Re: Clean Microsoft FROM NETBSD
On Fri, 17 May 2024 at 19:20, Todd Gruhn wrote: > > I want to to clean out crap that Microsoft forces on > that drive. > > MS Windows want to stop me from "Uninstall" stuff that they > installed... Do not try that. You can mount an NTFS volume easily from a Linux bootable medium -- Ventoy is a very easy way to make one of those -- and clear out TEMP directories, and delete page/swap/hibernation files (although they will be recreated on the next boot). I wrote a tutorial on how to clean up a Windows drive before dual-booting: https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/68495.html But if you delete bits of Windows itself, it will probably just fail to boot next time. There are tools to remove much stuff. O AppBuster is pretty good and it's free. It does not even need to be installed. https://www.oo-software.com/en/ooappbuster Up to an including Win10 you can uninstall all Windows Store stuff using PowerShell: https://www.process.st/how-to/uninstall-microsoft-store-apps/ https://lazyadmin.nl/it/uninstall-microsoft-store-and-default-apps/ NOTE: if you do this on Win11 it will break the OS and prevent it from running correctly ever again. Do not even try. But you need to do this within Windows itself. Try from Linux or whatever and you'll almost certainly destroy your Windows install. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884 Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053
Re: Please forgive a blatant plug: I reviewed v10 for the Reg
On Thu, 2 May 2024 at 14:51, Hauke Fath (SPG) wrote:
>
> And there's the rub, right there.
>
> You want to tell other people ("developers") what they should spend
> their time on. And if you were ten times right, it wouldn't work that way.
Ahh yes. Excellent point.
> Do the leg work yourself, and things *might* come to happen. Or not.
If I were capable, which I am not, then there are other things I would
focus my efforts on which I find much more interesting than 1970s
monolithic Unix-type OSes.
In that family of designs, I personally find Plan 9 and Inferno _far_
more interesting, for instance. I did a talk on that theme at FOSDEM
in Brussels in February:
https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-3095-one-way-forward-finding-a-path-to-what-comes-after-unix/
I turned it into some articles:
https://www.theregister.com/Tag/One%20Way%20Forward/
But I am more intrigued by the idea of getting away completely from
the concepts of "filesystems" and "drives", which I regard as legacy
technology -- 20th century stuff. That was the theme of my previous
talk, which became the "starting over" article above.
https://archive.fosdem.org/2021/schedule/event/new_type_of_computer/
--
Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
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Re: "Building products with NetBSD"
On Fri, 3 May 2024 at 17:01, Stephen Borrill wrote: > > You're welcome! It was an update of my talk at EuroBSDCon 2007. Oh my word! I was not expecting that. :-) I found it fascinating -- thanks for keeping it online. > You might be interested in this talk too: > http://www.netbsd.org/~sborrill/RISCBSD.pdf I will have a look ASAP. > And related to your recent article about RISC OS on the RPi, I must > finally get round to open-sourcing this: > http://www.melidi.co.uk/ :-) You should. It is, sadly, a shrinking community... -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884 Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053
"Building products with NetBSD"
A design study I just found while researching some Acorn stuff. https://www.bsdcan.org/2009/schedule/attachments/77_BuildingProductsWithNetBSDthin-clients-Stephen-Borrill.pdf >From 2009. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884 Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053
Re: Please forgive a blatant plug: I reviewed v10 for the Reg
On Wed, 1 May 2024 at 12:31, Greg Troxel wrote: > > Liam Proven writes: > > > Step 1: a binary interoperability standard, so apps from any BSD can > > execute on any other BSD (on the same CPU architecture, obviously.) > > This is not so much about the binaries about about the ABI for libc and > other core libs. But I suspec this works better than you think, if one > arranges for the other libs and deals with elf tags. You are missing my point. I am not asking "are they close?" or "are they compatible?" I am saying: let's work out the differences, make a detailed specific list, and see if it would be possible to work out a specific standard API so that *the same binaries* could run on them all. A modern BSD equivalent of the iBCS 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Binary_Compatibility_Standard > All BSDs come from 386BSD and Net/2, said in a very broad brush way. I know that. I have been working in the Unix industry and thus watching this sector closely since half a decade before 386BSD was released. > It's not accurate to say that the kernels are unique. [...] Again, you misunderstand and do not see my point. I am saying: let us try to isolate and work out which parts of the 3 or 4 main BSD projects are specific to each OS and which are shared. Each BSD's kernel is its own. Yes they are all related. We know that. The clue is in the BSD name. But they are not the same any more and merging the kernels would be both an epic job, as well as one that nobody would want to do or to happen. > > * Coreutils? > > coreutils is a term for a GNU package, and many/most of those > utilities in BSDs aren't from that. Really, coreutils is the linux > reimplementation of traditional utilities. I dispute that. It's just a name. Don't fixate on the name. Thing about the thing that the name refers to. Here is one set of BSD coreutils, ported to Linux: https://github.com/DiegoMagdaleno/BSDCoreUtils Here is another: https://github.com/dcantrell/bsdutils Here's a modernised port of that: https://github.com/chimera-linux/chimerautils It is an identifiable, discrete thing. FWIW I have written about this subject as part of this article: https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/13/chimera_non_gnu_linux/ > Lots of things are the same because they are from the same upstream, > eg. OpenSSH. But others are differnet. Again you can't really slice it > that way so easily. I submit that there is a very important difference between "you can't slice it" and "nobody has tried to slice it". > Mostly these are the same upstreams, perhaps packaged differently. I know. That is my point. > emacs runs on all of them. I'm not sure what your point is here. My point is to try to reduce the maintenance load of the 4 separate BSD projects by identifying where they overlap and moving those duplicated sections into a shared codebase, which can be collaboratively maintained by all the teams, reducing the maintenance burden on those parts by, conservatively, 75%. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884 Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053
