Post #1799650

2026-04-12 01:39 UTC

Installing OpenBSD on the G4 was just like on any other computer. Uneventful. (Beyond that installing OpenBSD always gives me vague Linux-from-Scratch vibes.) It booted. Needed a USB wifi, but that's it. Sticking to the basic window manager for light resource use, very snappy. The lack of modern browser and lack of Rust support were the main blockers for my personal longer-term use (see linked thread above, no binary packages for Firefox it Chrome variants b/c they need too much RAM for a native PPC build). 3/n

Replies (1)

@csgordon@discuss.systems 2026-04-12 01:40

OpenBSD doesn't support the 32-bit RPiZero (I haven't gone spelunking to find out if it ever did; the Zero 2 is 64-bit). So for the first time I installed the third major BSD, NetBSD. It's an SBC, so there's not really an installation. It just boots. X11 works. USB wifi over a hub works. There are only about a dozen processes running by the time you get to X. It was the first time since early 00s Slackware that 'top' didn't fill the screen. Also very responsive. Rust actually does support armv6, so I did eventually manage to compile my preferred editor (Helix), after 2 days of constantly restarting it because it kept overheating and crashing. I could have gone for better cooling, but I was also generally wary of running anything important off an SD card anyways. 4/n

Open ##1799651