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OpenBSD 6.4 released

openbsd.org

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Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#51

Post by MaxBarraclough »

mruts wrote: post #13

Linux is a depressing mess after you've used OpenBSD. Such a high quality system, with stellar documentation. It's unfortunate that Linux has become so popular even though the BSD's are so much better. A bad historical accident. Damn you Linus...

> It's unfortunate that Linux has become so popular even though the BSD's are so much better. A bad historical accident.

I'm not sure that's fair.

Linux has snowballed, whereas OpenBSD hasn't. Linux is a much larger system. Is it surprising you find OpenBSD to be tidier?

Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#52

Post by vtail »

heywire wrote: post #24
mruts wrote: post #13

Linux is a depressing mess after you've used OpenBSD. Such a high quality system, with stellar documentation. It's unfortunate that Linux has become so popular even though the BSD's are so much better. A bad historical accident. Damn you Linus...

Is OpenBSD suitable for use on a laptop? I have a Dell Latitute 7370 running KDE Neon, and it runs really well. All hardware is supported, battery life is on-par with Windows, etc. Would OpenBSD work well on this laptop?

Thinkpads are VERY well supported - pretty much everything works, except bluetooth and fingerprint reader. I just ordered a Thinkpad X1 Carbon 6th gen as a replacement for aging Macbook to use as a main home machine.

You can search NYC*BUG board, where users submit their dmesg(8) output, e.g. there is a submission[1] for Dell Latitude e7270.

[1]http://dmesgd.nycbug.org/index.cgi?do=view&id=3466

Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#53

Post by toyg »

DCKing wrote: post #34
mruts wrote: post #13

Linux is a depressing mess after you've used OpenBSD. Such a high quality system, with stellar documentation. It's unfortunate that Linux has become so popular even though the BSD's are so much better. A bad historical accident. Damn you Linus...

One thing Linux has going for it is a bunch of popular features for developers' desktops: * Electron apps - VSCode, Atom, Slack, almost every universal desktop app that gets released today. Individual ports of apps to FreeBSD exist, but there is no way to automatically build Electron apps for any of the BSDs. * Good desktop virtualization - KVM, VirtualBox (okay FreeBSD has these in theory), VMware * First-class Dock…

There is no point competing on desktop apps, even Linux has a very hard time there. BSD variants have always lagged behind in that area, you could have probably written the same comment 15 years ago by just moving Openoffice etc to the “Linux only” group.

The areas where OpenBSD can compete (in addition to the ones it already fights in, like routing and network-edge roles) are cloud deployments and orchestration. If it were as easy to run OpenBSD for development as it is a containerized Linux, people would pick the more secure choice. They could also make prebuilt appliances for the most sensitive components in a deployment (databases etc).

Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#54

Post by MaxBarraclough »

auslander wrote: post #44
jhasse wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO Linux has the better license. Not sure if I'm in the minority with this opinion?

GPL (distribute your code) is better than BSD permissive (do what you want)? For whom?

For almost all of us.

Companies extend the BSD OSs with proprietary additions, then abandon the work and it gets lost. With Linux, everyone is forced to play nice and release under the GPL, and the work gets to live as long as people value it.

Hence the Linux kernel snowballing and taking over the world, whereas the BSDs have not, despite being at least as strong technically.

The better Linux gets, the more people target it, and the virtuous cycle continues.

Additionally, as it grows bigger and bigger, the more of the proprietary competition it crushes underfoot (sorry Solaris), and the more traction FOSS gets.

Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#55

Post by dx87 »

heywire wrote: post #24
mruts wrote: post #13

Linux is a depressing mess after you've used OpenBSD. Such a high quality system, with stellar documentation. It's unfortunate that Linux has become so popular even though the BSD's are so much better. A bad historical accident. Damn you Linus...

Is OpenBSD suitable for use on a laptop? I have a Dell Latitute 7370 running KDE Neon, and it runs really well. All hardware is supported, battery life is on-par with Windows, etc. Would OpenBSD work well on this laptop?

