That setup with TWM and a basic X11 installation and no DE makes me think a lot of what I did with my Linux from Scratch build a long time ago, when I basically did the bare minimum by hand to get a Linux kernel booting and had nearly nothing in place by default... I actually had to type commands manually to bring up the network interface and startx, but it "worked," even if all I had was an xterm to run Firefox from. I was pretty proud of myself for compiling all that from scratch. It seems like what NetBSD provides out of the box is a lot like a slightly more polished version of that nice, clean minimal Unix-like experience that you can add onto. Not as terrible as trying to alternate between lynx and a command line because you don't have X, but not as much bloat as a full DE.
Now to create 'dmr' and 'ucb' directories -- the Berkeley way : ) In the unlikely case that any of us don't know what 'dmr' represents, its a 'mandatory' directory under /usr for 'Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie' (died 2011), one of UNIX' creators/geniuses. o7
Ahhh, the “Other” BSD. I did use it several years ago on a network sniffer. Everyone else in my group had no idea what it was. “No, its not Linux!” Ran very nicely but they all went Linux-a-Gogo. I might give it a go since no one else is.
lol, Linux-a-Gogo...... I'd copyright that name... :-) It does seem to be a forgotten entry in the BSD family...if you do have a go again, it would be interesting to hear your take on it, as I only know one person using it.
Oh crikey Are you trying to boot from a USB and if so did you download and burn the correct file for the USB, it should be an .img file such as: NetBSD-9.2-amd64-install.img.gz
@@RoboNuggie yeah except its the i386 image as this is on a 32 bit system. maybe netbsd is incompatible with the hardware? its running dual xeons from 2002
There is a page here that may be of help - silas.net.br/tech/netbsd/netbsd-install-thinkpad-t440.html Are you using NetBSD 8 or 9.x ? If we can't sort this, I'll get in touch with one of the developers and pass on your problem....
I've contacted a dev on Twitter and the initial response was "Probably needs to specify the root device for the installation, something like sd0a" - give that a try and failing that are you on Twitter? If not I'll relay the messages... Can you take take a picture of the failing booting screen?
Holy Molding really? lol! This IS a nice OS! NetBSD..I have ALWAYS read it was a command line only OS and yes, hard to install. It was back in the day like most things UNIX so yeah.. Welcome welcome, to the FUTURE!!! :-D
Well, I think the BSD's have come a long way in the last few years.... a lot of work has gone into them, and are not out of reach to users as they may have been thought to be many years ago... I have never used this before, but I am glad I tried it...
@@RoboNuggie yes! I am so on board because of that fact now. Although I will admit that some of the versions of NIX OS that I had the misfortune to buy back in the day have known defects that I only found out about NOW with modern internet and resources. Wow.. lack of resources and lack of knowledge does cause alot of problems in life.. Ah well, happy to be here now lol!
