Oh duh, #ctwm supports opaque/live moving/resizing windows! How did I miss this all this time? XD

(in ~/.ctwmrc -- )

# hide window contents while altering windows for performance
#NoOpaqueMove
#NoOpaqueResize
#(comment those two out and reload)

I can't blame the #NetBSD folks for making the more performant option the default, even though I had opaque move/resize in (checks notes) 1995. ;)

(Of course, some folks might run the OS on older machines than that. It's technically possible!)

Now if I can just figure out how to move windows with the keyboard. Like, not a few pixels at a time, but snapping to the edges of the screen and other windows like you can in KDE Plasma. ;)

Bummer, it seems like the issue with the Realtek ethernet driver might not the driver itself, but faulty hardware. But... once I opened the laptop I thought that I might be able to replace the Atheros wifi card with one compatible with #NetBSD... what do you think?

Alt...

Wireless adapter inserted in the laptop motherboard.

Latest 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 - 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲/𝟬𝟴/𝟯𝟭 (Valuable News - 2026/08/31) available.

https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2026/08/31/valuable-news-2026-08-31/

Past releases: https://vermaden.wordpress.com/news/

#verblog #vernews #news #bsd #freebsd #openbsd #netbsd #linux #unix #zfs #opnsense #ghostbsd #solaris #vermadenday

@traumweh I use #NetBSD for most things. Email, web-hosting, SIP (until recently), xmpp, firewalling, environment monitoring, storage, file-sharing, visualisation and development. My colleague keeps feeding me package updates for #Salt

building iocaine on NetBSD
once it's done, move my blog from bozohttpd to caddy (only because I'm more familiar with caddy and it's a production site)

wish me luck (it will build, it's a cargo thing).

next step, configure caddy/iocaine, stop bozohttpd, start caddy and enjoy the chaos

#netBSD

Having fun inspecting Realtek ethernet kernel drivers in #NetBSD. In FreeSoftware projects, this is part of the game. In the end, regardless of the result, it will always be a great learning experience. 😺

@jcoglan

That was the argument used by #NetBSD to refuse contributions made with LLM. I believe that position to be correct.

comment ça une autre instance mastodon, mais sous NetBSD?

faut arrêter de me donner des idées à la noix! (dit notre héros à son cerveau très neurodivergent)

#NetBSD

Prompted by @aris, I added getopt-style long options to a #FreeBSD flavour of the #dd command, last night. Marc Teitelbaum added getopt to 4BSD ps(1) in 1990. Time for at least considering doing it for dd(1).

I changed the manual page, changed the Z shell completions, and even added some alternative spellings that use whole words.

This should be portable to #NetBSD and #OpenBSD with relative ease. GNU coreutils and BusyBox dd differ and need their own work, however.

#Unix

Alt...

A shell session in (mostly) white on black. The dd command is run several times. 1: With the --help option, which yields some output describing both JCL-style and getopt-style options. 2: With getopt-style options writing 7 8KiB blocks from /dev/zero to /dev/null, which it prints a summary of. 3 and 4: With a mixture of getopt-style and JCL-style options resulting in usage error messages. 5: With JCL-style options doing the same as in run number 2.

Alt...

A shell session in (mostly) white on black. The dd command is first run with the --usage option to get it to display usage information The next command line shows a partly entered "dd --" (followed by a blob which is the cursor), and the results of the Z shell's command-line completion system picking up and displaying the long options. There are several spellings of some options.

Alt...

A text viewer showing the modified version of the FreeBSD manual page for dd. The differences from the existing manual are that the SYNOPSIS section also lists (some of) the getopt-style long options and the DESCRIPTION section has an additional paragraph on long options. The mouse pointer is by the former, and the cursor is by the latter. This text viewer sets them to be boxes.

@aris

Proof of concept.

This is FreeBSD's #dd, lightly modified to use getopt_long() with a fairly straightforward set of long options mirroring the JCL-style ones.

It's a fairly simple modification, and a very similar one would apply to NetBSD.

This is not the hard part. (-:

@cstross @ryanc
#Unix #FreeBSD #NetBSD

Alt...

A shell session in (mostly) black on white. The dd command is run several times. 1: With the --help option, which yields some output describing both JCL-style and getopt-style options. 2: With getopt-style options writing 7 8KiB blocks from /dev/zero to /dev/null, which it prints a summary of. 3 and 4: With a mixture of getopt-style and JCL-style options resulting in usage error messages. 5: With JCL-style options doing the same as in run number 2.

#NetBSD Pros & Cons
#Debian #runbsd

This is fascinating. I'd taken for granted that NetBSD had a no-slop policy, but it isn't quite that straightforward.

