How is OpenBSD performance these days?
Why OpenBSD Rocks
21–30 of 107 posts
Re: Why OpenBSD Rocks
#22> Xserver without root permissions There must have been a regression. There still was lingering suid root binaries that OpenBSD got bit by recently. I mean, it was security fix #1 for release 6.4: https://www.openbsd.org/errata64.html
AFAIK that suid binary was used to enable starting the X server without a display manager. It still actually ran as non-root.
Re: Why OpenBSD Rocks
#23A more comprehensive list https://www.openbsd.org/innovations.html
Re: Why OpenBSD Rocks
#24What are the desktop GUI environments or window managers available on OpenBSD that are comparable to those on Linux? I see a mention of running X as a user, but nothing more. What about desktop hardware support? Does it have working drivers for different WiFi chipsets, video cards, trackpad, etc. (referring only to x86 based systems)?
>What are the desktop GUI environments or window managers available on OpenBSD that are comparable to those on Linux? I'll answer this honestly; All of the X11 based ones until SystemD and wayland came about are essentially supported or working. Gnome created a hard dependency on systemd and thus can't be used any longer on openbsd. Wayland (and thus; Sway) is not supported by OpenBSD. But i3, xmonad, KDE4, XFCE4 and…
> Gnome created a hard dependency on systemd and thus can't be used any longer on openbsd.
This isn't true, OpenBSD has GNOME 3.30.2 in ports. It maintains patches to keep it working for users, who can install it with the meta package: pkg_add gnome
6.4 has 3.28.2 in packages: https://www.openbsd.org/64.html
Antoine Jacoutot is the maintainer.
Re: Why OpenBSD Rocks
#25>If you install a library, there is no split between library and header files. There is no zlib-dev package as an addition to zlib. You get everything at once. And that's good?
well, it's what happens if you actually install a package from source, and so is congruent with what it really means to 'install '
seems preferable to accepting arbitrary segmentation of packages into subsets based on some random package maintainers preference..
also, it's not 1993 and having 100kb of headers on my system is not really a big deal.
Re: Why OpenBSD Rocks
#26Many of the items on this list seem to be some variation of "random place in memory so attackers can't guess" It sounds nice, but can someone explain if there are any downsides?
software written in other environments may fail due to assumptions of non randomness, and so need patching to work on openbsd.
on the upside, these changes often improve overall security of the code and are merged upstream so those using other OS's benefit.
Re: Why OpenBSD Rocks
#27Why does file(1)[1] need its own chroot sandbox instead of using the pledge(2)[2] facility. They say: > Think of the following: You download a random file from the internet and analyze it using file. If file has a security hole (local code execution for example), he can run attacks with his prepared file. Thats why the file utility is sandboxed and chrooted by default. Isn't that exactly the sort of case where file(1…
> Why does file(1)[1] need its own chroot sandbox instead of using the pledge(2)[2] facility. It does use pledge(2) these days, those references are to how file(1) was sandboxed before. Why the author has linked to that I don't know.
Yeah, on closer inspection their page describing the sandbox links to the CVS commit where the sandbox implementation was deleted in favor of tame(2), the predecessor of pledge(2).
Re: Why OpenBSD Rocks
#28I really, really want to use OpenBSD. I love everything they make. The one thing that keeps me on FreeBSD/Linux is ZFS support.
Re: Why OpenBSD Rocks
#29I like openbsd and have used it happily for a long time, but it's not fair to list sysmerge and syspatch as selling points. If we are being honest, other systems have long had more automatic upgrade procedures and these two tools are essentially minimalist ways of solving the problems with the old way.
Re: Why OpenBSD Rocks
#30How is OpenBSD performance these days?
Plenty serviceable as a desktop. That said, I run pretty lightweight software. As with most OSs, an SSD is recommended. I made sure to pick out hardware knowing it would be compatible; that might be the bigger issue.