NetBSD was my favourite playing around OS from the late 1990s to about 2010. Worked on any old crap I had lying around which was mostly thoroughly obsolete SPARC and x86 kit. Did the job. Never went wrong. Good documentation built in. Netbooted on anything.

No idea where it is now but this post has inspired me to have a look.

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jambalaya8 43 minutes ago | parent [-]

I was a fan of FreeBSD over NetBSD; far more driver compatibility in the 1990s. It was nice to play with. Way too hard to use for much (well, online) now, due to the shrinking number of software packages (eg browsers) these days. I still remember how good it used to feel installing NetBSD on (now long long dead) laptop in the early/mid-90s.

	▲	cavem0nkey 37 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I would have gone for FreeBSD myself but alas it didn’t run on the SPARC stuff I lifted out of the company skip :) I think the thing with the BSDs in general was the fact I didn’t always even need any extra software packages on them. The base install was that useful.