Installing NetBSD on the Nintendo Wii!

[@MichaelMJD]

Thanks again to boot.dev for sponsoring! Head over to sponsr.is/bootdev_MichaelMJD and use my code MICHAELMJD to get 25% off your first payment. That’s 25% off your first month or your first year, depending on the subscription you choose.

[@S1LLY_BRUD_L0V3R]

Wii

[@PizzaPizza144]

No. Just *no.*

[@EquaTechnologies]

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[@iiTsFaded_]

Pretty soon we’ll be able to turn our Wii into an air fryer

[@monikabixho7752]

KFConsole at home

[@oliverprower]

@@monikabixho7752 hahahaha

[@309electronics5]

Just run regular firefox and other intensive programs on netbsd on homebrew and it will be a air fryer

[@lrx6231]

you clearly don't own an air fryer.

[@luiginoyoutube2401]

My Mom would love this idea.

[@lunakittyyy]

LÖVE is a framework for making 2D games in Lua. Various versions of LÖVE have different splash screens that show when a game isn’t loaded, and that looks like one of them - most likely Not Pacman’s files didn’t load

[@ccricers]

More famously, Balatro was made using LÖVE.

[@pepejw]

olympus (celeste mod thing) also uses love i think?

[@adoggewokepupper]

Whaaat, a currently and officially maintained Unix distro _for_ the Wii?

[@S1LLY_BRUD_L0V3R]

@@adoggewokepupper wii

[@Inconito___]

Like we say in french "Wii"

[@Jace-Briand]

​@@Inconito___ J'aime la Wii. Oui oui

[@ulipink]

of course it runs NetBSD

[@Rauli788]

NetBSD runs on anything.

[@tunatezer8902]

NetBSD, the Doom of operating systems. If it exists, it can run NetBSD.

[@SIackware]

truly is, lol

[@xanderplayz3446]

Tiny Unix? It can run on a Famicon.

[@tunatezer8902]

@@xanderplayz3446 Might check that out

[@mjdxp5688]

I love how many weird projects that serve no practical purposes other than "because it's cool" exist for old consoles, especially the Wii. I installed Linux on my Wii and the experience waa absolutely unbearable. Download speeds were nonexistent. Just updating the repositories took several minutes. Pretty much anything I wanted to do wouldn't really work because the Wii was too slow or the screen was too small or something. Looking forward to seeing if NetBSD is any better, maybe I'll try it as well!

[@kaitlyn__L]

I can't speak firsthand for the Wii, but I had a similar experience with Linux on a 1GHz G4 as you, and had a much better time when I tried FreeBSD on it. So the BSDs do seem to be able to manage lower powered systems better, maybe has to do with being a microkernel rather than a monolithic kernel like Linux is?

[@gitcat6671]

firefox is heavy, even "lightweight" forks. it is a fully fledged webbrowser which simply doesn't come cheap. what you could have tried instead are falkon(more feature-rich but still lighter), dillo(very bare-bones), or lynx (command line web browser)

[@kaitlyn__L]

oof I misread that second one and had to do a double take

[@LemonYerg]

i thought the CLI web browser was called links

[@FreeFireFull]

@@LemonYerg lynx and links are two different TUI web browsers. There's also elinks, w3m, chawan, and some others

[@SuperMattMan03]

The Wii is probably the most violated console of all time.

[@xTunis1aFF]

wii is definitely a console of all time

[@S1LLY_BRUD_L0V3R]

@@xTunis1aFF wii

[@Box223]

I immediately thought blue screen of death when I saw the title.

[@S1LLY_BRUD_L0V3R]

Wii

[@dhkatz_]

Might as well be called NetBSOD when running on the Wii

[@Bananenmann]

Wii are back!

[@abdalnablse10]

You're playing a dangerous game boy.

[@i664k]

*ba dum tss*

[@S1LLY_BRUD_L0V3R]

@@Bananenmann wii

[@igors_lv]

Poor SD card screaming for its life while system writes swap file to it non stop 🤣

[@courtneymertz4596]

The Nintendo Wii can do everything when you install Homebrew on it. A Unix/Linux device? You got it! A media player capable of playing videos, music and (on older Wiis) DVDs? It sure can do that! An FTP server? It’s a fine one at that! A current day Pizza ordering device? Why not! And it plays games and Homebrew features as well! What can’t this Wii do? Once you Homebrew a Wii, I can’t think of a reason why you would want to uninstall Homebrew on the Wii after it’s on the device?

