NetBSD 10.0 is now in beta and will be released in a couple of months. NetBSD supports various CPUs and old computers. You can find the list at http://www.netbsd.org/ports/



From http://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/netbsd_10_0_beta_available :

December 20, 2022 posted by Nia Alarie

After nearly 3 whole years of development (work started on NetBSD 10 in late 2019), BETA snapshots have finally been published for interested users to test. More changes will be backported from the development branch over the next few months before we tag a final release, so the BETA images will keep getting updated.
What to expect

While NetBSD 10.0 is expected to be a major milestone on performance, especially on multi-core systems, currently the BETA builds have some extra kernel diagnostics enabled that may reduce performance somewhat.

Among the features you can expect to find in NetBSD 10 are reworked cryptography, including compatibility with WireGuardⓇ, automatic swap encryption, new disk encryption methods, and CPU acceleration in the kernel. In hardware support, there are updated GPU drivers from Linux 5.6, support for more ARM hardware (including Rockchip RK356X, NXP i.MX 8M, Amlogic G12, Apple M1, and Raspberry Pi 4), support for new security features found in the latest ARM CPUs, and support for Realtek 2.5 gigabit and new Intel 10/25/40 gigabit ethernet adapters. compat_linux has been ported to AArch64 and DTrace has been ported to MIPS. For retrocomputing enthusiasts, there's improved multiprocessor support on Alpha, and more iMac G5 support. The Xen hypervisor support has received a major rework. There are various new userspace programs, including blkdiscard(8) to manually TRIM a disk, aiomixer(1) to control audio volume, realpath(1), and fsck_udf(8). And loads more...

There are many little details that might be relevant to admins when upgrading from NetBSD 9, so wait and read the final release announcement before you upgrade any production systems. Please note that networking setups using tap(4) as a bridge endpoint must be modified to use vether(4) instead, and compat_linux is no longer built into the kernel for security reasons (load it as a module instead). DisplayPort and HDMI audio is now enabled in the default x86 kernel, so you might need to change the default audio device with audiocfg(1) if you're not getting any sound output. blacklistd(8) was renamed to blocklistd(8).


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* Origin: War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. (21:3/102)

Oli wrote to All <=-

NetBSD 10.0 is now in beta and will be released in a couple of months. NetBSD supports various CPUs and old computers. You can find the list
at http://www.netbsd.org/ports/

One of my roles at work is desktop support for my company's dev apps
that the helpdesk doesn't support. I did a lot of remote support for
engineers working from home and got to know most every home router
interface, drivers for home network printers, and so on.

I was pleasantly surprised by how many people were running NetBSD and
OpenBSD. These were older people who grew up hand-hacking X configs and sendmail.cf files, so the BSDs feel more like how things should be.

I got my start on SunOS, BSD/OS and FreeBSD, been thinking about going
back.



... Use something nearby as a model
--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
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On 22 Dec 2022 at 08:33a, poindexter FORTRAN pondered and said...

I got my start on SunOS, BSD/OS and FreeBSD, been thinking about going back.

I've found that OpenBSD is the closest to what classical Unix
"felt" like to me.

Ah...the sound of the RA81 spinning up while the VAX-750 booted.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

Re: Re: NetBSD 10.0 BETA available
By: tenser to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri Dec 23 2022 09:25 am

I'm getting my retro flair using 86Box on a Linux laptop. "Rebuilt" a favorite 386 of mine and using mTCP telnet on DOS 5.0. Honestly, as a telnet client it's pretty solid for this!
--- SBBSecho 3.11-Win32
* Origin: -=[conchaos.synchro.net | ConstructiveChaos BBS]=- (21:4/141)

tenser wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

I've found that OpenBSD is the closest to what classical Unix
"felt" like to me.

Ah...the sound of the RA81 spinning up while the VAX-750 booted.

I don't go that far back. My only experience with a VAX was typing on a terminal while the VAX sat behind a glass wall in the server room.

My first real taste of BSD was working in an all Macintosh server
environment, and about 75% Mac/25% Windows users. We used an email
program called Quickmail, and for a company of 70 people, it had
mushroomed. Started off with one server, then it bogged down. Added
another server to handle a Compuserve gateway. Another group were heavy
email users, sending images - they needed another server. Internet mail
was a bottleneck, so we ended up adding another server as an SMTP
gateway. The Windows client was horrid.

We replaced it all with a single repurposed 486 running BSD/OS, and used
POP3 and Eudora as a mail client. People loved the change, and I loved
not having to reboot the mail servers every couple of days.

I used FreeBSD in a couple of production environments after that. Never
had it let me down once.




... Imagine the music as a set of disconnected events
--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
* Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)

HughzHeff wrote to ALL <=-

I'm getting my retro flair using 86Box on a Linux laptop. "Rebuilt" a favorite 386 of mine and using mTCP telnet on DOS 5.0. Honestly, as a telnet client it's pretty solid for this! --- SBBSecho 3.11-Win32

I did the same, thing, and when I had a 4:3 monitor, it was great
running DOSBOX with a similar environment. I loaded Telix in DOSBOX for
a walk down memory lane.

Later, I got a 16:9 monitor and ran DOSBOX on the 4:3 monitor, now my secondary. When I got rid of the 4:3 monitor, DOSBOX did a pretty good
job of filling the monitor.

Now that I have an ultra-wide monitor, DOSBOX doesn't look right in
full-screen and I end up running it in a window. Running 32-bit DOS apps
for my QWK reading with TSEPro ends up being much faster.

I should dig up the old Thinkpad T60 with a 4:3 screen that ran the BBS
for many years and make it into a retro DOS environment...




... Imagine the music as a set of disconnected events
--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
* Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)