Re: Please forgive a blatant plug: I reviewed v10 for the Reg
On Tue, 30 Apr 2024 at 21:38, Riccardo Mottola wrote: > > Ciao Liam! *Waves* :-) > > There is actually, but it is never easy. I have seen good transfer > between NetBSD and OpenBSD in the years, including drivers and such. I wonder if there might be some way to formalise it, without stepping on too many egos. Step 1: a binary interoperability standard, so apps from any BSD can execute on any other BSD (on the same CPU architecture, obviously.) Step 2: identify the core OS elements that are widely different, and those that are largely shared because they are upstream FOSS code. Unique and different: * Kernels * LibC * Init daemon, maybe? * Packaging tools Largely common: * Shells * Coreutils? * Console-level userland? * X11 server? * Other core servers, such as HTTPD, SSH, etc.? * Compilers Mostly separate: * Desktop environments and window managers * Upstream apps such as editors, web browsers, office suites, etc. Then work out if there could be cooperation on the bulk of the userland code, so that it could be shared between all of them. One common set of software repositories that Net/Open/Free/Dragonfly all drew from. This could, it seems to me, vastly reduce the maintenance of each project and allow more effective sharing of developers' time and effort. But whether it's possible with all the conflicting egos, I have no idea. > > Dragonfly has the best installer, IMHO, but of course it has many > > fewer options to cover. > > I only use the "canonical" three. It's worth trying Dragonfly and Ghost in VMs, at least, just to see the contrast. > I must say as a user I like NetBSD and > OpenBSD best. There are good things, yes. I don't know enough to have a favourite. > I think Debian has a good, but complicated, heavy installer. NetBSD > could learn something from it, but not too much. > Debian has a decent partitioning tool I largely agree there. > OpenBSD are complicated people.. :-D > I'm not expert there, but they should have peraps more per This sentence looks unfinished...? > > Terminal type does that for you... and NetBSD install works well even > ona 9600 baud serial vt100, which is really legacy technology. I am aware. But it is possible to gracefully scale _up_ as well as down. > Yes, upgrading sometimes does not well test the bare install. However > both are important applications. I often hear from BSD users that they never see the installer so they don't care. This is foolish. If you only try to promote to, and include, existing users then decline is inevitable, because people age and die. In English it is called "preaching to the choir" and it is a proverb for pointless, wasted activity. Whereas your installer is *the first thing* newcomers see. Again, an English proverb: "you never get a 2nd chance to make a first impression." Lose them then, you lose them forever. > I tend to too to upgrade... In the case of NetBSD however you still test > a big part of the install - except partitioning. You do all steps! That's the job. As the earlier flame in this thread shows, some people cannot handle criticism of things they are accustomed to. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884 Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053
Re: Please forgive a blatant plug: I reviewed v10 for the Reg
On Fri, 19 Apr 2024 at 10:01, Riccardo Mottola wrote: > > Hi Liam. Ciao! > Nice share and thanks for taking the time to write it. Oh, thank you! I really wish there were more technology sharing between the BSDs. In the last ~2 years, I have tried Net, Open, Free, Dragonfly, Ghost, Midnight, Nomad, the Hello System, plus XigmaNAS and TrueNAS Core. (I have also installed and written about 9Front, Redox OS, Serenity OS, Genode, Arca OS, FreeDOS, RISC OS Open, RISC OS Direct, and others.) I really am trying to cover as many bases as I can here. Dragonfly has the best installer, IMHO, but of course it has many fewer options to cover. FreeBSD is the worst inasmuch as it does the least complete job. Some OpenBSD folks are angry with me because I criticise its disk partitioner. When I tell them the config I work with and they recoil and go "OMG that is _impossible!_" One of the better Linux installers is Calamares, which does not depend upon any distribution: it's an independent project. Pop OS and Elementary OS share an installer. Multiple Ubuntu remixes share variants of Ubiquity and Subiquity. Some variants of this can run in both GUI and text-driven modes. The point being: cross-platform installers that work on multiple very different distros with different packaging tools are 100% a thing. I am sure it would be possible to write a program which, when run, tests the console or terminal to determine if it can use colour and cursor controls, and if it can, which presents a cursor-key-driven-menu based UI with CUA-style controls -- but if the terminal does not, then falls back gracefully to simple numeric or letter-choice menus. Binary compatibility is not really an issue because this is an ideal kind of application of a scripting language. It would be to the advantage of all the BSDs if they worked together on this, pick the best of each OS's installer, and combined them into one. Long-term users often tell me that they do not notice the issues because they simply upgrade from one version to the next and never see the installer. Well, in that case, offer that opportunity to visitors as well: it would be to the benefit of all of the BSD family if the projects supplied pre-installed and pre-configured VM images for direct download, so that the curious could simply download an OVA file, import it into the hypervisor of their choice, and try the OS out without installing it at all. Several Linux distros do this, especially the enterprise ones which do not expect to run on bare metal. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884 Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053
