Re: Phoronix 8-way-BSD-install - NetBSD bombed

[Swift Griggs <swiftgriggs%gmail.com@localhost>]

On Wed, 14 Sep 2016, coypu%SDF.ORG@localhost wrote:
> I feel that for home users, -current may be a good choice.

I'd agree. It might be worthwhile to put some link to the releng site 
where you can download ISO's for -current a little more prominently on the 
Netbsd website. It's currently a little blurb waaaay at the bottom of the 
"Get NetBSD" link and it doesn't mention "You might want to use this if 
you are dead-set on using newer hardware." I'm not trying to be snarky, 
I'm just agreeing in detail. :-)

> netbsd 7.0 is entirely unusable on much of my hardware. desktop was 
> extra bad. no USB3 means USB keyboard interrupts are lost or something, 

Hmm, that sucks. I didn't have the same experience, but I can understand 
how that's frustrating.

> need to boot with ACPI disabled (disables hyperthreading), cannot 
> install from USB,

I didn't try installing from USB yet with any 7.x release. The issue with 
ACPI is nasty, though. 

> lack of graphical acceleration for nvidia cards means when running old 
> Xorg it took 1 minute to run a command like 'su', new Xorg can handle 
> until X is shut down once (all fixed in -current).

IMHO, nVidia will probably always be a problem. I've never forgiven them 
for being so (incredibly) rude to me in the late 1990's when I was trying 
to get some non-NDA specs from them. They didn't just refuse, they were 
completely unprofessional about it and basically laughed in my face. 
However, that's my own problem. In general, though, no matter what the 
state of ATI vs nVidia is, they seem to have always fought open source, 
giving ground only when they felt they had to because of the competition 
or because they wanted CUDA to spread more. Deep down, nothing has changed 
in them. I doubt they will every properly cooperate with anyone on the 
driver front (ever). There is just too much work and logic that goes into 
their drivers and they don't want to expose it which further complicates 
and aggravates their jerkholery. I won't buy anything that uses their 
hardware ... ever.

Nonetheless, the situation is still pretty grim, even when looking at 
other graphics cards. All the old companies like Sigma, Paradise, Matrox, 
Neomagic, Trident, S3, and Number Nine have either gone out of business, 
been gobbled up, or fled into a niche. We are pretty much stuck with "the 
big three" these days. Now that graphics cards are uber-complex compute 
devices, it's going to take even more work to write drivers and keep them 
going. None of them seem to be interested in participating in something 
like AtomBIOS and exposing graphics cards in a similar fashion as wireless 
firmware works these days (ie.. move the blobs to the hardware and provide 
a public API instead).

I despair of ever seeing drivers hit a non-partisan project which could be 
shared among the open source world. I see new X11 display server 
replacements coming out like Wayland that seem ultra-Linux-centric and 
drop backward compatibility (and some features) from the core X11 
protocol. Color me so-far-unimpressed. I've got a sneakin' suspicion that 
Wayland will be a defacto schism worse than systemd is, but without the 
loud noises from the crowd.

> on linux drivers are written before a release, or right after. so a 
> typical user which has 2-3 year old hardware can afford to use LTS 
> kernel.

Good observation. It's something benchmarking and hardware test folks 
don't seem to understand at all. Of course, I've never been all that fired 
up to "enlighten" everyone or for "world domination". If NetBSD has enough 
folks to keep going - good enough. We've seen what happens to an OS that 
actually gets to "world domination" and they can keep it.

> in netbsd, drivers only end up written after 2-3 developers get the 
> hardware, and they don't get it on release day. so this is a 2 year 
> delay in itself.

I've adapted to this over the years. My strategies are:

* Never buy something with nVidia anything in it.

* Try to buy desktop/laptop gear with Intel hardware that seems to be the 
  best supported, even if it does have to come from Linux. 

* Create a bootable USB stick for testing new gear in the store. When I go 
  in to buy, I make sure ask the sales staff to let me boot the stick to 
  see if things like the NIC, wifi, or framebuffer are going to give me 
  the bird. 

* Retrofit newer machines with older framebuffers if you absolutely must 
  have it now. Then re-install the card once it's got support. 

I'm not suggesting everyone do this (or can do it in all situations). I'm 
just saying it's what I personally do.

> after this many users end up picking netbsd 7.0 release, not knowing it 
> is effectively like picking old ubuntu LTS, except with the additional 
> delay until developers (which are normal people and not companies) 
> obtain the hardware and get around to adding support.

There is a cost to running a real open source OS with real principles and 
an honest-to-goodness UNIX && BSD heritage. I accept it, but you are quite 
right about the implications. 

> it's USB3 now, tomorrow it will bbe that legacy boot can't boot NVMe 
> root and we have no UEFI bootloader yet (PR 51279), or no skylake 
> ethernet, etc.

Indeed. I do hope UEFI will make things easier rather than harder, but I 
have no idea as I haven't really looked at it. NVMe is another one I also 
have concerns about, but I figure it's got to have some greater level of 
transparency vis-a-vis graphics cards. It's not as secret-saucy as a 
graphics driver. So, methinks that'll probably be fine, eventually.

> the only thing a user with recent can do to bridge this gap is to use 
> -current. it may rarely be broken, thoguh. If your hardware is 
> unsupported, it's worth a try.

Darn straight. That's how NetBSD rolls. 

-Swift