Are the current releases of NetBSD still fast enough for decade-old x86 machines, e.g. Intel Atoms? Or is this distro also slowly adding complexity with every release? Usercase would be either console-only or console with framebuffer graphics.

I'm a long-time Tiny Core Linux user (loving it!), but I often think about trying out NetBSD more seriously. The documentation seems superb; apparently, it is not hard to reconfigure some bits of the kernel even as more of a "lean systems hobbyist". From what I have read, it is quite convenient to set up as a RAM-booted system, just like Tiny Core.

NetBSD (probably 7.0 or 6.1) was a pleasant experience for me on a Thinkpad T42 some 6-7 years ago.

This is exactly the type of hardware where NetBSD shines - it's often best to install it on something from a few years ago where driver support has matured to a fine vintage. Very good OS for preventing old hardware from being binned.

Nice to hear this, thanks. I wonder what the framebuffer experience is like with current NetBSD. I researched this (framebuffer on Linux vs OpenBSD vs NetBSD) a while ago, since I would need a framebuffer PDF reader.

It feels like at this point, Linux has the most choice out of the box, when it comes to software for displaying images/pdfs on the framebuffer? I use fbpdf on Linux, which is not available on NetBSD. Then again, it is based on libmupdf, which is available, so maybe I should get my (shaking) hands dirty. :)

I like it very much how NetBSD encourages user-side modifications of the kernel, e.g. for changing the console font or underclocking the cpu. Every time I read the NetBSD documentation, I feel tempted to install it, because the docs are so well structured and written. Very welcoming, even for (curious) non-CS users like me.

For that reason, using NetBSD may possibly be more educational than using Linux, in the long run? Due to heavy reliance on the official documentation, you'll have a more structured understanding of how stuff works -- as compared to trawling web forums of various Linux distros and sometimes blindly copy-pasting solutions or hacks provided by others. In that sense, a good base documentation encourages more acknowledged use and going to the details from early on. (Obviously, there are Linux distros witch excellent documentation, too, like the Arch wiki.)

That said, I am rather pleased with Tiny Core Linux. Their current release is something like 12.x, and I've been in their boat since version 6.x. It is a really simple, well thought out distro, excellent for older hardware; somewhat similar in that sense to the BSDs. But, yeah, sans that documentation. :)

I wonder if there's a PDF reader that can render to sixel graphics - mlterm-wscons can display sixels.

However, I can always convert PDFs to images and go forward from there, I guess. It's not a bad workaround. The fbi image viewer is available for NetBSD's X Window system; not sure about the framebuffer port. https://www.kraxel.org/blog/linux/fbida/

EDIT: Apparently, NetBSD has lsix: https://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/current/pkgsrc/graphics/ls...

"Like ls, but for images. Shows thumbnails in terminal using sixel graphics. /.../ Because lsix uses ImageMagick pretty much any image format will be supported. However, some may be slow to render (like PDF), so lsix doesn't show them unless you ask specifically."

On Linux, the green pdf reader for Linux apparently supports sixel: https://github.com/schandinat/green

Screenshot of green+sixel on NixOS: https://teddit.net/r/commandline/comments/4oldf5/view_pdfs_i...

Another Linux pdf reader with sixel: https://github.com/dsanson/termpdf

All in all, woah, lots of fascinating reading and links here -- since I was not much aware of sixel before: https://github.com/saitoha/libsixel

The sixel format itself seems to match really well with the NetBSD philosophy (among other things, keeping old hardware running via low-demanding, essentials-only software). Thanks again for that pointer.