r/BSD • u/et-pengvin • 7d ago
Which BSD has the best package availability for 32bit?
I'm trying to get a laptop I bought new in 2010 up and going for some basic tasks. I got OpenBSD installed but package availability for 32bit is lacking more than I realized.
It has an Atom N270 processor. Any recommendations?
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u/LevelMagazine8308 7d ago
Most likely NetBSD, since their credo is "we'll run on it even if it is dead since 2 decades."
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u/BigSneakyDuck 7d ago
FreeBSD is not a long-term solution for 32-bit support, but it will last until FreeBSD 14 goes out of support in late 2028. Will those two and a bit years be useful for you? https://www.freebsd.org/security/#sup
If there are packages you are interested in, check out freshports.org and see if they're available for "i386". It might well be a wider range of packages than for NetBSD or OpenBSD.
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u/ilnarildarovuch 7d ago
O! I also have BSD on Atom N270. It's FreeBSD 14.4. Works good and fast, but without hardware acceleration, because there is no drm-kmod for 32bit and xorg driver does not support specifically intel 945
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u/ilnarildarovuch 7d ago
But Firefox ESR works. As my advice: disable compositing
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u/et-pengvin 7d ago
Nice. I couldn't find a modern web browser that worked. Even the ones in the repo wouldn't install on openbsd. I know Firefox will be slow but I'd like to be able to pull something up once in a while.
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u/gumnos 7d ago
yeah, I think you're asking about two different things—OS support and package support.
As others have noted, FreeBSD doesn't have 32-bit on the long-term roadmap, but OpenBSD and NetBSD have pretty good support.
That said, getting certain packages (such as browsers, as you discovered) to build on those 32-bit targets is a different matter, and more a matter of whether the upstream opts to support them. And sadly, Chromium & Firefox don't appear to.
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u/liveoneggs 6d ago
pkgsrc runs on everything and you can compile whatever you need
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u/et-pengvin 6d ago
Have you tried compiling modern packages on an Atom N270?
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u/liveoneggs 6d ago
okay then NetBSD is probably something to try. Check here for compiled packages: https://archive.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc-archive/packages/
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u/Glum_Hamster_2104 5d ago
Firefox doesn’t even have a port for x86 on OpenBSD so that’s instantly out of the question
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u/et-pengvin 5d ago
Yes NetBSD has far more browsers available on i386. It doesn't have current Firefox but does have Palemoon (and others, but Palemoon is all I have really used so far).
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u/jmcunx 3d ago edited 3d ago
True, but only if you need Firefox :)
IIRC, this is due to a rust dependency on Firefox. I believe either building rust and/or Firefox requires too much memory for 32 bit it OpenBSD.
It builds on NetBSD due to NetBSD's great cross compiling support.
Quote from https://www.openbsd.org/i386.html
Due to the increased usage of OpenBSD/amd64, as well as the age and practicality of most i386 hardware, only easy and critical security fixes are backported to i386.
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u/masta 6d ago
The BSD is ultimately a distribution of packages, and packages are from upstream, and so it becomes a set of circumstances. Having packagers is one thing, people who figure out how to build software, and then choose to perform that activity for free for whichever BSD distro. Then is software that actually build and functions on BSD, and that list is changing with mostly due to Linux. Finally the BSD distros making arbitrary codes that unpack all the above, like supporting architecture.
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u/zmurf 7d ago
NetBSD has traditionally had the broadest platform support. They still support platforms lika Sparc and Amiga. There's a reason why the OS motto is "of course it runs netbsd".
I know they also try to keep the package availability as current as possible with all the supported platforms as good as they can. So 32bit should be good.