2026-10-15 19:12 UTC
If you don't know where to start, a great starting point would be:
Get yourself a virtual machine - that can be Qemu or maybe VirtualBox, these are free. There are other options available, depending on the OS you use.Go to NetBSD.org and download the installation image (it can be a USB image or a CD image) Create a virtual machine, add a virtual hard disk, and the NetBSD image you downloaded to it, and startHave the NetBSD website with the manual open. It explains lots and lots of things. You'll learn a lot about your computer by reading it, and it can be useful even for other OSes (if you decide that NetBSD is too hard) Install NetBSD, and then configure a graphical interface for it, and maybe some software, like free office suite (LibreOffice or maybe Abiword+Gnumeric), or incredible graphic editors (Krita and Inkscape). They might not necessarily be what you're used to, but they're worth trying, and you might like them enough to use them on your normal OS.
Good luck!
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Replies (1)
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@nina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt 2026-10-15 23:41
P.S. alternative operating systems aren't easy. My feeling is that NetBSD and OpenBSD are roughly as easy to get into as Linux used to be 20 years ago. If your hardware is supported, you're in luck, but for computers newer than 5-7 years old, especially laptops, some crucial bits might be missing. The documentation is much better today than it was 20 years ago, though, and the range of ports and software available is pretty good, sure. But it still is difficult to use. For me it's learning a new thing under stress while grieving about the computing future I wish I've had.