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OpenBSD 5.6: What will be there

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Re: OpenBSD 5.6: What will be there

#2
Can anyone speak to SSD in OpenBSD? My understanding is that trim support is not supported in OpenBSD (http://daemonforums.org/showthread.php?p=51377). That makes me a little worried about the potential to wear out an SSD drive in a workstation. The thread I linked discusses reducing some writes by using softdeps and the like, is that enough to make this a non-issue?

Re: OpenBSD 5.6: What will be there

#4
I used to use OpenBSD extensively in my job because of the awesomeness of PF but later moved on to big iron F5 and Cisco gear. In this new age of NSA wiretaps and cloud based services built around advertising and tracking however, OpenBSD feels more relevant than ever. I'd like to give it a shot as a desktop again.

So, who makes a modern laptop with good OpenBSD hardware compatability?

Re: OpenBSD 5.6: What will be there

#5

I used to use OpenBSD extensively in my job because of the awesomeness of PF but later moved on to big iron F5 and Cisco gear. In this new age of NSA wiretaps and cloud based services built around advertising and tracking however, OpenBSD feels more relevant than ever. I'd like to give it a shot as a desktop again. So, who makes a modern laptop with good OpenBSD hardware compatability?

Was thinking the same thing myself. I keep thinking recent MacBook Airs would make a good candidate--reasonably standard Intel hardware, decent components, tons of systems in the wild. Hence my comment about trim support for SSDs.

Re: OpenBSD 5.6: What will be there

#6

I used to use OpenBSD extensively in my job because of the awesomeness of PF but later moved on to big iron F5 and Cisco gear. In this new age of NSA wiretaps and cloud based services built around advertising and tracking however, OpenBSD feels more relevant than ever. I'd like to give it a shot as a desktop again. So, who makes a modern laptop with good OpenBSD hardware compatability?

All of the openbsd devs use thinkpads and they have good compatibility in my experience. The newest ones might have UEFI and they might not work well.

Re: OpenBSD 5.6: What will be there

#7

I used to use OpenBSD extensively in my job because of the awesomeness of PF but later moved on to big iron F5 and Cisco gear. In this new age of NSA wiretaps and cloud based services built around advertising and tracking however, OpenBSD feels more relevant than ever. I'd like to give it a shot as a desktop again. So, who makes a modern laptop with good OpenBSD hardware compatability?

Lenovo X201 works well. Not exactly modern but a nice machine and more than adequate.

Re: OpenBSD 5.6: What will be there

#8
post #5

I used to use OpenBSD extensively in my job because of the awesomeness of PF but later moved on to big iron F5 and Cisco gear. In this new age of NSA wiretaps and cloud based services built around advertising and tracking however, OpenBSD feels more relevant than ever. I'd like to give it a shot as a desktop again. So, who makes a modern laptop with good OpenBSD hardware compatability?

Was thinking the same thing myself. I keep thinking recent MacBook Airs would make a good candidate--reasonably standard Intel hardware, decent components, tons of systems in the wild. Hence my comment about trim support for SSDs.

Try FreeBSD if you want TRIM. Also has LLVM, PF and ZFS out of the box.

Re: OpenBSD 5.6: What will be there

#9
post #6

I used to use OpenBSD extensively in my job because of the awesomeness of PF but later moved on to big iron F5 and Cisco gear. In this new age of NSA wiretaps and cloud based services built around advertising and tracking however, OpenBSD feels more relevant than ever. I'd like to give it a shot as a desktop again. So, who makes a modern laptop with good OpenBSD hardware compatability?

All of the openbsd devs use thinkpads and they have good compatibility in my experience. The newest ones might have UEFI and they might not work well.

I heard this and installed OpenBSD on my thinkpad only to find out there is no support for nVidia. I suppose you need ATI or Intel video to get a working X.

There is a brief warning about nVidia here: http://www.openbsd.org/amd64.html

Re: OpenBSD 5.6: What will be there

#10
post #2

Can anyone speak to SSD in OpenBSD? My understanding is that trim support is not supported in OpenBSD ( http://daemonforums.org/showthread.php?p=51377 ). That makes me a little worried about the potential to wear out an SSD drive in a workstation. The thread I linked discusses reducing some writes by using softdeps and the like, is that enough to make this a non-issue?

In general I wouldn't trust random forums for information about OpenBSD. People tend to repeat stuff long after its true. Send a message to misc@ or tech@openbsd.org and you'll hear directly from the devs.

Just make sure your partitions are 4k aligned to minimized write amplification. Many openbsd devs use SSDs. I've used one with openbsd for years without problems. Honestly it's a requirement given the shortcomings of ffs.

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