Meetings and Events

Meet the Smallest BSDs: RetroBSD and LiteBSD, Brian Callahan
2016-07-06 @ 19:45 EDT (23:45 UTC) - Stone Creek Bar & Lounge, 140 E 27th St

We all expect *BSD to run on our personal computers and servers. What you may not know is that the last five years have seen a successful experiment to bring *BSD to the PIC32 microcontrollers. There are now two different full *BSD operating systems for these microcontrollers: RetroBSD, a port of 2.11BSD, and LiteBSD, based on 4.4BSD-Lite2.

This talk introduces the two smallest BSDs, the differences between them, what hardware you need (with hands-on demos), and how to get involved. We'll overview what works, what doesn't, the challenges of writing a complete operating system with extremely small RAM limits in the modern era, and how to incorporate *BSD on the microcontroller into your *BSD universe.

Brian is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His research explores how underserved groups vie for legitimacy and normalcy in the IT sector through diversity and other initiatives. He is an ex-OpenBSD developer who used to do a lot of work on ports but now advocates for a BSD-agnostic approach. Somehow, George keeps convincing him that giving talks at NYCBUG is a good idea.