Post by @foolishowl@social.coop

I'm again considering switching to NetBSD, and I'm wondering if there's a "live" version I can use to test whether it supports my laptop's hardware well enough to be viable.

I've thought it's best to recommend to people switching from Windows to Linux to run a "live" version from a USB stick, and I'm considering switching from Linux.

I'm guessing there are technical reasons why I'm not seeing this recommended with NetBSD, but I thought I should ask.

#NetBSD #BSD

#netbsd #bsd

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Justine Smithies

@justine@snac.smithies.me.uk 1 hr. ago

Here's one for amd64 stuff and it's persistent too.

https://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/images/11.0/NetBSD-11.0-amd64-live.img.gz

Steven Rosenberg

@passthejoe@ruby.social 50 min. ago

@justine @foolishowl It works. I used it recently. It even has X11. Once you get to a prompt, you can login as root (no password), then type startx at a prompt, and you'll be in a CTWM session. If everything works, that is. You can also create user accounts and configure networking with the sysinst utility (run it as root).

I did try adding some big packages (Firefox), but it's not built for that. If it boots, you can log in, X11 works and you can set up networking, time for a full install.

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