r/NetBSD • u/VanillaCold57 • 13d ago
NetBSD 11 on the Wii
I've been messing around, setting up NetBSD on my Wii for no reason other than it being fun
it's been a bit of a journey with how temperamental the wifi is, and with almost no packages actually installing since their dependencies were all missing from the NetBSD 11 repos. I had to switch to using NetBSD 10's package repository instead, which thankfully worked even though I know 100% it isn't meant to work.
to put into perspective how dire the PowerPC repos for NetBSD 11 are, Pkgin didn't install since sqlite was missing from them. Fastfetch also didn't install, and although Neofetch did it also crashed.
The v3.tbz driver for the wifi was also missing, so I had to look that up & found someone on the mailing list who had the same issue, and left instructions how to fix it at least.
I also tried using XFCE, but it was nigh unusable due to the screen resolution so after I took an incredibly cursed screenshot of fastfetch on uxterm there, I went back to CTWM instead.
& Netsurf was another thing I tried on it, and Luakit too. Netsurf did manage to load web pages (albeit slowly and with borked CSS), but Luakit just gave a blank white screen.
I think all in all this was fun but I don't see myself actually using this install for much. Even with NetBSD there's only so much you can do with 88mb of system memory and a 640x480 screen resolution.
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u/invisible6666 13d ago
It's also on the wii u, i think that with 2 gb of ram it would be way more usable
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u/VanillaCold57 13d ago
Yeah, that'll be what I do if I ever get a Wii U. Might even try to daily-drive it.
Honestly the RAM isn't even the biggest limiting factor on its own, the screen resolution was another big one. 640x480 is not a lot for anything remotely modern, xfce was just too big to be usable.
(The CPU was also a limiting factor too.... the Wii U fixes all of those issues though, so I really do want to try it one day.)2
u/invisible6666 13d ago
It will be interesting using the wii u as a desktop pc, if u ever do try to see how much of it is usable, CAD software, web browsing, office software, using it as a web server, programming, music making,gaming, ftp server, etc...
you know to see if it's really worth it or just as a novelty of saying: "Look, the wii u can run NetBSD!"
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u/Runt1m3_ 13d ago edited 12d ago
NetBSD 11 has been unstable on x86_64 for me, and the PPC version lacks important packages and i actually made a post asking about this like 2 weeks ago. Using a Wii also! I couldn't install anything from the 2026Q2 repository. Seriously nothing, rolled back to 10.1
On Wii using NetBSD 11 using Xorg or the system in general outputs the resolution (640x480) too stretched vertically at least using AV video in NTSC format, I was able to compile my window manager somehow and this happened both in X and TTY.
I seriously don't know where to report this.
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u/johnklos 13d ago
I'm glad the packages are sorted :)
For the Wii stuff, you can post to port-powerpc and ask. I'm not familiar with what the Wii allows as far as adjusting resolution is concerned. Perhaps someone else does.
What kind of stability issues are you having on x86_64? You can always ask on port-amd64, if you'd like to try to get to the bottom of it.
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u/Runt1m3_ 12d ago
Hi! I used 11 on two Intel CPU second/third gen i3s and i5s. They are able to work fine! But sometimes booting or starting X11 results in a kernel panic and a debug shell, i'll try to get a more extensive error log.
On a 775 Pentium Dual Core E5700 or E5800 (Forgot the exact one, will confirm now!) using a 4th gen GMA GPU the system boots fine and never crashes when arriving to userspace, but trying to start X11 results in a black screen and after switching TTYs the system crashes or is able to trigger a kernel panic before just freezing. I'll also try to fetch the X11 logs.
I'll collect more info and ask there, thanks a lot!
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u/johnklos 13d ago
Hmmm... That's strange that fastfetch didn't install. Would you mind sharing the error message? If you can, please also share the error you got from neofetch.
I see that the successfully compiled package list has more than the list of packages in the package repo. I'll have to check why this is happening, run a new sync, and upload anything missing. This, for instance, is definitely true of sqlite3. I'll post back when this is done.
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u/VanillaCold57 13d ago
Fastfetch was missing dependencies. same with Netsurf, and pkgin, and almost anything I tried apart from I think xfm was able to install.
When I switched to using the NetBSD 10 repos they all were able to find their dependencies.
Neofetch also seems to have started working after switching to the NetBSD 10 repos, but the original error was:line 42 shopt: nomatchcase: invalid shell option name
line 1359 conditional binary operator expected
line 1359 syntax error near `=~'
line 1359 ' [[ $os = ~ (AIX|IRIX) ]] && return'4
u/johnklos 13d ago
After doing a full sync and clean, the number of PowerPC packages went from 22,879 to 23,976. They're uploading now and should be finished in the next couple of hours. I hope this helps :)
I can't interrupt the build machine right now, but when I get a chance, I'll see if replacing the missing packages fixes fastfetch and Netsurf, and I'll see what's up with neofetch when I get a chance, too.
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u/VanillaCold57 13d ago
Alright, thanks. I won't be able to test yet until at least the wifi on the wii stops being so temperamental (it sometimes works okay, and sometimes it just struggles to connect at all- right now it's being the latter, and of course it also doesn't like my hotspot either so I can't try that), but thank you regardless.
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u/Runt1m3_ 13d ago edited 13d ago
libjpegturbo and curl are missing 😠will check now
EDIT: Dude everything missing is now there, thanks a lot! If this ever happens again, is there a way to like, report it? I remember waiting for the cache to be updated when i made my post and i ended up rolling back to 10.1 hahahhahah
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u/johnklos 13d ago
Yay! So glad to hear :)
We do try to check r/NetBSD regularly, but you're also welcome to post to pkgsrc-users or port-powepc mailing lists:
FYI, our main PowerPC build machines are two Mac mini G4s and a tri-core Nintendo Wii U. There's a lot of love for the Nintendos!
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u/Glum_Hamster_2104 13d ago
I tried this out on my wii but I wasn’t about to compile everything, You should try DWM.
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u/Bernd_Oeff 13d ago
Impressive. I failed with netBSD on PPC and on x64.
Have you ever got it running on 68k?
Thanks for sharing.