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OpenBSD 7.9

openbsd.org

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Re: OpenBSD 7.9

#111

Post by mghackerlady »

mxuribe wrote: post #76
SanjayMehta wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenBSD is security focused while FreeBSD will remind you of older X-Windows workstations.

Thanks! And, wow, do i miss the old X-window workstations...well, i should clarify that i LOVED those (I think they were Sparc?) workstations that ran Solaris or SunOS back in the day! Man, that takes me back some years...but i really loved those machines! :-)

OpenBSD supports sparc very well and is compatible with old sunos stuff (iirc). Unfortunately no 68k anymore (okay, technically there's a niche flavour of 68k that still is supported because of a very dedicated man in Japan)

Re: OpenBSD 7.9

#113

Post by mghackerlady »

anthk wrote: post #105
nelsonic wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use OpenBSD for our VPSes on Hetzner, bare metal (for security focussed clients) and older (but still good) hardware in our Home Lab. OpenBSD is excellent on older (no longer supported by Cupertino) Apple hardware. We have an Intel Mac Mini Cluster with near-perfect uptime. If you need to run any kind of server (Web, Mail, DNS, NFS, Database) where you need stability & security, look no further. Some learning curv…

I use OpenBSD among Hyperbola GNU/Linux, soon to be rebased from a deblobbed OpenBSD 7.0 hard fork. IT's dumb easy to setup too. Also, I daily use nvi, oksh, oed (a portable ed for GNU/Linux) among Xenocara and CWM, and this way the environment it's almost the same as OBSD but with a GNU/Linux kernel.

(technically it's just a Linux kernel. GNU doesn't do any kernel work aside from deblob scripts)

Re: OpenBSD 7.9

#114

Post by doublerabbit »

maxall4 wrote: post #90
nelsonic wrote: post #11

With all the security issues constantly being uncovered in other Operating Systems - which will only accelerate with Ai - it’s time everyone considers OpenBSD. Their decades-long security-focus is second to none. We have fully converted from Ubuntu/Debian to OpenBSD. No looking back.

Is OpenBSD actually more secure than Linux? I have not been able to find any data to support this—only some vague opinions.

"Is Secure" is subjective.

I would be in favour to say that out of the box OpenBSD is more secure than Linux.

Re: OpenBSD 7.9

#115

Post by mghackerlady »

seethishat wrote: post #42
clbrmbr wrote: post #10

Anyone here using OpenBSD? If so, for what purpose? I’ve always wanted to use NetBSD for an application for an embedded system / IoT device but never had the pleasure (yet!).

I run it. Home firewall, office desktops and laptops. It's pretty stable and I'm fairly familiar with it. Really simple if you know Unix. I hope it never goes away, not sure what I would replace it with. Linux is so complicated now, it's just too much for me to deal with

If OpenBSD dies (somehow, at this point so many things are maintained there (OpenSSH, LibreSSL, PF, Tmux, sudo kinda) that it'll always exist to a degree) one of the other BSDs will suffice. FreeBSD is bloaty but for the most part works fine enough

Re: OpenBSD 7.9

#116

Post by mghackerlady »

2b3a51 wrote: post #89
skydhash wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not GP, but I mostly use: Firefox; Emacs; MPV; Keepass; calibre; xfe; mupdf;... Then a bunch of cli tools. There's a lot in base, so cli are mostly extra utilities like cmus, git, tig, ncdu,...

I would imagine that a lot of people who use OpenBSD on their laptops/desktops run a lean installation with one of the window managers in base (an ancient fvwm version, cwm which I find very nice and twm). You can however have a full-fat desktop environment with xfce4 or gnome and applications like libreoffice, gimp, inkscape, audacity and so on if you wish. I've never tried KDE on top of OpenBSD base but I gather pa…

SPARC is well supported (mostly because it's very good at finding bugs that wouldn't be big problems anywhere else despite not being 'correct') and big endian PowerPC (both 323 and 64) is fine, though hardware can be tricky since apple products tend to be so integrated that you can't really, say, replace a GPU because the support is poor

Re: OpenBSD 7.9

#117

Post by mghackerlady »

seethishat wrote: post #45
ska80 wrote: post #25

I wish OpenBSD supported Bluetooth. Unfortunately, its absence is a deal breaker for me. I did use OpenBSD on the desktop it was great.

They did for awhile, but removed it due to complexity and security issues.

It wasn't security really, it was just the entire stack being so complex and poorly maintained that it became insecure. If someone wants to go back and do things right, they're free to do so

Re: OpenBSD 7.9

#118

Post by MarsIronPI »

866-RON-0-FEZ wrote: post #95
gjm11 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the video, but it looks to me as if the situation is: You are root inside a sandbox . As root-in-the-sandbox, you create a symlink and this gives you the ability to escape the sandbox. (Whether this is interesting or not depends on whether anyone actually tries to use the sandbox facility in such a way as to give root-in-the-sandbox privileges to untrusted people or code. I don't know enoug…

So what? You're still root. You're relying on a sandbox to plug a few voids while you still effectively held keys to the kingdom before said voids were plugged. I hear this excuse daily from developers who insist on running all their docker containers as root "because we have to". If you're relying on a sandbox as your first line of defense you've already lost the war.

I think the idea is to not run programs as root in the sandbox.

Re: OpenBSD 7.9

#119

Post by anthk »

mghackerlady wrote: post #113
anthk wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use OpenBSD among Hyperbola GNU/Linux, soon to be rebased from a deblobbed OpenBSD 7.0 hard fork. IT's dumb easy to setup too. Also, I daily use nvi, oksh, oed (a portable ed for GNU/Linux) among Xenocara and CWM, and this way the environment it's almost the same as OBSD but with a GNU/Linux kernel.

(technically it's just a Linux kernel. GNU doesn't do any kernel work aside from deblob scripts)

Yeah, I'm aware of FSFLA and Linux Libre, but Hurd is not ready yet and it's being worked on with LLM's (something really anti-GNU, as it's propietary SAAS).

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2026-03/msg00100...

In the end Hyperbola BSD will be more free than OpenBSD and the former GNU maintainers themselves...

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