[@kingzombie951]

The only reason I could think of is if hombrew breaks. But then you would just reinstall it

[@WinVisturn]

Micheal MJD in 2034: Installing Windows 16 on the toaster!

[@hainesnoids]

"Can I turn a Nintendo Wii into an Intellistar?" should be your next upload

[@TechTimeTraveller]

In the late 90s a friend gifted me a Sun 3/80 with no OS. Figuring out how to get NetBSD on it was a lot of fun and I eventually had it running X11. It was dog slow though and at some point I decided to recycle the whole lot.. ugh. If only I'd known what Sun 3 stuff would be going for now.

[@Vlad-1986]

Aw man, you where actually looking at bastet (bastard tetris), which works on the CLI and is quite fun: It actually always guesses which one is going to be the worst piece to pull out. For web browsing you could do something like lynx, which is CLI-text only. You can also use links, which in both CLI and X can display images. And I don't know, there are zillions of terminal applications that can make this a daily driver: Mail clients like alpine or mutt, image and PDF viewers like ida and fbgs (all come with the fbi package), nice file managers like mc (midnight commander), video playing with mplayer (which can also be used to record with a webcam if you plug it one, and can also pass video into aalib for ascii output videos or cam), music with moc.... So many possibilities!

[@chrisjlocke]

2:37- That 'nonsense' is probably the actual .gz file. If you right-click and 'save link as' it should work. Its not meant to be viewed by a human. Its data.

[@arjix8738]

it doesn't look nearly enough to be 1.3 Gib of data though, unless it got interpreted as some weird unicode and most of the bytes were hidden

[@xWaLeEdOoOx]

MICHAEL YOU DIDNT RUN DOOM ON IT!!!!

[@ownerofanheartofthesunrise]

and Half life 1 !!!

[@davidoli]

You could try setting up a swap partition to expand the available RAM and mayyyybe things would run a bit faster

[@vomytdaug]

I saw you trying out netbsd on literally anything and I clicked so fast on the video I almost knocked my iPad off my desk.

[@S1LLY_BRUD_L0V3R]

@@vomytdaug wii

[@tunatezer8902]

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as an iPad, is in fact, a tablet, or as I've recently taken to calling it, a tablet computer. iPad is not a synonym for tablet, but rather a brand name of a specific tablet made by Apple. There are many other manufacturers of tablets, just like there are many other manufacturers of personal computers besides Apple.

[@tpmarvin5600]

When i saw the Title of the Video i knew exactly what i was gonna do the Rest of the day

[@glitchy_weasel]

Surprising how smooth it was for a MJD video lol

[@TDRR_Gamez]

This is incredible. I hope they get WiFi support in, because this would be super handy for a simple server.

[@whtiequillBj]

19:15, no its love2D. a lua framework used for game development. My favorite is not-Tetris.

[@Mondall-UA]

I bought 2 WiiU's. Don't ask why I don't know

[@a_nicegaming]

can i get 1

[@Mondall-UA]

@a_nicegaming no, you aren't living in Ukraine

[@a_nicegaming]

@@Mondall-UA aw

[@kingzombie951]

Don't worry I have like 10 modded wiis Edit: I don't have wii u but planning to get one

[@godzilla8470]

I don't know why, it doesn't even matter how hard you try

[@ahmadshami5847]

13:40 in neofetch it says that the system was using 87 mb out of the 88 available even before launching X11. I'm just baffled that the browser even launched at all without the system hanging all the way through. Probably netbsd does swapping though

[@BOplaid]

Fun fact: The Tetris featured here is available in Linux (at least in Ubuntu/Mint), and the package is called bsdgames.

[@AanzAriel]

This was a experience... A waiting experience, but a experience non the less

[@benjaluth09]

We need tandy deskmate in the wii

[@Jdbye]

Love is the engine the game is made in.

[@MichaelChin1994]

Amazing video! BTW, IDK if it'd work on BSD, but FastFetch is significantly better than NeoFetch

[@Wilson-obrien]

I love Wii homebrew

[@CameronReape]

pkgin is to pkg_src what apt is to dpkg

[@TaelsDoll]

thats why i hate twitter these days, bunch of gatekeepers

[@DaVince21]

LÖVE is a game engine, not a company! Well, maybe it also is. But it's known as a Lua powered game engine!

[@Nexus9_KD6-4.8]

It's amazing what they were able to fit into such a small pool of memory back then.

[@tailsprower9542]

Anything Nintendo wii homebrew is just cool, thanks for the video

[@S1LLY_BRUD_L0V3R]

@@tailsprower9542 wii

[@apollolux]

Michael MJD trying to run NetBSD on the Wii, next MetroByte will be trying to run Win95/98 on it and Action Retro will be trying to run classic MacOS or Haiku. XD

[@herdware]

128 megs of RAM really isn't enough to do stuff nowadays.

[@Sam-th4jl]

i thought the wii only had 64MB?

[@orinokonx01]

The slowdowns (and Arcticfox being very very slow) is probably because the Wii ran out of memory and was using swap space instead..? Maybe? Strange it only has 88MB to play with! Still and incredible project!

[@AtexBg]

Can it run doom on NetBSD ?

[@ChrisJackson-js8rd]

NetBSD defines "supported hw" and "runs good!" in very .... abstract and optimistic way. Essentially if a machine boots and appears to stay up. I don't think it's really an OS designed with end-users in mind - very important in bridging EOL or exotic HW into a second open-source life though.

[@dejoneltahan1974]

Pretty useful since the Nintendo Wii servers have been discontinued

[@bs_blackscout]

Great stuff but it may be worth trying to enable swap or zram (if NBSD supports it) to make the experience less unbearable. Maybe revisit one day?

[@diegoaugusto1561]

of course it runs netbsd

[@BOplaid]

THE PACKAGW WASNT A LIE

[@mariomario1849]

17:06 at long last, gaming on the wii

[@bluephreakr]

I wonder if you wake the system up a little bit with defining a swap space on the SD card and adding that into the bootloader or using swapon?

[@luketorkelson3647]

just be careful Nintendo is going nuts and people are getting copyright infractions. I believe Linus did a video about modding and he got a strike.

[@АлександрНестеров-б6ч]

I just started to watch this video, this is really facinating, i didnt even know that BSD supported powerpc

[@309electronics5]

Well openbsd and freebsd have ppc ports i believe

[@eMorphized]

Large numbers of small servers use it, both 32 and 64. Some people don't want to switch to Linux just because they upgraded from their old XServe to POWER9.

[@hri7566]

not pacman wasn’t running because the program loaded the game engine’s default sample project instead of the game

[@aidenmiller893]

I remember installing Wii Linux to try to run checkra1n years back before windows builds, couldn't get a power PC build lol

[@TeionM83]

You would be better off with lynx, links, or w3m.

[@David_Phantom]

A bit upset you didn't host a webserver on it. Be fun to see how many simultaneous connections it could handle. I wonder how Doom would run on it? It couldn't be _that_ bad, right? Right? I also wonder if the slowdowns were due to swap being used? I wonder what the speed of the SD Card reader is? Also also, I wonder how compiling stuff on it would be.

[@BlackravenX9]

I wonder if the Lynx web browser would work on here. Thats pretty lightweight.

[@tomrow32]

I wonder if hardware accellerated video works, and if a swap file can be set up. It might also be worth checking for a lighter weight browser than firefox such as NetSurf.

[@blazefright4889]

Is using a wii for a minecraft server valid? is it worth it at all?

[@99domini99]

No, not at all. The Wii has a total of 88mb of ram and a highly antiquated PowerPC CPU. It is not capable of running a Minecraft server at all.

[@lark9266]

I'm guessing text based browsers weren't available? Great video either way

[@Thiesi]

Sure - PkgSrc contains e.g. w3m and lynx.

[@watchmakerful]

Firefox, even its first ever version, needs at least 1 G RAM.

[@joetheman74]

You said in the beginning that the GUI is not usable but the CLI works well. There are LOTS of CLI programs that would have been good to show off including games, audio programs and even web browsers. Why wouldn't you show off any of those?