It's lacking a lot of the hardware support that Linux has. I wanted to try it out a year or 2 ago and it isn't compatible with any of the 4-5 desktops and laptops I have, but common Linux distros install on all of them with no issues. The only way I could get OpenBSD to install was as a VM.

Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#56

Post by jki275 »

lixtra wrote: post #47
DCKing wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing Linux has going for it is a bunch of popular features for developers' desktops: * Electron apps - VSCode, Atom, Slack, almost every universal desktop app that gets released today. Individual ports of apps to FreeBSD exist, but there is no way to automatically build Electron apps for any of the BSDs. * Good desktop virtualization - KVM, VirtualBox (okay FreeBSD has these in theory), VMware * First-class Dock…

Let’s not forget that MacOS X is considered a BSD by many.

It's not "considered", it is a BSD.

Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#57

Post by oneanddone »

pulsarpietro wrote: post #22
mruts wrote: post #13

Linux is a depressing mess after you've used OpenBSD. Such a high quality system, with stellar documentation. It's unfortunate that Linux has become so popular even though the BSD's are so much better. A bad historical accident. Damn you Linus...

I have been a Linux user for more than a decade - recently switched to OpenBSD and I must say I agree. Linux has become a chaotic place to be, I agree.

Quite. Especially now with their hideous CoC. That thing is straight out of the pits of PC hell. Many people think Linus will never again assume command now that he's stepped down for his so-called infractions. Gone now is the merit-based stuff and now it's all based on PC garbage. I miss the old days of IT, especially now.

Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#58

Post by mrpippy »

aquabeagle wrote: post #45
_wmd wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Quality" is a very subjective idea. Yes, docs are easy to keep consistent over long stretches of time if the speed of evolution is slow and a small number of like-minded assiduous gatekeepers can vet every change from a small number of contributors, but since the speed of evolution is slow, OpenBSD for example still has a giant lock protecting most of the kernel -- this despite nearly 2 decades of multicore chips sh…

From the release notes: sendmsg(2), sendto(2), recvfrom(2) and recvmsg(2) are run without KERNEL_LOCK. The lock is being removed, slowly with care, piece by piece.

Also, I think FreeBSD eliminated the giant lock ~10 years ago and maintains similarly good documentation. It’s just a matter of priorities, and SMP scalability/high performance has never been on the top of the OpenBSD list.

Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#59

Post by JdeBP »

enriquto wrote: post #11
ttul wrote: post #4

I am so tempted to install this after a 15 year break...

You can try it right now inside virtualbox, and 20 minutes later you realize that it is has all you need. After a few days, you'll notice that you spend most of your time inside the virtual machine, and then it makes sense to turn your setting upside down and work directly on the saner system.

It may have all that you need, but that sweeping generalization is far from true for everyone.

For example, things that I need that it does not have (last that I checked) include: filesystem-neutral nmount(), POSIX RT signals, the "new" 1990s dynamic PTY allocation system, a KDGETMODE ioctl on wscons, waitid(), fexecve(), and ACLs.

And then there are the things that would make life easier to not have to bodge around: const-correct ncurses API (available in ncurses since 1997), const-correct login_cap API, const-correct sysctl(), and no multiple evaluations in EV_SET().

It would be very welcome for it to gain all of these, but until then there is no "it has all that you need" realization on the cards.

Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#60

Post by mtgx »

zdw wrote: post #12

> Because Simultaneous MultiThreading (SMT) uses core resources in a shared and unsafe manner, it is now disabled by default. It can be enabled with the new hw.smt sysctl(2) variable. Is this on all architetures or just Intel's Hyperthreading? I'd imagine that other CPU's with hardware threads (especially the 4 and 8 way Sparc T series) would be quite hobbled in terms of performance with this change.

We only know it affects Intel's fast and loose architecture so far.
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