NetBSD

NetBSD is one of the BSD operating systems, descended from the Berkeley System Distribution. Starting with version 10.0, NetBSD supports the Wii as a first class platform.

Comparison with Wii-Linux

• Wii-Linux is launched from boot2 via Gumboot or NPLL. While NetBSD has boot2 support in the current branch, as of May 2025, release builds are started via the Homebrew Channel.

• Wii-Linux is able to use part of MEM1 as system RAM, while NetBSD only seems to use MEM2. Hence, a Wii-Linux system has access to more RAM. (This is somewhat mitigated by the NetBSD init system being much simpler than systemd.)

• The Wii-Linux ArchPOWER image has better menu-driven configuration tools. While NetBSD's sysinst can be used for tasks like network configuration, it is not as easy to use as tools like nmtui or ConfigMii.

• NetBSD's package manager is not included as part of the base system, and has to be installed using sysinst.

• USB used to be more stable in NetBSD compared to Wii-Linux, but as of the mainline Wii-Linux kernel's release, USB should be about as stable as NetBSD.

• The framebuffer driver in both Wii-Linux and NetBSD emulates RGB colors, so graphical software doesn't have to be rewritten for the Wii's YUYV framebuffer. NetBSD's driver does this via the GX GPU, using a scratch framebuffer in memory, copying into the EFB (via the CPU) every frame, and then using GX to do the conversion + copy back to the XFB. Linux does this via software math. Both approaches have similar performance.

• As of May 2025, NetBSD doesn't have drivers for GameCube Controller or the USB Gecko, and the driver for the internal Wi-Fi adapter is not yet available in release builds.