--- title: NetBSD and my life (2005) | daily.dev description: A network administrator in the UK recounts switching his company's mission-critical server infrastructure from Windows to NetBSD, describing frequent outages... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/netbsd-and-my-life-2005--h42am942n twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: NetBSD and my life (2005) | daily.dev og:description: A network administrator in the UK recounts switching his company's mission-critical server infrastructure from Windows to NetBSD, describing frequent outages... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/netbsd-and-my-life-2005--h42am942n og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/H42am942n.png og:image:alt: NetBSD and my life (2005) og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # NetBSD and my life (2005) **[Lobsters](https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters)** · 7 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A network administrator in the UK recounts switching his company's mission-critical server infrastructure from Windows to NetBSD, describing frequent outages and disrupted personal life under Windows, and how migrating 29 servers running MySQL, Apache, Postfix, and Samba to NetBSD 2.0.2 dramatically improved stability, freed up admin time, and even improved his family life. Written as a heartfelt thank-you letter to the NetBSD project team. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 2 discussions and 53 comments across lobsters, hackernews (as of 2026-08-23). **TL;DR:** The story is received warmly as a nostalgic, heartfelt tribute, with many chiming in about their own long-running positive experiences with NetBSD's stability and portability, while some question why NetBSD specifically was chosen over FreeBSD or Linux alternatives. **Sentiment:** 75% positive · 20% mixed · 5% skeptical **The case for** - Multiple people report NetBSD running reliably for years once matched with compatible hardware. - Its portability to obscure and old architectures is repeatedly praised as its standout strength. - Some appreciate how spare and understandable the base system is compared to modern bloated systems. **The pushback** - Some question why NetBSD was chosen over FreeBSD, which was seen as more 'businessy' or driver-compatible at the time. - One commenter notes NetBSD's finicky hardware compatibility before finding the 'right hardware'. - The stated server throughput numbers in the original post are called out as unimpressive even for 2005. **By community** - lobsters (positive): Commenters found the letter heartwarming and shared their own long-term positive experiences with NetBSD once matched to suitable hardware. - hackernews (positive): A largely nostalgic and appreciative thread swapping BSD/Linux war stories, with light-hearted skepticism about why NetBSD specifically was picked and some technical nitpicking of the original numbers. **Hottest debate:** Why NetBSD specifically was chosen over FreeBSD or Linux distributions of the era. **Open questions** - Why the original author picked NetBSD over FreeBSD or other options available in 2005. **Highlights** > freebsd = utility: performance, gnu software compatibility, drivers, closest thing to useful as a desktop (still not very), but almost x86 only openbsd = security: internet exposed services netbsd = portability: already ported / most easily portable to every cpu arch & platform including old and new obscure ones. If you want a big-endian os for whatever academic reason, it's netbsd on an old sun sparc or pi3. I had an HP Jornada that had a SH3 cpu and shipped with wince, the only alternative os on that was netbsd. > — [Brian\_K\_White on hackernews · 2 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49404437) > Around 2009 I was working at a startup where I got a bunch of 3-4 year old servers from a recycler to support the software development. Some of those were AMD Opterons, which were more powerful and had lots more memory than the other servers, but had some odd system software quirks. The OS that ran most reliably on them was NetBSD. I used that for the comms stuff, Postfix, Dovecot, spam filtering, etc. It just worked, and worked pretty well, even with Xen. I used Linux on the other systems as that was the target, but I was always impressed with how little work that stack took to maintain. > — [kev009 on lobsters · 1 points](https://lobste.rs/s/a23bk3/netbsd_my_life_2005#c_m5wjid) > > NetBSD during peak hours, our httpd servers can deal with 35 requests per minute(internal and external). even in 2005 this is abysmal. no reflection of netbsd tho - likely a terrible app. > — [whalesalad on hackernews · 2 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49403636) > I wonder how this person ended up on NetBSD in particular. No offense to that project (it's neat!) but my superficial understanding was that FreeBSD was the fast/"businessy" one. > — [evmar on lobsters · 1 points](https://lobste.rs/s/a23bk3/netbsd_my_life_2005#c_m4zxev) **Source threads** - [lobsters](https://lobste.rs/s/a23bk3/netbsd_my_life_2005) · 25 points · 4 comments - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49402781) · 82 points · 49 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Why I Love FreeBSD](https://daily.dev/posts/why-i-love-freebsd-u4bmqzrba) · Lobsters · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [Why are you \(still\) using OpenBSD?](https://daily.dev/posts/why-are-you-still-using-openbsd--q3u9wc9hu) · Hacker News · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [I stopped dismissing FreeBSD after trying out its modern distros](https://daily.dev/posts/i-stopped-dismissing-freebsd-after-trying-out-its-modern-distros-jsecapfsz) · XDA Developers · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Tim's blog](https://daily.dev/posts/tim-s-blog-pahehjpyz) · Lobsters · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [I installed FreeBSD as my daily driver, and it was surprisingly good](https://daily.dev/posts/i-installed-freebsd-as-my-daily-driver-and-it-was-surprisingly-good-pb86lsf8d) · XDA Developers · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#open-source](https://daily.dev/tags/open-source), [#mysql](https://daily.dev/tags/mysql), [#sysadmin](https://daily.dev/tags/sysadmin) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/netbsd-and-my-life-2005--h42am942n) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"NetBSD and my life (2005)","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/netbsd-and-my-life-2005--h42am942n","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/netbsd-and-my-life-2005--h42am942n"},"datePublished":"2026-08-22T23:36:10.606Z","dateModified":"2026-08-23T05:06:55.786Z","description":"A network administrator in the UK recounts switching his company's mission-critical server infrastructure from Windows to NetBSD, describing frequent outages...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--2-1xRawN--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2011","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--2-1xRawN--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2011","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Lobsters","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Lobsters","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--tl8v_Fku--/f_auto,t_logo/v1698841318/logos/lobste.jpg","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/netbsd-and-my-life-2005--h42am942n","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"open-source,mysql,sysadmin","timeRequired":"PT7M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Lobsters","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"NetBSD and my life (2005)"}]} ```