accelerated video (smooth scrolling and 60fps video)
[+] Graphics software (Krita, GNU IMP)
[+] Music software - DAW (LMMS)
[+] Music software - guitar (TuxGuitar, PowerTab)
[+] Emulation (can run DOS 1.0-Windows 10, very fast)
[+] WineVery stable, can do everything I need.
-- OpenBSD 7.9
[+] Desktop
[+] WiFi
[+] Accelerated video
[+] Krita, graphic tablet support
[+] LMMS
[ ] No guitar soft
[±] No Windows emulation beyond DosBox
[ ] No wine-- NetBSD 11
"-" means unstable to the point of being unusable
[+] Desktop - the same XFCE
[±] WiFi
[ ] Accelerated video
[+] Krita
[+] LMMS
[-] Guitar soft
[±] Emulation (either unstable or slow)
[±] Wine (unstable)So far, OpenBSD has been the most stable of the three, but it is impossible to make emulation working in it. NetBSD is promising, and it is a rewarding learning experience, but I can't daily-drive it yet
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@woe2you I haven't used it before this day; I've been using TuxGuitar, but I gave up on making it work under NetBSD. It seems PowerTab is legit, but I couldn't open some gp3-gp5 files with it, unfortunately.
@nina_kali_nina Thanks for taking the time to answer this tangent for me, I know it wasn't your main focus.
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A quick summary of the OSes I have on my laptop now, as a checklist:
-- Debian 12 "Bookworm"
[+] Graphical desktop (XFCE my beloved)
[+] WiFi
[+] Accelerated video (smooth scrolling and 60fps video)
[+] Graphics software (Krita, GNU IMP)
[+] Music software - DAW (LMMS)
[+] Music software - guitar (TuxGuitar, PowerTab)
[+] Emulation (can run DOS 1.0-Windows 10, very fast)
[+] WineVery stable, can do everything I need.
-- OpenBSD 7.9
[+] Desktop
[+] WiFi
[+] Accelerated video
[+] Krita, graphic tablet support
[+] LMMS
[ ] No guitar soft
[±] No Windows emulation beyond DosBox
[ ] No wine-- NetBSD 11
"-" means unstable to the point of being unusable
[+] Desktop - the same XFCE
[±] WiFi
[ ] Accelerated video
[+] Krita
[+] LMMS
[-] Guitar soft
[±] Emulation (either unstable or slow)
[±] Wine (unstable)So far, OpenBSD has been the most stable of the three, but it is impossible to make emulation working in it. NetBSD is promising, and it is a rewarding learning experience, but I can't daily-drive it yet
Some people actually asked me: "Hold on, why won't you just use Debian, if everything works on it?"
I'm migrating from MacOS 14, the latest MacOS without AI. It is still receiving updates, and it probably will be fine/safe to use for another year. If the push comes to shove, I can update to MacOS 15 and get one extra year of support of software that is generally pre-genAI.
Debian Bookworm, the latest pre-major-genAI release, will get its last major update in June 2026, and will stop receiving LTS in June 2028.
In other words, if my reason for this move is "according to who there is no level of exposure to genai", then swapping from MacOS to Debian doesn't actually give me more time before the support for the last "safe-ish" version is dropped.
So, might as well bite the bullet now and go to BSDs. And it is increasingly looking like I might be able to get away with it without losing anything important to me in terms of computer functionality.
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@nina_kali_nina Thanks for taking the time to answer this tangent for me, I know it wasn't your main focus.
@woe2you Ah, no probs! Note that neither Tux Guitar nor PowerTab use GuitarPro's "Real Sound Engine", so they sound as MIDI as your MIDI sequencer/soundfont.
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Some people actually asked me: "Hold on, why won't you just use Debian, if everything works on it?"
I'm migrating from MacOS 14, the latest MacOS without AI. It is still receiving updates, and it probably will be fine/safe to use for another year. If the push comes to shove, I can update to MacOS 15 and get one extra year of support of software that is generally pre-genAI.
Debian Bookworm, the latest pre-major-genAI release, will get its last major update in June 2026, and will stop receiving LTS in June 2028.
In other words, if my reason for this move is "according to who there is no level of exposure to genai", then swapping from MacOS to Debian doesn't actually give me more time before the support for the last "safe-ish" version is dropped.
So, might as well bite the bullet now and go to BSDs. And it is increasingly looking like I might be able to get away with it without losing anything important to me in terms of computer functionality.
