NetBSD would be perfect for Intel’s ClassMatePC.
As we are well aware, the One Laptop per Child project has gotten a lot of publicity lately. And as would be expected, major companies are taking note. Intel’s ClassMatePC is one example of a similar product. I was reading that a version of Mandrive Linux 2007 will come pre-installed on the ClassMatePC systems.
But this got me thinking: is Linux really the best option for such a system? While the hardware will likely be more than capable for a wide variety of tasks, it still makes sense to utilize it as fully as possible. And that’s where I think NetBSD should come in.
NetBSD is more than suited to these sorts of applications. Its long history and philosophy of portability have come together to form a system that is sleek and minimalist, yet also very powerful. And it often delivers many of the benefits of a system like Linux. For instance, it can directly execute many Linux binaries on the i386. Of course, the POSIX-like interface it offers also allows for many such applications to be natively compiled for NetBSD. The NetBSD Packages Collection just goes to show how much useful software is available and very easily installed.
I have used NetBSD on a wide variety of older systems, and I have to say, it works wonders. When using NetBSD, it’s quite possible to turn old Sun SPARCstations into very capable mail servers or web proxies. Now, these low-end laptops are far, far more powerful than such obsolete Sun systems. The enjoyable experience of NetBSD on a 33 MHz SPARCstation 10 will no doubt be quite magnified on a 900 MHz Celeron-based system.
October 10th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
That’s the downside of the “no-hype” philosophy (which I happen to like). No too many people are aware of the BSDs.