NetBSD Blog
blog.netbsd.org · Company blog · on HN since 2009
The NetBSD project's official blog, covering releases, kernel work, reproducible builds, virtualization, security, and rump kernels.
What HN saysCommenters cite it for NetBSD's reproducible builds since 2017, rump kernels and anykernels, and updates on X.org and the wifi stack.
66HN people shared it
22linked it in comments
138stories submitted
3.0Kstory points
3 months agolast shared
2009people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Kernel Drivers Compiled to Javascript and Run in Browser9 people · 108 points · first shared 2012 · 5 comments on HN
- 2NetBSD fully reproducible builds5 people · 281 points · first shared 2017 · 61 comments on HN
- 3NVMM: A full, fast and flexible virtualization stack for NetBSD5 people · 160 points · first shared 2019 · 24 comments on HN
- 4X.org on NetBSD – The State of Things3 people · 172 points · first shared 2024 · 122 comments on HN
- 5NetBSD 9.23 people · 129 points · first shared 2021 · 60 comments on HN
- 6Latest developments in the kernel ASLR district3 people · 55 points · first shared 2017 · 2 comments on HN
- 7NetBSD Network Security Audit2 people · 194 points · first shared 2018 · 32 comments on HN
- 8An Internet-Ready OS From Scratch in a Week – Rump Kernels on Bare Metal2 people · 123 points · first shared 2014 · 23 comments on HN
- 9Announcing NetBSD 7.02 people · 112 points · first shared 2015 · 24 comments on HN
- 10Using bubblewrap to add sandboxing to NetBSD2 people · 104 points · first shared 2025 · 36 comments on HN
- 11Default window manager switched to CTWM in NetBSD-current2 people · 94 points · first shared 2020 · 62 comments on HN
- 12The Geeks way of checking what the outside wheather is like2 people · 64 points · first shared 2022 · 44 comments on HN
- 13Revolutionizing Kernel Development: Testing with Rump (2010)2 people · 44 points · first shared 2010 · 4 comments on HN
- 14Wayland on NetBSD – Trials and Tribulations2 people · 22 points · first shared 2020 · 8 comments on HN
- 15NetBSD 8.2 Is Available2 people · 6 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
ElectroBuffoon · 2024-06-01
Current Xorg has Glamor, using OpenGL to accelerate the 2D ops of X11. There is also Zink, OpenGL-over-Vulkan for the rare case of Vulkan without native OpenGL.
OTOH, there are people willing to add support for old hardware that probably can't run Vulkan, or even OpenGL, and sometimes they manage to upstream that code. With your "bsder" nick, the following example seems relevant.
https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/x_org_on_netbsd_the [search "PowerPC"]
Some old X11 coders still work on it, or make suggestions to improve it.
https://lists.x.org/archives/xorg/2024-April/061644.html
https://keithp.com/x-ideas/
But such initiatives lack the "new shiny bling" factor, which seems to be a must nowadays to be a "success". It's the curse of "mostly done, mostly maintenance" projects in a world where breaking ground looks better in a CV than polishing and oiling the machinery others crafted.
x3blah · 2020-05-16
"Also known as rump kernels a name inspired by the infamous purge of royalists from Parliament following the English Civil War this process involves creating a fork of an existing kernel codebase and manually purging it of the components deemed unnecessary to the target unikernel."
That appears to come from the FAQ on Github for "rumprun" dated 2015.
Rump kernels were introduced in NetBSD in 2009. It was an described then as an acronym for runnable userspace meta programs.
https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/runnable_userspace_meta_programs_in
I have not used rumprun for Linux but I still use the rump utilities included with NetBSD.
radimm · 2013-04-25
Anykernel/Rump kernel stories already covered here on HN
Kernel Drivers Compiled to Javascript and Run in Browser
http://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/kernel_drivers_compiled_to_javascript
If you are interested to find out more I recommend to check the dissertation
Flexible Operating System Internals: The Design and Implementation of the Anykernel and Rump Kernels
http://lib.tkk.fi/Diss/2012/isbn9789526049175/isbn9789526049175.pdf
jaypatelani · 2026-05-10
Good thing. NetBSD has fully reproductible build since 2017. https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/netbsd_fully_reproducible_builds
nequo · 2023-01-07
> When … wifi cards stopped having good blob support it became less tenable. Maybe that all improved after I jumped ship.
