Discussion
I did a bare-metal install of #NetBSD today on my 2017 HP Pavilion (Intel/Nvidia) laptop using a USB-connected 500 GB HDD.
It took a couple passes before I figured out that I had to manually remove the MBR on the target drive for the installation to boot.
Then it was easy because I've done a bunch of practice installs.
On this laptop, everything works:
WiFi
X11
Sound (and volume buttons)
Brightness buttons
YouTube video plays great
I guess powerd is already running .... Fans are quiet, so it must be working
#NetBSD WiFi networking issue:
Same hardware (2017 HP Pavilion with Intel/Nvidia and Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 7265), same location relative to router:
Debian: 526 Mb down
NetBSD: 15.5 Mb down
Debian is 3,400% faster
I need to test with the Edimax N150 ... but this is disappointing.
Update:
I did an #OpenBSD install, and after getting the firmware for iwm, I was able to get 58.7 Mb down.
Without any tuning, OpenBSD is 380% faster than NetBSD. And Debian is 900% faster than OpenBSD.
Does OpenBSD perform better?
@passthejoe do you know if it's using 2.4GHz instead of 5GHz on netbsd?
(i'm just curious; haven't dipped my own toes into netbsd yet)
Install Fedizen
Get the full app experience
I'm sticking with CTWM for now. Nice to see that most GUI apps are automatically added to the menu (and show after a CTWM restart). I added some of the stragglers to a local .ctwmrc.
Browsers Firefox and Chromium did appear in the menu automatically. So did htop and Geany. Gvim and ROX did not.
So far, everything is very responsive. This COULD be a daily driver. More testing needed.
Next thing: Power management. #OpenBSD is great at this. Hope #NetBSD will bring it.