Vulkan is now available on NetBSD

klibertp•about 2 hours ago

Installation instructions:

    ftp https://raw.githubusercontent.com/segaboy/vulkan-netbsd/main/scripts/setup-env.sh
       !^^^^^!

That's... a bit unorthodox. FreeBSD has a `fetch`[1] utility for this, I wasn't aware NetBSD puts that in `ftp`[2].

Interesting choice. I wonder what led to it.

[1] https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?fetch

[2] https://man.netbsd.org/ftp.1

yjftsjthsd-h•25 minutes ago

I dunno, that feels very BSD to me. Presumably, they had a ftp utility first, and then when somebody wanted to download files over http they looked around and decided that the obvious thing to do was to add it to the existing file transfer/download program. Same as continuing to add functions to ifconfig rather than inventing a new ip tool.

iberator•about 2 hours ago

Oldest supported machine for NetBSD is VAX 780 from 1978(!!!). One of the first system supporting mmu, 32 bit cpu, virtual memory etc etc

This machine is so slow that it takes a lot of time to generate ssh keys etc. We talking here hours hehe

NetBSD is known to support like 60 architectures - many of them low end embedded systems: so ftp AS A CHOICE (you have other options!) is very smart and easy

spijdar•about 1 hour ago

I think GP is confused why the ftp command also handles http(s) :)

I hate to imagine what a 780 running NetBSD would be like, too.

I tried netbooting NetBSD on my MicroVAX 3400, which is about 2.5x the performance of the 780. It did, literally, take 6+ hours to slog through making RSA keys.

klibertp•about 1 hour ago

> I think GP is confused why the ftp command also handles http(s) :)

Exactly - I even suspected for a second that `ftp` on NetBSD is something else entirely, not an actual FTP client with HTTP/HTTPS URLs bolted on. It's not - it still accepts a host as an argument and opens a CLI if there's an FTP server to talk to.

Tiberium•about 2 hours ago

Lavapipe is CPU rendering, it doesn't really prove much. But also, Vulkan on BSDs is totally possible and isn't something esoteric, FreeBSD has it.

> Build goal only: This targets compilation and linkage of the Vulkan stack. Runtime GPU acceleration is not available under VirtualBox; the software driver (Lavapipe) is the target.

I don't understand why this would ever be a problem, even without LLM assistance it's something that sounds like a weekend project?

qiu3344•about 2 hours ago

> Vulkan is now available

looks inside:

> What this is NOT (yet): Running Vulkan programs

LoganDark•about 1 hour ago

Technically, it isn't wrong, if you consider Vulkan the technology rather than the service

wbolt•about 2 hours ago

This is a nice project but looks like is either AI written or AI assisted and I haven’t seen mention of that in any of the docs.

MBCook•about 2 hours ago

I expected this to be official from the title but it doesn’t seem to be.

rjsw•about 3 hours ago

There are already Vulkan components in pkgsrc and wip.

iamnothere•about 2 hours ago

I have never had a need for NetBSD, but in case I ever do, I’m glad it’s there. Especially with Linux deprecating old platforms.

This looks like an unofficial effort but hopefully it gets refined and integrated.

Tiberium•about 2 hours ago

NetBSD already has relevant packages officially.

spiral09•about 1 hour ago

Lavapipe? So it's just Mesa software rendering stuff

Vulkan is now available on NetBSD

⚡ Community Insights

Discussion (14 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews