NetBSD 11 desktop on a Raspberry Pi 4
The gist
A neongd.com guide walks through installing NetBSD 11 on a Raspberry Pi 4 and fixing its WiFi.
The write-up pitches an AI-free desktop; a commenter asks about daily use.
How it unfolded
- date unknownneongd.com publishes a guide to installing NetBSD 11 on a Raspberry Pi 4 using the arm64 image, Raspberry Pi UEFI firmware and Balena Etcher.
- date unknownThe guide reports that after boot, ifconfig shows no wireless adapter and dmesg logs a bwfm0 NVRAM file error; after a fix and reboot, the bwfm0 device appears and WiFi reaches 'status: active' with a DHCP address.
- Nov 8, 2026The item appears in r/raspberry_pi and r/NetBSD listings, and the Lobsters Mastodon account posts it.
Key terms
- NetBSD
- A free, open-source Unix-like operating system derived from Berkeley Software Distribution, available for many hardware platforms.
- Raspberry Pi 4
- The fourth-generation model of the Raspberry Pi series of small single-board computers.
- UEFI firmware
- A specification for the firmware that runs first when a computer is powered on, before the operating system.
Source: Wikipedia