From their commit guidelines, "Code generated by a large language model or similar technology, such as GitHub/Microsoft's Copilot, OpenAI's ChatGPT, or Facebook/Meta's Code Llama, is presumed to be tainted code, and must not be committed without prior written approval by core."

So, it's not a closed door.

https://www.netbsd.org/developers/commit-guidelines.html

Compare with Gentoo's policy:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Council/AI_policy

#netbsd #noai #noslop

@Jonas nothing to worry about. I would suggest first playing around with virtualbox or qemu to understand #NetBSD ask community here for help or mailing list or any community forum. Once you get comfortable with terminology and how things work you can try it on bare metal machine and see how it goes.

@cstross

Well it wouldn't be at random. getopt(3) is fairly well known and established at this point, and using it a fairly mainstream notion since the days of AT&T System 5 Release 3, although there are parts of the world that look askance at long options (invented in 1989 if memory serves) as if they are heresy.

And it wouldn't change the JCL-like syntax one whit.

I wonder whether anyone has actually attempted this. A quick look around doesn't reveal anyone even questioning this religious tenet, which is amazing given how people have reinvented stuff over the years. I would still be surprised, and I haven't looked everywhere. But it might actually be, @aris , that you are the first to suggest this in 40 years.

If it's taken that long for someone to even float the idea, my prediction of Sol going red giant is still looking spot on. (-:

@ryanc
#Unix #dd #NetBSD

@cstross

One wouldn't have to discard the old syntax, thanks to what #NetBSD and #Illumos have done long since. One could make it fall back to the JCL-like syntax in the cases where no modern getopt() options were used.

All existing shell scripts that run on NetBSD and Illumos or that use GNU coreutils or BusyBox, at least, won't be using any modern options at the moment, because that's a fatal error, so there's no existing scripting to trip up.

The GNU and BusyBox people have snuck --help into their dd(1)s, but I don't see that being conflicted with. (-:

@aris @ryanc #dd #Unix

@cstross

@aris made a good point. BSD fixed the ps(1) command to have getopt(3) syntax in 1990. Maybe it's finally time to do the same to dd(1).

#NetBSD put the beginnings in place in its dd(1) 26 years ago, and is currently ahead of all of the other BSDs in this respect.

https://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/bin/dd/dd.c.diff?r1=1.17;r2=1.18

#Illumos also introduced the beginnings of getopt() to dd, at some point before going open source.

https://code.illumos.org/plugins/gitiles/illumos-gate/+blame/7c478bd95313f5f23a4c958a745db2134aa03244/usr/src/cmd/dd/dd.c#495

At this rate, we should get modern argument syntax as an optional extra in dd just before Sol goes red giant. (-:

@ryanc
#dd #Unix

if netBSD ever solves the issue of certain capture devices not working i'd consider it #netbsd

@nina_kali_nina #NetBSD 🙌

#omarchy #NetBSD 🚩

@argv_minus_one I think #NetBSD's stance is better it not just avoid AI LLM code but also any means of copy paste from other places or any means which can taint Base operating system.

Sending good vibes to everyone in the Debian community navigating the recent transitions. If you're using this moment to do a little distro-hopping, consider jumping over to the BSD side. NetBSD offers a completely independent codebase built on a classic, predictable philosophy. You might just find your new permanent home! 🚩💻
#NetBSD #Debian #FOSS #noai #TechCommunity #antiai

@oblomov hi, #NetBSD doesn't allow AI LLM code you can ask for the core on the mailing list :) @netbsd

So I'm starting the task of getting familiar with #NetBSD, on the assumption that it's likely to be among the last refuges of people who reject slop. (#HaikuOS is another option, and recently reached beta 6.)

I'm attempting an install of NetBSD 11.0 on my Thinkpad T41, but seconds into the boot sequence, the laptop screen drops to its lowest brightness level and can't be adjusted while the NetBSD installer is running. The installation instructions are almost impossible to read.

Any idea what's going on there?

The tragedy of #Debian accepting AI 'contributions' is that, most of the time, you are accepting stuff that:

a) is someone else's code, with all the potential legal issues (hence #NetBSD stance on it)

b) is of a very dubious quality, since it went through an AI blender

Just remember: an 'AI' does not exist and has no concept of code, quality and correctness -- I feel like we will soon see the first CVE with a CVSS 9.99 score in AI supplied slop vile coding due to this.

Funnily enough, I was never really into #Debian ... I appreciate the quality of the distro, but... I don't know, too many moving parts, I guess.

I will continue supporting #Slackware I'll look into #Guix and, of course, #OpenBSD and #NetBSD as well as #HardenedBSD .

The line is drawn. It is time to choose your side.