[@BluePlanet321]

Can you run Dolphin on there? Then you can play Wii games on it too! 😂

[@KatelynTea]

I thiiiink openbsd has a dolphin package, no idea about netbsd

[@basix250]

well running nginx on that would be extremely funny

[@someidiot4311]

OMG I WAS JUST THINKING ABOUT THIS

[@theNikNikovsky]

NetBSDiiz nuts

[@kalusian012]

imagine a unofficial server for non working anymore channels besides food channel and different unless i've skipped a video about them

[@ohajohaha]

it might work better with a text only web browser

[@asbfabfoaijfo8]

isnt love a game engine?

[@Chrys4l1s]

What is love ?

[@asbfabfoaijfo8]

@@Chrys4l1s baby dont hurt me

[@Chrys4l1s]

@@asbfabfoaijfo8 don't hurt me

[@alexey_fsk6654]

@@Chrys4l1s no more

[@KSPAtlas]

I actually did this, I installed the X11 server and messed around with running GUI apps on it, very slow but it worked

[@PriestessPaula]

maaaaybe stick lynx for web browsing in netbsd on a wii.

[@patpopov]

You need w3m or Lynx.

[@TheFakeVIP]

I do believe you've discovered the joys of trying to use a system that is severely starved of memory. 🤣 I'm honestly impressed the system managed to work its way through running *any* version of Firefox, regardless of speed. Linux, by default at least, would've probably just killed the process because of the out-of-memory condition (though I don't know what kernel version introduced that). Looks like that's not NetBSD's strategy.

[@Spamton.G.SpamtonBIG.SHOT.1997]

Man i found this tech channel in late 2021 and i don't regret it. I love how Michael explains things in such good detail. At least for me.

[@watchmakerful]

Is it compatible with FreeBSD?

[@nilswegner2881]

No. Very different OSs.

[@casixmc]

what. what. What. WHAT. e.

[@fauxhoods]

Oh my god im finally early to one of your posts! Aaand I don't know what to say...Dang it brain! Think of something funny!! Welp.. this is awkwardsauce….dattebayo😅

[@MasterOfTechnology566]

the wii is literally dying in misery lol (CPU Usage-5000%,CPU Temp-10000 C)

[@thatrealkikoabdou]

awesome!

[@EquaTechnologies]

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[@gothicgirlsophie]

Teacher: what Computer do you use Me: A Nintendo Wii :D Teacher; Your Joking Right? Me: Nope :D

[@BlendiGoose]

bro got hit by the love2d 0.7.2 no game screen

[@BrainDamageIV]

wii are sooo back

[@DidoCikolata]

Firefox on 88 MB💀

[@abozabib]

Try making a minecraft server on that big boy.

[@nilswegner2881]

Minecraft is a Java application. It needs memory. A lot of memory. Nothing the 128MB in the Wii can be used for.

[@TechTonic420]

If you installed NetBSD then you can run Wine 🧠🧠🧠

[@nilswegner2881]

No. Wine needs an x86 or x86_64 CPU.

[@iron.arg.]

Peak content

[@TecoTurtle]

Can i sue the 2 pepole who disliked

[@thejackofclubs]

its asking a lot from a system thats basically 25 years old

[@immameme]

TechHistoryImma1st Don't take my comments seriously. It's only a meme

[@freez8829]

Solder new larger RAM memory chip in order for web browser to work. is quite easy even for beginners Like this comment to get in top in order for michael to see it please

[@2435Bits]

Wiiiii

[@emlo40]

Cool

[@zexa252]

As someone who knows nothing about any of this, what's even the point? Like is there an advantage using NetBSD on the wii?

[@a_nicegaming]

wow

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

Wii would like to -play- install operating systems

[@CameronReape]

19:28 Löve is shit

[@milo9845]

finding a new vid 2 mins after it uploads? oh man

[@bluephreakr]

Oh, Mike, you sweet summer child; LÖVE is a games engine. Not Pacman is a game made by Maurice; the same mind behind Mari0.

[@AtexBg]

Have you ever heard about Windows XP running on the Wii ?

[@Mkhwlani]

sheesh