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OpenBSD 7.0

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Re: OpenBSD 7.0

#151

Post by bpye »

Filligree wrote: post #80
blacktriangle wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It made me switch from Linux. If it doesn't sound compelling to you, that's okay too, Linux is great. But I do think focusing on the consistency of design really is the best high-level summary of the difference between Linux and OpenBSD.

Consistency is great, but there's no equivalent to NixOS for the BSDs -- that I know of. Am I actually wrong about that? Is there some declarative configuration system I should be using, which I've simply never heard of?

There are a couple issues tracking FreeBSD support for Nix [0,1], the package manager indicating it works there. Depending on the level of integration you want that might be sufficient, that would already be enough to generate the system config files for example, but to get the sort of integration you get on NixOS with different generations and the ability to rollback at boot would require more work. This would look something more like nix-darwin [2] than NixOS really.

I wouldn't be entirely surprised if OpenBSD works too, I might spin up a VM and see...

[0] https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/3280

[1] https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/81459

[2] https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin

Re: OpenBSD 7.0

#152

Post by wowtip »

_ofdw wrote: post #143
t-3 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenBSD for laptops, VM guests, and VPSs. It has a very coherent userland, and the devs dogfood heavily, my go-to for anything I have to actually administer. FreeBSD for servers and NAS, desktop. FreeBSD has high performance all around, ZFS, jails, bhyve, linux compatability, etc. But it's not as nice to administer as OpenBSD. I want to love it, but it's tedious. NetBSD is an OK choice for anything, and very capable,…

Openbsd has consistently scored towards the bottom in all performance benchmarks that I've seen in the last few years, when compared to FreeBSD and various linuxen. I would personally never use it for a laptop.

Scores are one thing, using it is another.

I ran OpenBSD on a Thinkpad T450 for over a year, but recently switched to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, not because of lack of speed, but some missing applications and blutooth support.

Given I don't run a heavy desktop environment, rather just StumpWM, but still I did not in any way feel OpenBSD was slower than Linux, using the same applications.

OpenSUSE is the most solid Linux I have used so far, but OpenBSD was more to my liking setting up and maintaining. It is well thought out, simple, and... just makes sense.

Re: OpenBSD 7.0

#153

Post by t-3 »

_ofdw wrote: post #143
t-3 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenBSD for laptops, VM guests, and VPSs. It has a very coherent userland, and the devs dogfood heavily, my go-to for anything I have to actually administer. FreeBSD for servers and NAS, desktop. FreeBSD has high performance all around, ZFS, jails, bhyve, linux compatability, etc. But it's not as nice to administer as OpenBSD. I want to love it, but it's tedious. NetBSD is an OK choice for anything, and very capable,…

Openbsd has consistently scored towards the bottom in all performance benchmarks that I've seen in the last few years, when compared to FreeBSD and various linuxen. I would personally never use it for a laptop.

OpenBSD has way better ACPI, power management, and less setup hassle than FreeBSD, and way cleaner and nicer out of the box than any linux distro. You don't generally have to hack on anything to get basic laptop functionality working, and the small loss of performance from mitigations, disabling SMT, etc. is really not as big a deal for me, because my laptop is used for ssh and web browsing, not compiling huge projects or playing games.

Re: OpenBSD 7.0

#154

Post by ranger_danger »

anthk wrote: post #145
_ofdw wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Openbsd has consistently scored towards the bottom in all performance benchmarks that I've seen in the last few years, when compared to FreeBSD and various linuxen. I would personally never use it for a laptop.

If you cared about actual security, you would use it in a laptop thanks to bioctl and full disk encryption.

OpenBSD is not really as secure as people make it out to be: https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/openbsd.html

And plenty of other OSes have FDE and everything in-between.

