The port of NetBSD to AMD's x86-64 architecture was done in six weeks, which confirms NetBSD's reputation as being a very portable operating system. When interacting with datastructures of a fixed size, such as on-disk metadata for filesystems, or datastructures directly interpreted by device hardware, explicitly sized types are used, such as uint32_t, int8_t, etc. A variation on this problem had to be dealt with with the UltraSPARC (sparc64) port in 1998, which is 64-bit, but big endian (vs. Most of the problems of this kind had to be dealt with when NetBSD was ported to the DEC Alpha in 1994. Assumptions made about type sizes on 32-bit platforms were a large problem when 64-bit platforms came around.
#STARTX VS XINIT CODE#
When writing code that is intended to be machine-independent, and it contains conditional preprocessor statements depending on the architecture, then the code is likely wrong, or an extra abstraction layer is needed to get rid of these statements.Īssumptions about the size of any type are not made. If so, it is machine-independent and put it in an appropriate place in the source tree. In NetBSD, it should always be considered if the code can be assumed to be useful on other architectures, present or future. Generally, code is shared between ports as much as possible. As NetBSD was ported to more and more platforms, the NetBSD kernel code was adapted to become more portable along the way. Supporting multiple platforms was a primary goal of the NetBSD project from the start. The new AMD x86-64 architecture, of which the specifications were published at the end of 2000, with hardware to follow in 2002, is used as an example. This paper takes a look at what has been done to make it portable, and how this has decreased the amount of effort needed to port NetBSD to a new architecture. NetBSD is known as a very portable operating system, currently running on 44 different architectures (12 different types of CPU). Porting NetBSD to the AMD x86-64: a case study in OS portability Seriously, I have no big words to say, other than just recommending this laptop to FOSS enthusiasts :) So here it is, my new laptop, a Google Pixelbook. something rather big for a tablet, but it is useful actually), a Wacom touchscreen that supports a pen, mostly reasonable hardware (Intel Wi-Fi), and that famous coreboot support (Chromebooks\u2019 stock firmware is coreboot + depthcharge). Thin aluminum design, a 3:2 HiDPI screen, rubber palm rests (why isn\u2019t every laptop ever doing that?!), the \u201cconvertibleness\u201d (flip the screen around to turn it into. Other than the big huge large bezels around the screen, I liked everything about it. I want something more efficient, not less!Īnd then I discovered the Pixelbook.
But going back in processor generations just doesn\u2019t feel great. I was considering a ThinkPad X1 Carbon from an old generation - the one from the same year as the X230 is corebootable, so that\u2019s fun. how about something with open source firmware, that would be fun.supported by FreeBSD of course (\u201csome development required\u201d is okay but I\u2019m not going to write big drivers).assembled with screws and not glue (I don\u2019t necessarily need expansion and stuff in a laptop all that much, but being able to replace the battery without dealing with a glued chassis is good).without a dGPU, especially without an NVIDIA GPU.with a HiDPI display (and ideally with a good size for exact 2x scaling instead of fractional).with a 3:2 display (why is Lenovo making these Serious Work\u2122 laptops 16:9 in the first place? 16:9 is awful in below-13-inch sizes especially).lighter and thinner (ha, turns out this is actually important, I got tired of carrying a T H I C C laptop - Apple was right all along).But this summer I\u2019ve decided that it was time for something newer. Unlike most people in the ThinkPad crowd, I actually liked the clickpad and didn\u2019t use the trackpoint much. FreeBSD and custom firmware on the Google Pixelbookīack in 2015, I jumped on the ThinkPad bandwagon by getting an X240 to run FreeBSD on.
Headlines FreeBSD and custom firmware on the Google Pixelbook
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