hi RoboNuggie.... what about OpenBSD? do you know OpenBSD? I have FreeBSD 12 on my PC Lenovo, and OpenBSD 6.4 (the last one) on my Lenovo Thinkpad x250 laptop. On the Thinkpad x250, I can say that FreeBSD works 85% well and OpenBSD works 99%. Do you have any experiencie with OpenBSD? because I never see any video about it. Anyway, I love your videos (this one about NetBSD is gret!). I am a big fan of RoboNuggie :-) :-) :-)
And I am a big fan of you Joan.... :-) The skateboarding videos are very good....! I haven't used OpenBSD....may have a look at it in the same style as the NetBSD one.... Maybe... ;-)
Well my friends, I am revisiting this video and comment section to give an update. I am currently playing with NetBSD 9.0 32bit and there is no CDE desktop in the binary packages of the pkgsrc packages. But that is neither here nor there at the moment. I finally decided to try out both OpenBSD 6.7 and NetBSD 9 because of one major thing: SMALL FOOT PRINT! Both of these versions of BSD complete with X fit well on a 4GB SSD drive! Mind you, you will need lots of ram! My thinclients have 4GB ram and the SSD is 4GB standard but I can upgrade to at least a 8GB or higher now in 2020. That said, NetBSD is NOT as friendly as FreeBSD or OpenBSD for some things. What do I mean? If I log into ROOT with XDM, I get a TWM windowmanager with xterm right? Ok, no worries there. But when I type in xterm: pkgin install nano.. I get command not found or file not found or sometimes package not found errors! I found out I have to su -l to get to true root even logged in root! THEN it works! I find out that if I want to RUN any apps I have to type out the full absolute path such as /usr/pkg/bin/nano or what ever app, in order to get it to run. Insane. As a normal user, no issues. BUT, I have to su -l if I want to run any root apps in a xterm in normal user mode too. Now the next thing is I can not run X applications as root from a xterm as a normal user using su -l or su. "can't open display" errors happen. I remember these things in old versions of LINUX waaay back when. Modern Linux allows me to use the PC comfortably. I do know FreeBSD does not allow running X apps as root from a terminal in normal user mode either but damn, I do get to at least run apps without having to type out the full absolute paths! All this said, what the heck is up with netbsd and that? I did 2 installations, the first by myself going in on memory from a video by teetech and the second time using THIS video as a guide, step by step, with minor differences due to versions being different. Same issues, different day. I was so frustrated by this OS I wanted to smash my virtualbox machine, and then I realized.. it is virtual! lol!
It's not for everyone, I liked it.... I will have to revisit again... One thing, you can run X apps from the terminal as root in FreeBSD - I can do it right now, and that includes Dolphin as root, something sooo many Linux 'experts' on TH-cam says is impossible. You can in FreeBSD. It's not advisable,.... you should be using gksu or equiv.....
@@RoboNuggie lol! I know! I can run stuff on Linux and FreeBSD as a normal user, as root in a xterm, but in NetBSD..no. Also I have to type out the full path to apps in root. It is very frustrating. I need to fire up my OpenBSD again and see what IT does. I think it was MUCH MUCH nicer to me lol! I would ask my friend, if you could do a install and setup video on NetBSD 9 and OpenBSD 6.7 32bit? Both OS have a full graphical setup from their respective small single cd installs. The goal since BOTH ARE small foot print installs and fit a 4GB HDD/SSD, is to install ONE of these two on one of my HP T5740E Thinclients to use that thinclient as a mp3 player and photo viewer with internet connection but NO web browser. The apps I need are: Audacious, audacious-plugins, xfe file manager, xdaliclock, conky, a audio mixer to adjust sound levels, and a decent small foot print picture viewer, xzgv. As for system apps: nano, nedit, motif(motif-libs in OpenBSD I think), and lxrandr. These are extras not installed in the cd installs for both OS. I am going to have to install FreeBSD again with just MWM and CDE-DESKTOP with just these apps to see the foot print sizes and choose. 4GB is not much drive space, but it is what was standard back in 1996 and these OS are older than that so there has to be a solution. I have tried Linux and almost came to a solution but some bugs here and there prevent small foot print media player Linux installs just fail in the end. Solid state cool running PC systems are still hard to find and expensive so I am trying to use what I already own without having to pay money I do not have, for newer solid state fanless PC tech.. Software is free, I need some of that BSD magic my friend!
@@pianokeyjoe Are you sure your $PATH is set correctly? That's pretty much the only instance I can think of that would require you to use a full path in order to run a particular program. Luckily, it can be fixed in seconds.
@@Thiesi As I can remember, I did a default graphical install of NetBSD and the settings SHOULD have been set for me, but seems you have to manually set things like the $PATH in rc.local? or rc.conf? It was one of those system variables config files. Needless to say I shall revisit this someday on real machines when I finally get my tech room up and running. I am done with virtualbox.. It is fun when you have time to kill but ever since the pandemic, time is precious. That and virtualbox was crashing since 2020 on my Linux machine so if I want to try it, I need to do it on a real machine and I have many thankfully. I think NetBSD is just set like that by default for security reasons, but I could be wrong.
