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OpenBSD 7.9

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Re: OpenBSD 7.9

#271

Post by spauldo »

tete wrote: post #253
spauldo wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FreeBSD is a heavier, more capable system, suitable for large servers. It's got its own virtualization platform (bhyve), an LXC-ish container system (jails), native ZFS, dtrace, Linux emulation, and a bunch more. It makes for a decent workstation and has pretty decent hardware support. NetBSD is small and simple. It's a lot like an old-school UNIX. It makes a decent platform for small services. I run bind and dhcpd o…

> Linux emulation Just to clarify. It's not emulation in the sense it's slower or something. They call it compatibility layer, which is better, but also nobody knows what it means. This is simplifying a bit, but it's essentially "Linux is just a kernel" so the interface is just Linux syscalls, so the FreeBSD kernel when executing a Linux binary simply answers like Linux (so it has those system calls). How this is use…

I don't have much to disagree with there, only that any survey answer is the difference between complex things is going to be simplified. I'm thumb typing here and no one's paying me to write a book.

I will defend my "heaviness" argument, though. Sure, you can run OpenBSD on large hardware, but it's not going to be able to take advantage of it like FreeBSD can. Which makes sense if you think about it - FreeBSD optimizes for heavy workloads. Conversely, if you set up minimal installs, OpenBSD will be smaller. Again, that makes sense, since OpenBSD focuses on security over features (plus the only truly secure code is the code that doesn't exist). There's a lot of overlap in the middle, of course.

I wouldn't use OpenBSD for a NAS, and I wouldn't use FreeBSD for a diskless firewall. Not because they can't do those things - they just each have their strengths and weaknesses.

Re: OpenBSD 7.9

#272

Post by jmclnx »

jmclnx wrote: post #235

Time for an upgrade :)

Cannot edit, again the easiest upgrade of an OS, I did kitchen chores during the upgrade. The network was a bit slow, but got my work done during the upgrade :)

Re: OpenBSD 7.9

#273

Post by snvzz »

JCattheATM wrote: post #191
nidayewo wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting to see OpenBSD continuing to gain hardware support. I've been running it on a small home server for DNS/DHCP and the stability is remarkable. The man years of auditing really show.

Pretty much any OS would be just as stable if it's just serving DNS/DHCP.

As someone who has run DNS and DHCP servers... unfortunately, no.

Shit happens, and choices still do matter. Even if it feels it should be simple, Linux has a way.

My experience has been that Openbsd is rock solid, so are its implementations of the relevant server daemons.

Re: OpenBSD 7.9

#274

Post by snvzz »

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.

Openbsd makes a good stopgap.

The way forward is seL4[0][1].

0. https://sel4.systems/

1. https://microkerneldude.org/category/sel4/

Re: OpenBSD 7.9

#276

Post by tiffanyh »

thomashabets2 wrote: post #268
tete wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given from what Anthropic says with Mythos: Yes.

I pointed plain old gpt 5.5 at openbsd and found plenty of bugs. Sent patches for two just in "find". Openbsd, like all other projects, needs a large scale LLM powered bug squash effort. My recent experience: https://blog.habets.se/2026/05/Everything-in-C-is-undefined-...

> This was the most critical vulnerability we discovered in OpenBSD with Mythos Preview after a thousand runs through our scaffold. Across a thousand runs through our scaffold, the total cost was under $20,000 and found several dozen more findings.

Anthropic did that for OpenBSD.

https://red.anthropic.com/2026/mythos-preview/

Re: OpenBSD 7.9

#277

Post by JCattheATM »

snvzz wrote: post #273
JCattheATM wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much any OS would be just as stable if it's just serving DNS/DHCP.

As someone who has run DNS and DHCP servers... unfortunately, no. Shit happens, and choices still do matter. Even if it feels it should be simple, Linux has a way. My experience has been that Openbsd is rock solid, so are its implementations of the relevant server daemons.

> Even if it feels it should be simple, Linux has a way.

As someone who has run DNS and DHCP servers for over 30 years and continues to do so, this just feels like confirmation bias based on your personal anecdotes. If there's an issue, it's likely due to messy over-complicated distros. Alpine is no less solid than OpenBSD.

Re: OpenBSD 7.9

#278

Post by JdeBP »

foofyter wrote: post #146
maxall4 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

macOS is BSD roots on top of Darwin

That's not specifically OpenBSD, though. The BSD world is not the monolith that it was back in the 1980s.

Re: OpenBSD 7.9

#279

Post by JdeBP »

somat wrote: post #201
upofadown wrote: post #159

The big news for some of us is that Exim has been dropped from ports. Here is a good article about transitioning from Exim to OpenSMTPD: https://nxdomain.no/~peter/time_for_opensmtpd.html I tried using OpenSMTPD a long time ago, shortly after it came out, but things were not stable enough. I guess it is time to give it another go...

Surprised exim was dropped from ports. It is not like it was ever in base. I guess the maintainer did not want to anymore.

We don't have to guess. There are several mailing list discussions:

https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-ports&m=177625153728067

Re: OpenBSD 7.9

#280

Post by JdeBP »

mxuribe wrote: post #153
Brian_K_White wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

freebsd = utility openbsd = security netbsd = portability freebsd: performance, features, drivers, software compat - closest to linux in utility & usability though unlike linux in execution openbsd: safety for exposed services netbsd: portable across many cpu & hardware platforms - big-endian powerpc sun, hitachi sh3 jornada, etc, easiest to port to a new arch

Oh this is a wonderful and succinct summary; thanks!

It's also superficial and wrong, and as bad as dividing people up by hair colour into blondes, brunettes, and redheads.

The way that the BSDs differentiate cannot be reduced in this way, not least because there is a lot of what Justin C. Sherrill (of the DragonFly Digest) calls 'cross-pollination' amongst the BSDs.

A case in point:

Superficially, and erroneously, one might observe that OpenBSD, NetBSD, and FreeBSD have nvi, and only DragonFlyBSD has nvi2. In fact there was a three-way fork of actual Bostic nvi, all of them making revisions and leaving the original behind, and then things got really complex with nvi2 taking from OpenBSD's nvi, and FreeBSD's nvi taking from nvi2; not even getting into the existence of nvi-m17n along the way and how there are nvis in base and nvis in ports. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48132452) One cannot divide the BSDs up into those that have nvi2 versus those that have nvi.

The split is complex in other areas, too.

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