# Jorney into the Darkness

## Ch. 11: Settling Down (For Now...)

At last, I've managed to move away from Linux (almost) entirely for my daily driver, which is only made possible by my slowly diminishing needs.  I haven't used Calf Audio plugins for several years now, having since found a wireless DAC with a built-in equalizer.  It's not as good, but it does the job.  I've moved on from 3D modeling in Blender, playing games and pretty much all other tasks that require a graphical user interface.  NetBSD has been running quite smoothly on the Pi since February of 2023, which was shortly before I decided to disappear for several months.

Of course there are some quirks that annoy me.  First, there is no way to use the GPIO pins under NetBSD, at least that I know of.  Second, many tools which I would normally be using are not in the repositories, particularly Amfora and Bombadillo to name just a few.  The latest version of Go is quite outdated, but this is fine because compiling Go on the Pi is quite slow, so I try to avoid it whenever possible.  There are some other quirks, but they're the result of using a modified Geoff Graham VT100 terminal emulator.

That's right, my current working setup is a Raspberry Pi Zero with an Ethernet hat and a PIC32 serial terminal with FULL emulation of the VT100.  This does mean it's monochrome, but it converts ANSI color codes automatically and even lets me choose the color of the screen using jumpers on the board.  I like yellow the most, it's easier on the eyes.  Having a "real" terminal is nice because it means I get a consistent font and display resolution on any machine. It is always 80 columns and 30 rows at 640x480, which is perfect on the 8" IPS display that I use it with.  After all the nonsense of inconsistent console fonts, colors and resolution, this is a tremendous relief.  I made this change shortly before the first NetBSD experiment on the Pi, and despite the price, it was more than worth it.

Like FreeBSD, there is a "NetBSD Guide" which provides extensive documentation of the system, but I must admit it doesn't feel quite so polished and refined as FreeBSD.  Not just the documentation but the entire system.  Still, it's not as chaotic and ever-changing as the Linux kernel, and that kind of stability is much appreciated.  The same goes for the minimalism of the system.  In a way, NetBSD is like the Void of the BSD family.

But of course my journey hasn't ended.  The Bolt is still running Void Linux and is acting as a fallback system, while doubling as a file server for now. There is also a desire to try one of the various RCBus computers running CP/M, an old operating system which I never did explore up to this point.  I might even try to install 4.4BSD on the PIC32MZ microcontroller, something which was made possible with LiteBSD.

The ultimate goal is to install FreeBSD on a single board computer, with GPIO and networking capabilities.  If that happens, I should build an enclosure to hold all the parts, including the terminal with its tiny display and keyboard. Maybe I'll add a software defined radio like the uBITX and turn it into a radio teletype...  For now though, I'm just happy to be in the console of a unix-like operating system that isn't Linux and doesn't have a single GUI element at all.

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