NetBSD is an OS that I installed only a couple of times over the years, so I’m not very familiar with its installer, sysinst. This fact was actually what led to this article (or the whole series rather): Talking to a NetBSD developer at EuroBSDcon 2023, I mentioned my impression that NetBSD was harder to install than it needed to be. He was interested in my perspective as a relative newcomer, and so I promised to take a closer look and write about it. While it certainly took me long enough, I finally get to do this. So let’s take a look at NetBSD’s installer, shall we? The version explored here is NetBSD 10.1 on amd64.
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An excellent deep, deep dive into the NetBSD installer. The two earlier installments cover FreeBSD’s and OpenBSD’s installers.
I’ve only ever installed NetBSD once in my life. But as a 90’s kid, that installer looks so “futuristic” and clean, I don’t mean that in a sarcastic way.
Disappointing that there’s no option for full disk encryption in the NetBSD installer.
I did a courtesy search and according to https://wiki.netbsd.org/security/cgdroot/ “Unfortunately this is not supported yet.”
It’s one of my complaints with the Slackware installer as well.
Nice writeup.
My impression from installing all 3 BSDs in a VM 2 years ago was that OpenBSD was the easiest and NetBSD the hardest.
The article provides an objective and detailed look at the NetBSD installer – a truly useful review for both beginners and those who want to compare experiences between BSD operating systems. https://monkeymartgame.org