Re: OpenBSD 7.0

#155

Post by chousuke »

melony wrote: post #136
chousuke wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend giving OpenBSD a try over the others. It's just... a clean OS, and the base system is extremely well documented; to the point that I think it's the only OS you can learn inside out without ever using Google. OpenBSD might not be the best choice for any given use, but it's so remarkably consistent and understandable that I think everyone interested in alternative OSes should try it out at least once.

I don't want a OS where I have to read man pages and documentation to get around. The whole self documentation excuse is the same reason why Emacs is slowly losing market share. People want software that is intuitive, and failing that, have all answers available on their favorite search engine. Short of baking a chatbot or search engine into OpenBSD, relying purely on self documentation is not sustainable. Though the…

"Intuitive" is often a code word for "familiar to me". A full-blown general purpose OS cannot be completely intuitive; the user always needs something to build from.

For what it's worth, I think OpenBSD is intuitive because of its consistency. It's certainly been more intuitive to me than any other OS; it just makes sense as a whole in a way that no other OS quite does, and that's refreshing in a world where users are expected not to understand what their tools are and how they work.

OpenBSD just builds its intuitive bits on things you may not yet know. Fortunately, it has excellent documentation to get you started.

Re: OpenBSD 7.0

#156

Post by wyager »

t-3 wrote: post #135
mirekrusin wrote: post #90

I'd love to try but I'm experiencing hardcore option paralysis every time I start thinking about it. FreeBSD, OpenBSD or NetBSD – _that_ is the question. Wait, maybe DragonFly actually? illumos? ...wait, I mean OpenIndiana, I think... wait, what's OmniOS? Is Darwin a thing, like I could just have BSD and macOS for free or something?

OpenBSD for laptops, VM guests, and VPSs. It has a very coherent userland, and the devs dogfood heavily, my go-to for anything I have to actually administer. FreeBSD for servers and NAS, desktop. FreeBSD has high performance all around, ZFS, jails, bhyve, linux compatability, etc. But it's not as nice to administer as OpenBSD. I want to love it, but it's tedious. NetBSD is an OK choice for anything, and very capable,…

I haven’t used OpenBSD yet, but I found FreeBSD to be a total breeze to administer compared to Linux. You’ve gotten me very excited about OpenBSD…

Re: OpenBSD 7.0

#157

Post by GordonS »

I used to use CentOS for all my Linux servers, but that's no longer an option of course.

I've been using Vmware PhotonOS for Docker host VMs, and I'm pretty happy with it.

For everything else though... I'm thinking Ubuntu, but I'm not sure. Might a *BSD be a good option? Does it have any real advantages over Linux? Or any drawbacks for that matter?

Re: OpenBSD 7.0

#159

Post by mirekrusin »

epitactic wrote: post #105
mirekrusin wrote: post #90

I'd love to try but I'm experiencing hardcore option paralysis every time I start thinking about it. FreeBSD, OpenBSD or NetBSD – _that_ is the question. Wait, maybe DragonFly actually? illumos? ...wait, I mean OpenIndiana, I think... wait, what's OmniOS? Is Darwin a thing, like I could just have BSD and macOS for free or something?

This is why I've setup my homelab with a hypervisor, you don't have to choose and can run each of these operating systems, for specific purposes they are best suited for. This is what I do: OpenIndiana: file server (ZFS) OpenBSD: firewall, router, network services (DHCP, DNS, NAT) DragonflyBSD: game server FreeBSD: other general application services I haven't found a personal use case for NetBSD yet, though I would l…

"All of them" is an interesting answer.

Re: OpenBSD 7.0

#160

Post by macintux »

zokula wrote: post #50
ksec wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>OpenBSD split from NetBSD years ago for political reasons. I was naive in thinking it was always about the focus on priorities, as in Security vs NetBSD's portability. So I decided to read up on it [1]. Since Wiki seems to be purposely quiet / unclear on the incident. Turns out Open Source Politics isn't that much different 25 years later. [1] https://www.theos.com/deraadt/coremail.html

That would assume that OpenBSD is secure the first place.

Nothing is 100% secure.
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