nanobsd, picobsd, tinybsd

Post by John Smith
Can anybody please explain to my what the differences are between
nanobsd, picobsd and tinybsd.
They all seem to be doing the same (creating a minimal FreeBSD image
that can be used in embedded systems), or is this not right?

What don't you experiment with them, and see? :)

John Smith

2007-11-10 21:45:30 UTC

I'd expected a more level headed reply from this FreeBSD list. How is
a newbie supposed to know the differenced and how can I test this if I
don't have a spare machine?

My question was more out of interest. This mailing list is called
FreeBSD-Questions, so why can't I asked a reasonable question and
expect a reasonable reply...?

What don't you experiment with them, and see? :)

Garrett Cooper

2007-11-10 22:12:51 UTC

Post by John Smith
I'd expected a more level headed reply from this FreeBSD list. How is
a newbie supposed to know the differenced and how can I test this if I
don't have a spare machine?
My question was more out of interest. This mailing list is called
FreeBSD-Questions, so why can't I asked a reasonable question and
expect a reasonable reply...?

What don't you experiment with them, and see? :)

Please read the explanations on each page. You'll find that they differ
as follows:

http://www.tinybsd.org/tinybsd -- TinyBSD (I emphasize the words
"tools", "scripts", "development", and "dynamically linked").

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/nanobsd/index.html
-- nanobsd (sounds like a complete, read-only system).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PicoBSD -- picobsd (obsolete; replaced by
nanobsd according to the Wiki page).

-Garrett

Roland Smith

2007-11-10 22:15:35 UTC

Post by John Smith
I'd expected a more level headed reply from this FreeBSD list. How is
a newbie supposed to know the differenced

Both nanobsd and picobsd have manual pages. Try 'man nanobsd' and 'man
picobsd'.

Picobsd has been superseded by nanobsd, whose primary is building system
images for embadded systems. This is definitely not a newbie subject.

Post by John Smith
and how can I test this if I don't have a spare machine?

Use a virtual machine, like Qemu or vmware.

Post by John Smith
My question was more out of interest. This mailing list is called
FreeBSD-Questions, so why can't I asked a reasonable question and
expect a reasonable reply...?

You're supposed to look for answers yourself first. A quick googling of
tinybsd, nanobsd and picobsd would have given you these links:

http://www.tinybsd.org/tinybsd
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/nanobsd/index.html
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/nanobsd/howto.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PicoBSD

Roland

--
R.F.Smith http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
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Giorgos Keramidas

2007-11-10 22:50:57 UTC

What don't you experiment with them, and see? :)

I'd expected a more level headed reply from this FreeBSD list. How is
a newbie supposed to know the differenced and how can I test this if I
don't have a spare machine?
My question was more out of interest. This mailing list is called
FreeBSD-Questions, so why can't I asked a reasonable question and
expect a reasonable reply...?

Minus the typo in the original reply [s/What/Why/], I'm afraid that this
is the only way to get hands-on experience with these systems. I'm
sorry if the original response came out as ``odd''. More over, I don't
really know what you mean by ``level headed'', other than ``not flame me
for asking'', which is not something we tend to do in freebsd-questions.

Having said that, a brief description of what each one of the systems
you mentioned is:

* PicoBSD used to work with earlier FreeBSD versions. I don't think
it does work with recent 7.X versions or CURRENT. I wouldn't even
go there right now, unless you want to ``forward port'' all the code
which made PicoBSD tick, and make it work with recent FreeBSD
releases.

* NanoBSD is more ``modern'' than PicoBSD, and it works with 6.X, 7.X
and CURRENT releases. One of the advantages of NanoBSD is that it's
part of the base system and it is easy to use. Our documentation
includes an article about NanoBSD at:
<http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/nanobsd/>
Try reading the introduction of the article for some of the features
of NanoBSD.

* TinyBSD is a set of tools and scripts, which is also part of the
base system. It definitely has a few good characteristics. For
instance their documentation is Wiki-like and gets updated often.

These short descriptions contain stuff that only scratches the surface
of what it *feels* like to work with each system. If that's what you
originally wanted, then Google and ten minutes or so would do fine. The
important bits, however, are always in the details, and that's why you
have to try NanoBSD and TinyBSD yourself, and see how much you like or
dislike each one of them.

- Giorgos

Jerry McAllister

2007-11-10 23:05:35 UTC

Because, like the software creation, the responses on the questions
list are done by volunteers. You happened to get one who seemed
to need to respond, but didn't have any information to respond with.

You will probably also get some more useful responses. (Sorry, I
don't know much about nano, tiny or pico BSD except that those words
tend to be used to imply very small)

Of course, you could try to experiment. You could try dual-booting
the machine you have and put those on the other part.

////jerry

What don't you experiment with them, and see? :)

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Jerry McAllister

2007-11-10 23:10:57 UTC

Post by Jerry McAllister

Didn't notice who had made that response. It was by someone who would
really know, but was still unfortunately short on information.

////jerry

Post by Jerry McAllister
You will probably also get some more useful responses. (Sorry, I
don't know much about nano, tiny or pico BSD except that those words
tend to be used to imply very small)
Of course, you could try to experiment. You could try dual-booting
the machine you have and put those on the other part.
////jerry

What don't you experiment with them, and see? :)

_______________________________________________
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions

John Smith

2007-11-12 05:44:35 UTC

Thanks, guys, for the information. This is really helpful.

Giorgos, just apologizing that I used the word "level-headed". In
hindsight "more informative" would have been more appropriate.

I'm currently using PC-BSD - and the journey so far has been tremendous.

Happy to be part of the BSD world ;-)

Post by Jerry McAllister

Didn't notice who had made that response. It was by someone who would
really know, but was still unfortunately short on information.
////jerry