Notes on BSD

With Linux distributions becoming increasingly bloated and dropping support for older hardware, while alternate operating systems like Haiku are only getting there, members of the BSD family ought to be considered as a possible alternative. But while there are fewer of them, the differences are still meaningful.

This page starts out by comparing NetBSD and FreeBSD back to back, after testing both in quick succession. NetBSD in particular had changes since previou versions. The remarks below apply to NetBSD 9.3 and FreeBSD 13.2, both stable production versions at the time.

NetBSD

Pros:

• very lightweight, can install and run on truly ancient machines;
• ships with X11 included and will set it up correctly at install time;
• huge number of (binary) packages, second only to Debian.

Cons:

• must remember to set up pkgin at install time;
• pkgin has a weird interval of several minutes when it hangs on every run.
  (Edit: turns out that's due to it trying IPv6 first even when it's not available.)

Also there's a hardcoded password requirement. (Hey, I'm the sysadmin here!) On the plus side, NetBSD runs fine in Qemu, including VMWare graphics.

FreeBSD

Pros:

• lighter than most Linux distributions (comparable to Void Linux);
• the pkg package manager is installed by default and works quickly;
• overall friendlier setup tools, during and after install.

Cons:

• X11 (or Wayland) must be installed and configured manually;
• disk space and RAM use swell up quickly as more stuff is added.

FreeBSD has conveniences such as a mouse driver for the console, and a graphical console, but I couldn't get either of them to work in Qemu no matter what. X11 also sticks to VESA mode even with the VMWare driver installed, and handles the display oddly.

OpenBSD

I didn't try the other major BSD until version 7.9 in 2026. A few impressions on OpenBSD:

• Like in NetBSD, the install disk includes X11 yet fits on one CD.
• Unlike there, package management is automatically set up and works out of the box.
• The installation program looks hardcore, but in fact it's very simple and friendly.

Note: there's no VMWare driver, so running it in Qemu is tricky. Auto-partitioning also expects a decent-sized disk image. On the plus side, post-install and administration tasks are simple and straightforward; documentation is compact and to the point.