@nina_kali_nina I like how you are approaching this - I'm on a similar path...Debian 13 is comfortable, I don't have to abandon it to plan a transition to the BSD's (in my case, I'm looking at NetBSD for the most part right now)
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
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A quick summary of the OSes I have on my laptop now, as a checklist:
-- Debian 12 "Bookworm"
[+] Graphical desktop (XFCE my beloved)
[+] WiFi
[+] Accelerated video (smooth scrolling and 60fps video)
[+] Graphics software (Krita, GNU IMP)
[+] Music software - DAW (LMMS)
[+] Music software - guitar (TuxGuitar, PowerTab)
[+] Emulation (can run DOS 1.0-Windows 10, very fast)
[+] WineVery stable, can do everything I need.
-- OpenBSD 7.9
[+] Desktop
[+] WiFi
[+] Accelerated video
[+] Krita, graphic tablet support
[+] LMMS
[ ] No guitar soft
[±] No Windows emulation beyond DosBox
[ ] No wine-- NetBSD 11
"-" means unstable to the point of being unusable
[+] Desktop - the same XFCE
[±] WiFi
[ ] Accelerated video
[+] Krita
[+] LMMS
[-] Guitar soft
[±] Emulation (either unstable or slow)
[±] Wine (unstable)So far, OpenBSD has been the most stable of the three, but it is impossible to make emulation working in it. NetBSD is promising, and it is a rewarding learning experience, but I can't daily-drive it yet
@nina_kali_nina
How well does OpenBSD fare with the DOSBox forks that can emulate Windows 95 (i.e Dosbox-X)?
Have considered using Dosbox-X on Linux because I don't like Wine, but the official Debian and Flathub builds kept crashing whenever I resized the window. -
Some people actually asked me: "Hold on, why won't you just use Debian, if everything works on it?"
I'm migrating from MacOS 14, the latest MacOS without AI. It is still receiving updates, and it probably will be fine/safe to use for another year. If the push comes to shove, I can update to MacOS 15 and get one extra year of support of software that is generally pre-genAI.
Debian Bookworm, the latest pre-major-genAI release, will get its last major update in June 2026, and will stop receiving LTS in June 2028.
In other words, if my reason for this move is "according to who there is no level of exposure to genai", then swapping from MacOS to Debian doesn't actually give me more time before the support for the last "safe-ish" version is dropped.
So, might as well bite the bullet now and go to BSDs. And it is increasingly looking like I might be able to get away with it without losing anything important to me in terms of computer functionality.
@nina_kali_nina According to open-slopware, OpenBSD has a permissive AI policy. It's getting very hard to find an untainted OS.
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@nina_kali_nina I like how you are approaching this - I'm on a similar path...Debian 13 is comfortable, I don't have to abandon it to plan a transition to the BSD's (in my case, I'm looking at NetBSD for the most part right now)
@scott yep, I hold hopes for NetBSD, too. From what I read, FreeBSD might be quite usable in my situation, and it seems to be less gung-ho on AI than Linux
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Some people actually asked me: "Hold on, why won't you just use Debian, if everything works on it?"
I'm migrating from MacOS 14, the latest MacOS without AI. It is still receiving updates, and it probably will be fine/safe to use for another year. If the push comes to shove, I can update to MacOS 15 and get one extra year of support of software that is generally pre-genAI.
Debian Bookworm, the latest pre-major-genAI release, will get its last major update in June 2026, and will stop receiving LTS in June 2028.
In other words, if my reason for this move is "according to who there is no level of exposure to genai", then swapping from MacOS to Debian doesn't actually give me more time before the support for the last "safe-ish" version is dropped.
So, might as well bite the bullet now and go to BSDs. And it is increasingly looking like I might be able to get away with it without losing anything important to me in terms of computer functionality.
@nina_kali_nina Why no FreeBSD?
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@scott yep, I hold hopes for NetBSD, too. From what I read, FreeBSD might be quite usable in my situation, and it seems to be less gung-ho on AI than Linux
@nina_kali_nina NetBSD appeal deeply to me because it's so small, and the "small town" size you noted in relation to NVMM where it's people contributing, not huge corpos.
The flip side for me is like 85% or more of BSD users are on FreeBSD - it would probably be a _lot_ easier daily driving in that space, I suspect.
The idea of rolling up my sleeves and actually contributing a port when needed to NetBSD is also tantalizing tho - maybe I don't need everything handed to me in a package.
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@nina_kali_nina According to open-slopware, OpenBSD has a permissive AI policy. It's getting very hard to find an untainted OS.
