Most of my servers run FreeBSD; never even considered NetBSD. Have tried OpenBsd.
As a server BSD meets my needs, and we even use PC BSD on 24 workstations.
With the exception of SUN's issues with Java; I have found what I need on BSD.
It seems that Open and Free cross pollinate each other, and play well with each other.

NetBSD on a laptop.
Using freeBSD docs for it.
Using NetBSD docs for FreeBSD on desktop.

Used netbsd 3.1 for a short time just to try it out. Then installed 5.0 a couple weeks ago to test it out. Liked it enough that I did a permanent install on my desktop.

Has everything most in a desktop - movies, music, browser w/ flash and java, torrent, editors, etc. Only thing netbsd can't do is hardware 3d. Although there is a drm for the kernel that claims some radeon and intel works.

The thing about netbsd is that it's very basic and simple, the way it's setup. Even pkgsrc, you don't need to learn a million options. And so far it seems to be a pretty solid package manager.

Still playing around with various sysctl settings, but feels pretty smooth and responsive.

netbsd is a good system. But it didn't run on my laptop.

...

I won't say I told you so either.

I just read both statements from the NetBSD people and honestly, I smell some F.U.D. Not to say either side is right or wrong, it just feels not all the information is there for both sides to make an argument that has any solid foundation even if there was a restructuring due to problems with leadership, or lack of refinement with project management. It just doesn't seem... like all the information is there.

Do you mean the statements from 5 years ago?

NetBSD has been pretty quiet in recent years, though they still have a pretty web site with recent news. I haven't used it in several years, but I enjoyed it when I did and I keep thinking I'll get back to it.

Is it still a going concern?

It is for me

I have 6.1.5 i386 running nicely on an elderly Compaq NX-9005 laptop with the BlackBox WM. I like to use this to demonstrate the C=64 to people running on the Vice emulator (with Athena widgets of course).

I also have 5.1.5 i386 with a custom kernel build running a small ipv6 webserver on an even older Toshiba Portege 3110CT - this was put together while I was doing the Hurricane ipv6 training...

Man! That was almost six years ago!

Yes, I have tried using it since then myself, (7.1 I think it was), just couldn't get wifi to work, & recently found a version for my Raspberry Pi3B, no wifi again, but this time I wasn't surprised, as this little SOC uses a Broadcom chip.

It is a good BSD, if it'll do what you want from it.
(I'll try it again sometime, but OpenBSD works for me.)

What were the issues with WiFi?

I found Wifi-Supplicant very picky about loading especially if you had /var and /usr on separate disk partitions. I did swap a BCM card in the latop for an Intel one a while back though.

I did try it on a Mk1 Pi but it was painfully slow trying to build stuff out of pkgsrc. I've since discovered build.sh so I'd like to try again and see if it's possible to build on a different architecture and move the packages across.

No matter how I configured it, (& I had help from NBSD users), it just wouldn't work for me - so I thanked them for trying to help, but said I would return to try again when wifi got sorted out & worked properly. (All in good humour.)

Pretty clear instructions here: https://wiki.netbsd.org/tutorials/ho...pa_supplicant/

Yes, they are, but for some reason, mine just wouldn't work.....not even with the help of some of their guys, couldn't work out what was wrong, did all the right things, just wouldn't work on my computer at that time. (It may have been a driver problem.)