Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

.NET framework ported to NetBSD

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 39 posts

Re: .NET framework ported to NetBSD

#3

Post by nbyouri »

NetBSD is a very portable BSD-licensed operating system. This is CoreCLR, the open source .NET framework from Microsoft.

Why is this important? Programs for NetBSD can be run in a stripped down NetBSD kernel and libc (a unikernel) called rumpkernel, which can be run on any platform, including on bare metal. It is also extremely minimal - an operating system image for nethack was a mere 4MB.

Rump can also run on any architecture that NetBSD runs on (including MIPS, VAX, m68k, as well as standard platforms like amd64 and ARM) and also on those without fully NetBSD support, but just with a functional C compiler (like RISCV). Many people use rump as an extremely lightweight container - it can run on Linux and others.

Rump was recently used to port NetBSD audio drivers to GNU/Hurd.

Caveats: doesn't run in rump yet, but this is a big step towards it. .NET is also not self-hosting yet, and requires assemblies (CoreFX) to be cross-compiled from Linux.

The work was done almost entirely by Kamil Rytarowski, a NetBSD developer, in his free time. Good job Kamil!

Re: .NET framework ported to NetBSD

#4

Post by kingmanaz »

NetBSD scales well. See SDF.org for working example. Hundreds of users from around the world online simultaneously at any given moment, thousands of Unix commands and services being used and consumed, and despite all that, a great security record and good performance.

NetBSD really is a nice system and deserves to be as popular as the other BSDs ( Free-, Open-, etc. ).

Re: .NET framework ported to NetBSD

#6

Post by tomcam »

nbyouri wrote: post #3

NetBSD is a very portable BSD-licensed operating system. This is CoreCLR, the open source .NET framework from Microsoft. Why is this important? Programs for NetBSD can be run in a stripped down NetBSD kernel and libc (a unikernel) called rumpkernel, which can be run on any platform, including on bare metal. It is also extremely minimal - an operating system image for nethack was a mere 4MB. Rump can also run on any a…

Super helpful explanation & context. Thank you

Re: .NET framework ported to NetBSD

#8

Post by callinyouin »

nbyouri wrote: post #3

NetBSD is a very portable BSD-licensed operating system. This is CoreCLR, the open source .NET framework from Microsoft. Why is this important? Programs for NetBSD can be run in a stripped down NetBSD kernel and libc (a unikernel) called rumpkernel, which can be run on any platform, including on bare metal. It is also extremely minimal - an operating system image for nethack was a mere 4MB. Rump can also run on any a…

I was wondering "why NetBSD???", other than as a possible hobby project, but your explanation gives a pretty clear answer. I've never even heard of rump, and know little to nothing about NetBSD, but this sounds really, really interesting. In my spare time I'm writing a "fantasy console" (along the lines of pico-8) that will run in a framebuffer. I wonder if this would be a good fit.

Re: .NET framework ported to NetBSD

#9

Post by saosebastiao »

nbyouri wrote: post #3

NetBSD is a very portable BSD-licensed operating system. This is CoreCLR, the open source .NET framework from Microsoft. Why is this important? Programs for NetBSD can be run in a stripped down NetBSD kernel and libc (a unikernel) called rumpkernel, which can be run on any platform, including on bare metal. It is also extremely minimal - an operating system image for nethack was a mere 4MB. Rump can also run on any a…

How is the rump kernel any different than a unikernel?
Post reply on HN