Depends on what you want to do.... I would choose FreeBSD....because that it is what I use daily...and had the greatest hardware compatibility... But that is not saying NetBSD or OpenBSD are not suitable., it is just that they are different in as much as they are the same...they serve their own niche, and do that well.
What with *permissively* licensed, *forked* from 386BSD, *embedding*, cross-compiling, software *interrupts*..... the language of BSD is downright sordid....I love it ;-)
@@RoboNuggie yes! I saw that! That had me in nostalgia city real quick too! And then I saw it, TWM. The oldest of most WMs. So now I know how OpenBSD will setup X11. The same way. it is so sweet how you get all the basics that are needed with this OS. FreeBSD is the same but not at install time and that IS the difference I think. Old FreeBSD had X11 and a numerous amount of WMs and DEs at install time but now it is very basic command line only options. The sometimes LACK of internet will cause distress with that as you would NOT be able to install anything beyond the base system without internet or without knowing beforehand, how to mount and copy the entire cd or DVD to a place FreeBSD can and will find all pkgs as a valid install source. I do miss the old way that it was all included at install time..Like NetBSD and OpenBSD. As for CDE desktop? Since it is not a default anymore, it HAS to be found online but MWM is a great base to start! I am game if that is all I do get. That xdm does look great too! The internet being slower on BSD is noticeable on FreeBSD too. But I figured it is because of some defaults set for security and for checks of file packets. I could be wrong though. I have 250mb/s max connection so again, could be wrong.
The CDE package is in pkgsrc wip so you can try it out if you want, but it may be buggy. The version in wip looks to be old, but the CDE page on SourceForge has instructions on how to manually install the latest version.
@@davidokeif8304 Hi, I am late to the party here! CDE is no longer found in NetBSD repos. But I found out with Linux, that CDE-DESKTOP is a whopping 230MB or so in size! Big for small foot print desktop but small by today's standards I know. Eitherway, it is absent here now. If FreeBSD was small foot print to fit in a 4GB SSD thinclient, I would use that since cde IS still available for IT. I like going old school desktop with motif but alas I am starting to lose heart... NetBSD being a bi&$ to me lol!
Hi, pkgin original author here, I think the most common way to say it is "package-in" but it's really up to your taste ;)
Great video, thanks a lot!
Lol....thanks Emile, I thought it may have been....
Great utility by the way, thanks for creating it!
@Data Mined I actually am!
Packaging = Packagin' = pkgin
pkgin install, is like pkg install just with a "in" at the end... :-P a little Seinfeld reference off the cuff there.
That setup with TWM and a basic X11 installation and no DE makes me think a lot of what I did with my Linux from Scratch build a long time ago, when I basically did the bare minimum by hand to get a Linux kernel booting and had nearly nothing in place by default... I actually had to type commands manually to bring up the network interface and startx, but it "worked," even if all I had was an xterm to run Firefox from. I was pretty proud of myself for compiling all that from scratch. It seems like what NetBSD provides out of the box is a lot like a slightly more polished version of that nice, clean minimal Unix-like experience that you can add onto. Not as terrible as trying to alternate between lynx and a command line because you don't have X, but not as much bloat as a full DE.
NetBSD is a good deal when you want to use exotic hardware.
Just imagine surfing internet via toaster!
Now to create 'dmr' and 'ucb' directories -- the Berkeley way : )
In the unlikely case that any of us don't know what 'dmr' represents, its a 'mandatory' directory under /usr for 'Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie' (died 2011), one of UNIX' creators/geniuses. o7
Great viddy, RoboNuggie. I haven't used NetBSD since the cozy Sun SPARCstation IPCs died at $WORK some years ago.
