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Why OpenBSD Rocks

why-openbsd.rocks

81–90 of 107 posts

Re: Why OpenBSD Rocks

#81

I was actually playing with OpenBSD while stuck with the flu. The good: * ifconfig handling everything is brilliant. Having one tool to do networking, including WiFi(!) is great. * the documentation is good. `man -k` normally gets you what you need. * "base builds base" is pretty cool. I managed to rebuild base on a 1GHz single core BeagleBone Black in 48hrs. the bad: * Performance. I didn't think this would be a hug…

>UFS seemed to have I/O deficiencies which exacerbated the performance issue.

Turning on soft dependencies can help:

* https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#SoftUpdates

Re: Why OpenBSD Rocks

#82
sndiod is pretty nice...

Dead simple. Fixed latency that you set when you run the sound daemon. Same API with the sound daemon in or out. You can yank it out and the programs get to use the same interface for both audio and mixer. So nothing like the pointless ALSA mixing interface laying around when you run pulseaudio. It all works transparently.

Re: Why OpenBSD Rocks

#83

How is NVidia GPU support on OpenBSD? Will OpenBSD run GPU-accelerated TensorFlow or Torch?

OpenBSD is written by OpenBSD devs for OpenBSD devs. Generally, if you're the only dev who wants it then it's up to you to do it. If you let it go stale then there's a good chance it'll be removed.

Re: Why OpenBSD Rocks

#84

I was actually playing with OpenBSD while stuck with the flu. The good: * ifconfig handling everything is brilliant. Having one tool to do networking, including WiFi(!) is great. * the documentation is good. `man -k` normally gets you what you need. * "base builds base" is pretty cool. I managed to rebuild base on a 1GHz single core BeagleBone Black in 48hrs. the bad: * Performance. I didn't think this would be a hug…

I wonder though, if they don't have the manpower to optimize for desktop usages, why don't they stick to server only?

I've tried to use it on a server some months ago (trying out OpenBSD every few years because I do like the philosophy) but things behaved odd and slow, so I just used FreeBSD and problems disappeared.

I'd like to see a completely server focused one instead of trying to do it all and keep issues hanging loose.

Re: Why OpenBSD Rocks

#85
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the off-chance you're somehow unaware and are running Debian: with Devuan it's almost just a repository change and an "apt-get dist-upgrade" away (depending on which release you are upgrading from a few manual actions, which are documented, might be required).

Yes, thank you. I run Debian and am well aware of Devuan (I'm running it on two machines right now). However, I have doubts about Devuan as a long-term solution, and it's a long-term solution that I'm seeking.

Gentoo. Going on 2 decades.

Re: Why OpenBSD Rocks

#86
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the off-chance you're somehow unaware and are running Debian: with Devuan it's almost just a repository change and an "apt-get dist-upgrade" away (depending on which release you are upgrading from a few manual actions, which are documented, might be required).

Yes, thank you. I run Debian and am well aware of Devuan (I'm running it on two machines right now). However, I have doubts about Devuan as a long-term solution, and it's a long-term solution that I'm seeking.

I had the same concerns and held off until Wheezy LTS ran out.

I had some reservations about what seemed to be an "angry" fork and its longevity, but so far, Devuan's been up to date, and last I heard most of the acrimony has dissipated up to the point where Devuan was about to get involved in the sysvinit maintenance of Debian itself.

So I don't know about the real long-term, but it appears they are serious about producing and keeping up a distribution.

Re: Why OpenBSD Rocks

#87
post #84

I was actually playing with OpenBSD while stuck with the flu. The good: * ifconfig handling everything is brilliant. Having one tool to do networking, including WiFi(!) is great. * the documentation is good. `man -k` normally gets you what you need. * "base builds base" is pretty cool. I managed to rebuild base on a 1GHz single core BeagleBone Black in 48hrs. the bad: * Performance. I didn't think this would be a hug…

I wonder though, if they don't have the manpower to optimize for desktop usages, why don't they stick to server only? I've tried to use it on a server some months ago (trying out OpenBSD every few years because I do like the philosophy) but things behaved odd and slow, so I just used FreeBSD and problems disappeared. I'd like to see a completely server focused one instead of trying to do it all and keep issues hangin…

Because they believe in dogfooding their software. So developers run it on their desktops, as well as on their servers.

Re: Why OpenBSD Rocks

#88
post #72
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If your operating system needs an SSD than you need a better operating system.

It runs on Luna-88k and people use it.

Re: Why OpenBSD Rocks

#89
post #55
post #42

Since SystemD has become so prevalent in Linux, I've been looking longingly at BSD. The only problem is that I have a large number of machines that I'd need to move over, and it's a pretty intimidating amount of work. But I'm planning on beginning the move, one system at a time...

Take a look at GhostBSD while you're at it. I wouldn't recommend OpenBSD for normal day-to-day usage....

There are several BSDs that it is worth looking at, beyond looking at only one. TrueOS, DragonFly BSD, MirOS BSD, GhostBSD, MidnightBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD.

Re: Why OpenBSD Rocks

#90

I was actually playing with OpenBSD while stuck with the flu. The good: * ifconfig handling everything is brilliant. Having one tool to do networking, including WiFi(!) is great. * the documentation is good. `man -k` normally gets you what you need. * "base builds base" is pretty cool. I managed to rebuild base on a 1GHz single core BeagleBone Black in 48hrs. the bad: * Performance. I didn't think this would be a hug…

IPv6 works. One of my WWW site's servers is an OpenBSD system, quite happily serving it up over IPv6.
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