@Retrograde my understanding is that OpenBSD doesn't have a permissive AI policy, but they do accept upstream patches made with AI (tmux) or AI-assisted bug reports (librcypto and kernel).
In this aspect, NetBSD is far better, yes.
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Some people actually asked me: "Hold on, why won't you just use Debian, if everything works on it?"
I'm migrating from MacOS 14, the latest MacOS without AI. It is still receiving updates, and it probably will be fine/safe to use for another year. If the push comes to shove, I can update to MacOS 15 and get one extra year of support of software that is generally pre-genAI.
Debian Bookworm, the latest pre-major-genAI release, will get its last major update in June 2026, and will stop receiving LTS in June 2028.
In other words, if my reason for this move is "according to who there is no level of exposure to genai", then swapping from MacOS to Debian doesn't actually give me more time before the support for the last "safe-ish" version is dropped.
So, might as well bite the bullet now and go to BSDs. And it is increasingly looking like I might be able to get away with it without losing anything important to me in terms of computer functionality.
@nina_kali_nina wait, is there something that passed me? What are you talking about Debian and ai?
I mean don't really follow Debian that closely because I use kubuntu with some extra repos so I don't have to use snap, but Debian going some involuntary ai use path would be something I think I would have heard about. -
@nina_kali_nina
How well does OpenBSD fare with the DOSBox forks that can emulate Windows 95 (i.e Dosbox-X)?
Have considered using Dosbox-X on Linux because I don't like Wine, but the official Debian and Flathub builds kept crashing whenever I resized the window.@moses_izumi I have Win98 running real fast (Pentium 200 MHz 100%) in dosbox-x on both NetBSD and OpenBSD. I haven't tried to use it for music production just yet, but that'd be my fallback if I fail to port PowerTab or TuxGuitar.
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@woe2you Ah, no probs! Note that neither Tux Guitar nor PowerTab use GuitarPro's "Real Sound Engine", so they sound as MIDI as your MIDI sequencer/soundfont.
@nina_kali_nina I'm trying to get back into guitar after many years, I remember when GP was pure MIDI so that's no downside.
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@nina_kali_nina Why no FreeBSD?
@metalmartijn I'd ditch Debian for an old FreeBSD. Current FreeBSD explicitly allows AI-generated contributions.
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@nina_kali_nina NetBSD appeal deeply to me because it's so small, and the "small town" size you noted in relation to NVMM where it's people contributing, not huge corpos.
The flip side for me is like 85% or more of BSD users are on FreeBSD - it would probably be a _lot_ easier daily driving in that space, I suspect.
The idea of rolling up my sleeves and actually contributing a port when needed to NetBSD is also tantalizing tho - maybe I don't need everything handed to me in a package.
@scott FreeBSD, unfortunately, explicitly allows AI slop. This, and they seem to support Xlibre, which I consider a bad move. Otherwise it'd be a no-brainer.
Every now and then I think I should just move to Potato[1] or disconnect from the internet forever and just keep using what I always used, so I can stop being worried about software vulnerabilities affecting me.
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Some people actually asked me: "Hold on, why won't you just use Debian, if everything works on it?"
I'm migrating from MacOS 14, the latest MacOS without AI. It is still receiving updates, and it probably will be fine/safe to use for another year. If the push comes to shove, I can update to MacOS 15 and get one extra year of support of software that is generally pre-genAI.
Debian Bookworm, the latest pre-major-genAI release, will get its last major update in June 2026, and will stop receiving LTS in June 2028.
In other words, if my reason for this move is "according to who there is no level of exposure to genai", then swapping from MacOS to Debian doesn't actually give me more time before the support for the last "safe-ish" version is dropped.
So, might as well bite the bullet now and go to BSDs. And it is increasingly looking like I might be able to get away with it without losing anything important to me in terms of computer functionality.
@nina_kali_nina I've been looking into running an old Debian instead. If you want to be super-conservative it has to be Debian 10, alas I am quite sure that Debian 11 would still be mostly fine. On the other hand, even Debian 10 receives post-ChatGPT updates that COULD be tainted. The only way to be sure seems to be to roll your own. Which is quite a rabbit hole. I've gone down it but I have yet to come out the other end with something useful.
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@metalmartijn I'd ditch Debian for an old FreeBSD. Current FreeBSD explicitly allows AI-generated contributions.
@nina_kali_nina Damn it has been my favorite since 2001, I run it on my home servers..