Ahhh, the “Other” BSD. I did use it several years ago on a network sniffer. Everyone else in my group had no idea what it was. “No, its not Linux!” Ran very nicely but they all went Linux-a-Gogo. I might give it a go since no one else is.
lol, Linux-a-Gogo...... I'd copyright that name... :-)
It does seem to be a forgotten entry in the BSD family...if you do have a go again, it would be interesting to hear your take on it, as I only know one person using it.
Nice one! Thanks for branching out, Robo.
Hi Richard,
Thank you! Think of it as a sideways glance...... :-)
how did you boot netbsd? i can't get past the green text screen, it says boot device: unknown and is asking for a root device
Oh crikey
Are you trying to boot from a USB and if so did you download and burn the correct file for the USB, it should be an .img file such as:
NetBSD-9.2-amd64-install.img.gz
@@RoboNuggie yeah except its the i386 image as this is on a 32 bit system. maybe netbsd is incompatible with the hardware? its running dual xeons from 2002
There is a page here that may be of help -
silas.net.br/tech/netbsd/netbsd-install-thinkpad-t440.html
Are you using NetBSD 8 or 9.x ?
If we can't sort this, I'll get in touch with one of the developers and pass on your problem....
@@RoboNuggie the system is from 2002, long before USB 3 or UEFI.
I've contacted a dev on Twitter and the initial response was "Probably needs to specify the root device for the installation, something like sd0a" - give that a try and failing that are you on Twitter? If not I'll relay the messages...
Can you take take a picture of the failing booting screen?
Holy Molding really? lol! This IS a nice OS! NetBSD..I have ALWAYS read it was a command line only OS and yes, hard to install. It was back in the day like most things UNIX so yeah.. Welcome welcome, to the FUTURE!!! :-D
Well, I think the BSD's have come a long way in the last few years.... a lot of work has gone into them, and are not out of reach to users as they may have been thought to be many years ago...
I have never used this before, but I am glad I tried it...
@@RoboNuggie yes! I am so on board because of that fact now. Although I will admit that some of the versions of NIX OS that I had the misfortune to buy back in the day have known defects that I only found out about NOW with modern internet and resources. Wow.. lack of resources and lack of knowledge does cause alot of problems in life.. Ah well, happy to be here now lol!
And we're happy to have you here.....!
cool! I have been very unlucky with my hardware compatibility on FreeBSD, so I am totally giving this a try
Well, you never know until you try Polikarpov.... :-)
Legend! 'pkgin' rather than pkg_add. Everytime.
pkgin seems a very tidy tool.... thank you for suggesting it...
Thank a lot! (pkgin author here ;) )
@@emileimilheitor3456 It's a fine tool. Have a great day, Emile. o7
Excellent 👌
Thank you petits pois!
hi RoboNuggie.... what about OpenBSD? do you know OpenBSD?
I have FreeBSD 12 on my PC Lenovo, and OpenBSD 6.4 (the last one) on my Lenovo Thinkpad x250 laptop.
On the Thinkpad x250, I can say that FreeBSD works 85% well and OpenBSD works 99%.
Do you have any experiencie with OpenBSD? because I never see any video about it.
Anyway, I love your videos (this one about NetBSD is gret!). I am a big fan of RoboNuggie :-) :-) :-)
And I am a big fan of you Joan.... :-)
The skateboarding videos are very good....!
I haven't used OpenBSD....may have a look at it in the same style as the NetBSD one....
Maybe... ;-)
I would have thought that all of the BSD variants would use the same pkgs; also how would you go about installing a printer?
