I'm a big fan of NetBSD. Great docs, clean design, it's just about ideal for "set it and forget it" projects. I hadn't used a BSD in over a decade but got it up and running in no time for an odd project a few years back that had some unusual display requirements. I imagine it would have taken a lot longer to do with Linux because it's always changing how it does things and I just don't have the time or inclination to keep up with it anymore and the docs are often less than ideal.<p>Bonus points for their build system. It's about the only time I've ever felt like building from source was a pleasant experience.
I wanted to run NetBSD as a daily driver but the Intel 3945ABG wifi performance was horrible, it disconnected after a few minutes with a fatal firmware error, there was no clean way to get it working again. I will try these versions. I went through FreeBSD and I liked it. I don't give up.
Are the current releases of NetBSD still fast enough for decade-old x86 machines, e.g. Intel Atoms? Or is this distro also slowly adding complexity with every release? Usercase would be either console-only or console with framebuffer graphics.<p>I'm a long-time Tiny Core Linux user (loving it!), but I often think about trying out NetBSD more seriously. The documentation seems superb; apparently, it is not hard to reconfigure some bits of the kernel even as more of a "lean systems hobbyist". From what I have read, it is quite convenient to set up as a RAM-booted system, just like Tiny Core.<p>NetBSD (probably 7.0 or 6.1) was a pleasant experience for me on a Thinkpad T42 some 6-7 years ago.
I am thinking of using a *BSD for a remote NAS VPS. I'm comfortable with linux. I was having trouble finding guides on how to harden a BSD at the basic level. SSH lockdown? Is there perhaps a better way to connect like over a VPN or something for this type of use case?
More comments in this post, which was flagged as a dup<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32368771" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32368771</a>