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OpenBSD 7.0

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Re: OpenBSD 7.0

#171

Post by bluejekyll »

anthk wrote: post #110
bluejekyll wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t all that different from choosing the Linux OS of choice. That decision often is partnered with the package manager that’s desired, and how quickly things are upstreamed in it. Do you want apt, nix, yum/rpm? Then how stable do you want it? Debian, Ubuntu, etc? How much support are you looking for? Redhat, etc. I guess I don’t see a major difference in the complexity of that decision process in the Linux spa…

Not even close. Each BSD is it's own OS.

Is Debian a different OS from Redhat?

Re: OpenBSD 7.0

#172

Post by bluejekyll »

5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #106
bluejekyll wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t all that different from choosing the Linux OS of choice. That decision often is partnered with the package manager that’s desired, and how quickly things are upstreamed in it. Do you want apt, nix, yum/rpm? Then how stable do you want it? Debian, Ubuntu, etc? How much support are you looking for? Redhat, etc. I guess I don’t see a major difference in the complexity of that decision process in the Linux spa…

Most Linux distributions are much more similar to each other than BSDs are. At least that's my impression after spending the last month at work porting a bunch of scripts from Linux to several BSDs (Free, Open, and Net). The differences are too many to describe here, from where they install third party libraries, to configuration file locations and formats, to how basic tools work (essential things like grep/sed/awk…

I find each Linux OS that’s based around a different package manager to generally feel like a different operating system. That’s my point.

The BSDs all have a common ancestor. The Linux’s tend to all have a GNU user space, the kernels are mostly the same, but the OS layout tends to differ in important ways.

Re: OpenBSD 7.0

#173

Post by anthk »

bluejekyll wrote: post #171
anthk wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even close. Each BSD is it's own OS.

Is Debian a different OS from Redhat?

Can you run Debian stuff on a RedHat chroot without needing different ABI compat libraries? Yes.

Can you run FreeBSD binaries under OpenBSD? No.

Re: OpenBSD 7.0

#174

Post by Koshkin »

bluedino wrote: post #108
deltarholamda wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>prioritising being a cohesive operating system and docs This is one of the areas where OpenBSD really shines. Their documentation is really good. FreeBSD is also quite good, but I've been consistently impressed with OpenBSD's docs since 2.5. Linux distros can't reach the same level of quality due to being less cohesive at the base, though they do make up for it with quantity. You can search for most Linux issues and…

Arch was the most BSD-ish when I tried it a few years back

This is usually said about Slackware. (It uses the BSD style init system.)

Re: OpenBSD 7.0

#175

Post by theonemind »

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?

I'd recommend trying one of the big three. If you value performance, FreeBSD. If you like a really well-documented, simple, coherent system, OpenBSD. If you've got a real tinkerer mindset, NetBSD--like, kernel extensions in Lua, run it on anything you can find with a processor in it.

They're all good. I wouldn't over-complicate it. Just look at the one with known strengths that most match what you most value and dip in. A lot of the knowledge crosses over if you want to try other ones anyway, they're all related.

Re: OpenBSD 7.0

#176

Post by massysett »

edgyquant wrote: post #112
petre wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple has switched from bash to zsh. I don't know the motivations for this GPLv3 vs BSD or MIT license. I lived zsh anyway, switched some of my BSD shells to it afterwards.

I love zsh but it’s history doesn’t segregate based on the tty and it locks up a lot during autocompletion for me (on Ubuntu.)

This is not typically the default setting in zsh (it is if it’s acting like ksh.) Your distributor has probably “helpfully” set it up this way. man zshoptions and look for “SHARE_HISTORY”.

Re: OpenBSD 7.0

#177

Post by bilinguliar »

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,…

In the case of OpenBSD, it is more “drinking your own champagne” than “eating your own dog food.”

Re: OpenBSD 7.0

#178

Post by eacafdcbac »

nanna wrote: post #6

Any BSD fans out there wish to persuade a happy Debian desktop user to take a BSD for a spin?

Playing with OpenBSD will be a learning experience. For me, that's usually enough to install something on a non-daily driver machine.

Are you a software engineer or CS student? If so, I'd say that OpenBSD really shines in code simplicity, clarity, and consistency. This is also a matter of taste. What drew me in initially was the quality and consistency of the kernel source code, consistent high standards in documentation, and the design of system interfaces and libraries.

I like being able to answer my own questions and I find that easier in OpenBSD than in Linux. Sometimes I sit for hours and simply flip back and forth between documentation and code exploring how things work. I feel that this level of consistency and availability of information within the system feed creative urges on my part.

I like to write code and I feel like I have an easier time doing that in OpenBSD than Linux (again, a matter of tastes.) This is in large part because my workflow tends to happen at the terminal.

I would be surprised to find that VSCode, Slack, Discord, and other electron-y applications can be made to work in OpenBSD at all... maybe they do, but I've never felt the need to try, so if they don't I'm fine with that.

I think OpenBSD is well adapted to a specific kind of user and a specific kind of problems. If you're paranoid, or a developer, or just like the terminal window, or prefer design consistency over broad compatibility and feature variety, you might find that you really enjoy using OpenBSD.

By all means, give it a spin if for no other reason than to learn about a thing that's out there that a bunch of people enjoy.

If OpenBSD is not for you, that's okay too. I don't think that the user base, developers, or community have ever been looking run campaigns aimed at growing the popularity of the system. For me that's a good thing, the developers seem less prone to chasing the next thing that will expand their share in a market, and are more focused on making a thing they want to use - which translates well for me. YMMV.

Re: OpenBSD 7.0

#180

Post by chasil »

GordonS wrote: post #157

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?

Major drawbacks are closed-source applications intended for RedHat. These might work with some kind of binary emulation, but the vendor will never support it.

My focus would be database. Microsoft's binary ODBC libraries and Oracle Instant Client are Linux binaries. FreeTDS and Oracle SQLcl/JDBC are options on a BSD, but there are drawbacks, as there likely would be with any binary packages.

I know that both RedHat and Oracle will migrate an installed CentOS to their platforms (RedHat does it more violently, by replacing every installed package). Alma & Rocky might also be migration options.

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