Install the CUPS package (Common Unix Printing System).
thanks
@@pscheie
Well my friends, I am revisiting this video and comment section to give an update. I am currently playing with NetBSD 9.0 32bit and there is no CDE desktop in the binary packages of the pkgsrc packages. But that is neither here nor there at the moment. I finally decided to try out both OpenBSD 6.7 and NetBSD 9 because of one major thing: SMALL FOOT PRINT! Both of these versions of BSD complete with X fit well on a 4GB SSD drive! Mind you, you will need lots of ram! My thinclients have 4GB ram and the SSD is 4GB standard but I can upgrade to at least a 8GB or higher now in 2020. That said, NetBSD is NOT as friendly as FreeBSD or OpenBSD for some things. What do I mean? If I log into ROOT with XDM, I get a TWM windowmanager with xterm right? Ok, no worries there. But when I type in xterm: pkgin install nano.. I get command not found or file not found or sometimes package not found errors! I found out I have to su -l to get to true root even logged in root! THEN it works! I find out that if I want to RUN any apps I have to type out the full absolute path such as /usr/pkg/bin/nano or what ever app, in order to get it to run. Insane. As a normal user, no issues. BUT, I have to su -l if I want to run any root apps in a xterm in normal user mode too. Now the next thing is I can not run X applications as root from a xterm as a normal user using su -l or su. "can't open display" errors happen. I remember these things in old versions of LINUX waaay back when. Modern Linux allows me to use the PC comfortably. I do know FreeBSD does not allow running X apps as root from a terminal in normal user mode either but damn, I do get to at least run apps without having to type out the full absolute paths! All this said, what the heck is up with netbsd and that? I did 2 installations, the first by myself going in on memory from a video by teetech and the second time using THIS video as a guide, step by step, with minor differences due to versions being different. Same issues, different day. I was so frustrated by this OS I wanted to smash my virtualbox machine, and then I realized.. it is virtual! lol!
It's not for everyone, I liked it.... I will have to revisit again...
One thing, you can run X apps from the terminal as root in FreeBSD - I can do it right now, and that includes Dolphin as root, something sooo many Linux 'experts' on TH-cam says is impossible. You can in FreeBSD.
It's not advisable,.... you should be using gksu or equiv.....
@@RoboNuggie lol! I know! I can run stuff on Linux and FreeBSD as a normal user, as root in a xterm, but in NetBSD..no. Also I have to type out the full path to apps in root. It is very frustrating. I need to fire up my OpenBSD again and see what IT does. I think it was MUCH MUCH nicer to me lol! I would ask my friend, if you could do a install and setup video on NetBSD 9 and OpenBSD 6.7 32bit? Both OS have a full graphical setup from their respective small single cd installs. The goal since BOTH ARE small foot print installs and fit a 4GB HDD/SSD, is to install ONE of these two on one of my HP T5740E Thinclients to use that thinclient as a mp3 player and photo viewer with internet connection but NO web browser. The apps I need are: Audacious, audacious-plugins, xfe file manager, xdaliclock, conky, a audio mixer to adjust sound levels, and a decent small foot print picture viewer, xzgv. As for system apps: nano, nedit, motif(motif-libs in OpenBSD I think), and lxrandr. These are extras not installed in the cd installs for both OS. I am going to have to install FreeBSD again with just MWM and CDE-DESKTOP with just these apps to see the foot print sizes and choose. 4GB is not much drive space, but it is what was standard back in 1996 and these OS are older than that so there has to be a solution. I have tried Linux and almost came to a solution but some bugs here and there prevent small foot print media player Linux installs just fail in the end. Solid state cool running PC systems are still hard to find and expensive so I am trying to use what I already own without having to pay money I do not have, for newer solid state fanless PC tech.. Software is free, I need some of that BSD magic my friend!
@@pianokeyjoe Are you sure your $PATH is set correctly? That's pretty much the only instance I can think of that would require you to use a full path in order to run a particular program. Luckily, it can be fixed in seconds.
@@Thiesi As I can remember, I did a default graphical install of NetBSD and the settings SHOULD have been set for me, but seems you have to manually set things like the $PATH in rc.local? or rc.conf? It was one of those system variables config files. Needless to say I shall revisit this someday on real machines when I finally get my tech room up and running. I am done with virtualbox.. It is fun when you have time to kill but ever since the pandemic, time is precious. That and virtualbox was crashing since 2020 on my Linux machine so if I want to try it, I need to do it on a real machine and I have many thankfully. I think NetBSD is just set like that by default for security reasons, but I could be wrong.
