[Proposal-Suggestion] for a better and more user friendly NetBSD installation experience

[email protected] Wed, 11 Feb 2026 23:57:11 +0000
Newsgroups gmane.os.netbsd.devel.installation
Message-ID <[email protected]> 
------=_Part_25_236110199.1770854232190
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Hi
I'm brand new to NetBSD , the project is very qualitative and having good principles, so, I'm all in to support the project.

As many users, most of my Unix experience is with GNU/Linux systems.

I tried many installers during my journey, the installer I think is the most effective is the Void Linux installer.
It uses cfdisk for manual partitioning (this is very important, cfdisk permit an easy and precise control of partitioning). I've noticed that NetBSD does not permit an easy manual partitioning at install time, and in general, it lacks of tools for disk management, like cfdisk, parted , garted or listing tools as lsblk.
Another thing, ipv6 is very slow, the 1st thing I did with netbsd is disabling ipv6.
So ,choosing between ipv4 and ipv6 at install time very explicitly would be nice.

Long story short : my suggestion is to fork the Void Linux installer and adapt it to NetBSD for the future, if it's possible, taking care about including the two options I mentioned above.
This is not only for NetBSD, the CLI installers should be similar to Void Linux's installer IMHO, it's very well done

Thank you & best regards

------=_Part_25_236110199.1770854232190
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

<html>
 <head>
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
 </head>
 <body>
  <span dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">Hi</span>
  <br><span dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">I'm brand new to NetBSD , the project is very qualitative and having good principles, so, I'm all in to support the project.</span>
  <br>
  <br><span dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">As many users, most of my Unix experience is with GNU/Linux systems.</span>
  <br>
  <br><span dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">I tried many installers during my journey, the installer I think is the most effective is the Void Linux installer.</span>
  <br><span dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">It uses cfdisk for manual partitioning (this is very important, cfdisk permit an easy and precise control of partitioning). I've noticed that NetBSD does not permit an easy manual partitioning at install time, and in general, it lacks of tools for disk management, like cfdisk, parted , garted or listing tools as lsblk.</span>
  <br><span dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">Another thing, ipv6 is very slow, the 1st thing I did with netbsd is disabling ipv6.</span>
  <br><span dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">So ,choosing between ipv4 and ipv6 at install time very explicitly would be nice.</span>
  <br>
  <br><span dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">Long story short : my suggestion is to fork the Void Linux installer and adapt it to NetBSD for the future, if it's possible, taking care about including the two options I mentioned above.</span>
  <br><span dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">This is not only for NetBSD, the CLI installers should be similar to Void Linux's installer IMHO, it's very well done</span>
  <br>
  <br><span dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">Thank you &amp; best regards</span>
  <br>
 </body>
</html>
------=_Part_25_236110199.1770854232190--