The work to modernize the wifi stack has been underway since 2020. There was an update on it in 2021.[1] Based on the wiki, this work is still happening.[2] But they can probably use help.
[1] https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/wifi_project_status_update
[2] https://wiki.netbsd.org/Converting_drivers_to_the_new_wifi_stack/
jayp1418 · 2021-05-03
NetBSD default is CTWM https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/default_window_manager_switched_to
rvp-x · 2020-06-19
Someone compiled NetBSD (rump) to JavaScript before WASM was a thing :-) https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/kernel_drivers_compiled_to_javascrip…
The link seems to be down, I found this as a replacement http://197.155.77.5/NetBSD/misc/pooka/rump.js/
floatboth · 2019-06-16
Of course https://wiki.netbsd.org/tutorials/clang/
Though NetBSD is a bit behind on switching to the LLVM toolchain, here's a recent update https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/final_report_on_clang_lld
Meanwhile FreeBSD (on amd64, i386, armv6/7, aarch64) has been buildable with clang since some point in 9.x (2012-13), comes with clang only since 10.0 (01.2014), and since 12.0 the bootstrap linker on amd64/i386/armv7 is LLD (which was the case on aarch64 from the beginning iirc)
algorithm314 · 2018-06-20
NetBSD has fully reproducible builds https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/netbsd_fully_reproducible_builds
bch · 2018-06-20
I’m not a hardware expert, so I’m not sure how interesting this is here, but along the lines of MS architectures and FOSS operating systems, see also their work w eMIPS and NetBSD[0]
[0] https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/support_for_microsoft_emips_extensib…
nomadlogic · 2017-07-26
netbsd beat you to this by 5 years or so:
https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/kernel_drivers_compiled_to_javascrip…
protomyth · 2017-07-23
with NetBSD stating "As of 2017-02-20 we have fully reproducible builds on amd64 and sparc64." https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/netbsd_fully_reproducible_builds
LargoLasskhyfv · 2016-10-22
Maybe late rolling it out in production. Experimenting with it not so much.
2007 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/emips/
Even open sourcing it in 2011 http://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/support_for_microsoft_emips_extensibl…
liveoneggs · 2015-02-20
netbsd has a pretty comprehensive testing framework called atf.
http://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/testing_netbsd_easy_does_it
http://wiki.netbsd.org/tutorials/atf/
http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?tests++NetBSD-current
http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/tests/?only_with_tag=MAIN
icebraining · 2015-01-22
Well, the NetBSD kernel has been ported to JS: http://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/kernel_drivers_compiled_to_javascript
It's using emscripten, not handwritten JS, though.
bitwize · 2014-11-15
Rump kernels are something quite different from containers or jails. They provide just enough of the kernel interface to a kernel device or filesystem driver to allow that driver to be linked in with other code to form a user-space process. If this sounds a lot like FUSE to you, you're onto something: NetBSD's user-space filesystem layer, puffs, is based on rump architecture, and there are at least two FUSE API wrappers for puffs.
Where it gets interesting is when application code is linked together with all the rump kernel code the application needs, forming a unikernel. See Antti Kantee, "An Internet-Ready OS From Scratch in a Week", http://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/an_internet_ready_os_from
anttiok · 2013-09-19
Someone asked me to compare the two:
http://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/running_applications_on_the_xen#comme…
tl;dr amount of code rewritten vs. reused
justincormack · 2013-08-01
But it can't even compile NetBSD http://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/portable_c_compiler which is disappointing (its much easier than Linux).
jaxb · 2013-02-07
There's netpgp (from NetBSD project) -- http://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/netpgp
andrewcooke · 2012-11-08
http://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/kernel_drivers_compiled_to_javascript (without ssl) seems to work better
cnst · 2020-02-16
Don't see anyone mention these rather notable features of NetBSD 9.0:
* NVMM — hypervisor compatible with QEMU. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19622590. http://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/from_zero_to_nvmm.
* KASLR — kernel address-space layout randomisation. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15769457. http://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/the_strongest_kaslr_ever.
Both were done by the same person, BTW, who also found a serious bug in OpenBSD's VMM hypervisor earlier today, too — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22336962.