That's funny, I've never had to type full paths to run nano and stuff.
Which one should I choose FreeBSD Or Netbsd
Depends on what you want to do....
I would choose FreeBSD....because that it is what I use daily...and had the greatest hardware compatibility...
But that is not saying NetBSD or OpenBSD are not suitable., it is just that they are different in as much as they are the same...they serve their own niche, and do that well.
RoboNuggie Thanks For The Advice!
NetBSD runs on Raspberry 3s and your old Amiga 500. Jun Ebihara supplies the 'evbarm7' image for the Pi -- hassle-free systemd-free cheap computing.
@simurgh - I love my Pi's...got around 4 of them all 3's with one plus.....all running FreeBSD...
@@RoboNuggie Had no idea FBSD was available for Pi. Thank you.
NetBSD...that's so...kinky. Ooh, look at those exotic device file system nodes....yeah.
What with *permissively* licensed, *forked* from 386BSD, *embedding*, cross-compiling, software *interrupts*..... the language of BSD is downright sordid....I love it ;-)
Press no,haha,Im sure that installer has changed.
:-) I'm the kind of person that if a button says don't press, I want to press... . Kaboom!
Looks Difficult and Antiquated! ;-(
It can appear that way, but it's a great way to learn the system and it makes for a great OS....
But new user friendly? Certainly not....
It's very low-level and very elegant.
Well ya already know what I want to do lol! CDE desktop and MWM on NETBSD! Anyone? Anyone? Beuller? Beuller?
well, it does set up xdm for you...and that's a motif login ;-) 25% there from the start :-)
@@RoboNuggie yes! I saw that! That had me in nostalgia city real quick too! And then I saw it, TWM. The oldest of most WMs. So now I know how OpenBSD will setup X11. The same way. it is so sweet how you get all the basics that are needed with this OS. FreeBSD is the same but not at install time and that IS the difference I think. Old FreeBSD had X11 and a numerous amount of WMs and DEs at install time but now it is very basic command line only options. The sometimes LACK of internet will cause distress with that as you would NOT be able to install anything beyond the base system without internet or without knowing beforehand, how to mount and copy the entire cd or DVD to a place FreeBSD can and will find all pkgs as a valid install source. I do miss the old way that it was all included at install time..Like NetBSD and OpenBSD. As for CDE desktop? Since it is not a default anymore, it HAS to be found online but MWM is a great base to start! I am game if that is all I do get. That xdm does look great too! The internet being slower on BSD is noticeable on FreeBSD too. But I figured it is because of some defaults set for security and for checks of file packets. I could be wrong though. I have 250mb/s max connection so again, could be wrong.
The CDE package is in pkgsrc wip so you can try it out if you want, but it may be buggy. The version in wip looks to be old, but the CDE page on SourceForge has instructions on how to manually install the latest version.
@@davidokeif8304 Hi, I am late to the party here! CDE is no longer found in NetBSD repos. But I found out with Linux, that CDE-DESKTOP is a whopping 230MB or so in size! Big for small foot print desktop but small by today's standards I know. Eitherway, it is absent here now. If FreeBSD was small foot print to fit in a 4GB SSD thinclient, I would use that since cde IS still available for IT. I like going old school desktop with motif but alas I am starting to lose heart... NetBSD being a bi&$ to me lol!
Great gosh :D
ShaTer! That's what I say whenever I see a post from you.... sightings of you are rarer than hen's teeth :-)
@@RoboNuggie LOL LOL
pkgsrc *will* be slow: think how many downloads must be happening all over the world all the time.
That's a good point.... it's easy to forget sometimes.... thank you KC9UDX :-)
@@RoboNuggie there are days when I'm really hammering on it, and I'm just a casual user 😊
Thanks the full
Thank you علي ليث
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Those were the days...