Last Significant Update:

2025-09-14

Status:

Draft

Comments to:

jkoshy@NetBSD.org

Select and fully support a set of reference machines for an open-source operating system.

Example hardware could include that being explicitly designed for longevity, and hardware reuse, such as the products from Frame.work and similar manufacturers.

“Full support” here implies:

  • writing drivers for hardware support,

  • fixing bugs anywhere in the system,

  • ensuring that applications run well on the hardware,

  • investigating and improving OS performance on the platform,

and so on.

Having a small set of ‘reference’ machines that allow newcomers to an open-source operating system to be immediately productive on that OS would be of great value to the community.

  • The Kernel DDI/DKI project could enable cross-kernel portablity for kernel driver code.