As of today, I believe NetBSD is one of the most important operating systems to consider for your deployments.

With hardware costs rising dramatically, portability and efficiency have become more important than ever. If prices do not come down, we will probably have to adapt and create new kinds of hardware, at lower cost. And NetBSD, by its very nature, will be very easy to port to that hardware.

Does it run on your modern PC? Maybe. Maybe not.

But it runs on your server. On your VPS. On your SBC. On your old computer, which may still have a lot to give, especially if you want to keep ownership of your own data.

And I know something about old hardware still having a lot to give:
https://it-notes.dragas.net/2023/08/27/that-old-netbsd-server-running-since-2010/

No jails or containerisation? smolBSD has already shown that a reduced NetBSD kernel can be so small that it can be started in milliseconds, while also adding the security benefits of virtualisation. A different concept, certainly. But one that already exists and can already be used.

Linux itself has opened up to AI. That is a choice I will not comment on.

But from now on, for those who do not want LLM-generated code in their operating system, there are essentially two options: fork Linux (!!!), or choose something different.

And NetBSD is that something different.

Already in 2024:

“...code generated by a large language model or similar technology (e.g. ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot) is presumed to be tainted (i.e. of unclear copyright, not fitting NetBSD's licensing goals) and cannot be committed to NetBSD.”

#NetBSD #RunBSD #smolBSD #IT #SysAdmin #OwnYourData #ModernTech