Re: Please forgive a blatant plug: I reviewed v10 for the Reg
On Thu, 18 Apr 2024 at 14:21, Benny Siegert wrote: > > Wonderful article, thanks for sharing! :D Oh thank you! Thank you too for your help in inspiring it – and putting me in touch with Martin. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884 Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053
Please forgive a blatant plug: I reviewed v10 for the Reg
I thought this might interest folks here... NetBSD 10 proves old tech can still kick apps and take names three decades later Proper old-school Unix, not like those lazy, decadent Linux types https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/17/30yo_netbsd_releases_v10/ Comments and feedback welcomed! -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884 Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053
Re: Keyboards
On Fri, 19 Jan 2024 at 20:54, Todd Gruhn wrote: > > Ump-teen years ago there was an analog-keyboard. *Analogue* keyboard? I do not think so, no. A piano, maybe. > It actually when 'click' when one pressed the key. Sure, all the good ones do. I still use a couple of these: https://deskthority.net/wiki/IBM_Enhanced_Keyboard > Do these still exist?? Yes. And there are modern replicas: https://www.clickykeyboards.com/ https://www.pckeyboard.com/page/SFNT > Do they last longer then the current keyboards? One of mine is 33 and works perfectly. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884 Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053
Re: Is it possible to install NetBSD from Ventoy?
On Thu, 14 Dec 2023 at 12:52, Martin Husemann wrote: > > The web page does not give any technical details, so it is hard to tell > how it is supposed to work. I don't know, to be perfectly honest. I have not looked into it: it's just a convenience tool that is both much quicker than writing an image to disk, easier, and saves on rewriting keys: one key is a Linux install key, and a Windows install key, and a few recovery environments such as System Rescue. > Since you tested it with FreeBSD: what devices shows up as root device > there? I can try it and check if you really need to know! The source is here if you're curious: https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy > Extracting the bootloader and dynamically generating the boot menu is the > easy part, but how is the main part of the ISO filesystem provided to > the kernel? I think it mounts it on a separate virtual device, as the booted live OS can see the raw Ventoy drive and UEFI partition _as well as_ running from its ISO file. > On some architectures (and amd64 is one of them) the kernel booted from > the ISO is not ramdisk based, but instead mounts the CD's ISO9660 file > system as / (and sets up tmpfs for all writable parts). You can choose whether to copy the ISO to a RAMdisk and boot from that, if you have enough RAM and want to be able to remove the key. > I don't see how that could work outside of an emulator. It does, very well, and it works equally well on BIOS and UEFI. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884 Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053
Re: Is it possible to install NetBSD from Ventoy?
On Wed, 13 Dec 2023 at 22:26, Chavdar Ivanov wrote: > No, I got the same result. It boots the kernel, but then it drops to > the boot: prompt - the kernel does not see the cd it has been booted > from as a cd device - it sees the stick holding Ventoy and all the ISO > files... Ah, shame. I will have to try to find a small key to dedicate to this, then. That's a significant nuisance. :-( FWIW it is not my first exposure to NetBSD. I wrote this last year: https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/10/netbsd_93/ -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884 Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053
Re: Is it possible to install NetBSD from Ventoy?
On Wed, 13 Dec 2023 at 17:58, John McCue wrote: > > I never heard of it, but what image did you copy to the drive ? The standard ISO file. > > I looked at the WEB page and this quote from the page indicates > to me it will not correctly write the image to the USB Drive: You don't write an image to anything. You copy a file. It's a normal FAT32 filesystem with as many ISO files as will fit and it generates a boot menu on the fly every boot. It works on x86-32, x86-64, BIOS and UEFI. > FWIW, after I dd(1) an amd64 install image to a USB The point of Ventoy is avoiding `dd` and being able to store 20-30 bootable ISOs on a single USB key. I have tested it extensively with Win7, Win10, multiple Linux distros, FreeBSD and other OSes. Some OSes do fail though: AROS, Oberon/A2, Haiku, OS/2, and WinXP (which does not support booting from USB key at all). P.S. > I looked at the WEB page Why the block caps? It's not an acronym or initialism -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884 Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053
Is it possible to install NetBSD from Ventoy?
I use this excellent multiboot tool instead of writing USB sticks. It saves me hours. https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html NetBSD 9.3 and 10 are both throwing errors saying they can't locate /boot. Is it just me or my machine? -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884 Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053
