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I apologize for being an ignorant for so many years but... who is the OpenBSD target audience? In which areas it is the most popular OS? I worked with Windows, GNU/Linux and macOS (OSX) but never tried OpenBSD.
From the release notes: > o Support the sun4v hypervisor interrupt cookie API, adding support for SPARC T7-1/2/4 machines. Who is running OpenBSD on a big expensive SPARC T7 and why? I'm genuinely curious as to what possible use cases there are which make this a desirable combination.
"SPARC64 is a favorite of this developer because it's some Alice in Wonderland stuff where up is down and left is right compared to other architectures. So it exposes a number of bugs that others don't."
I apologize for being an ignorant for so many years but... who is the OpenBSD target audience? In which areas it is the most popular OS? I worked with Windows, GNU/Linux and macOS (OSX) but never tried OpenBSD.
- Those running network infrastructure (router, firewall, VPN gateway, mail server, etc.)
- Those who want a simple Unix desktop with no gimmicks and low hassle
- Hardcore Unix geeks who don't like the other flavors for $REASONS
In a more general or vague sense, OpenBSD is often appealing to people who care more about cohesiveness and correctness than about the sheer magnitude of performance and features. If you've ever thought that you might prefer to have an indefinitely supported version of Windows 7 because Windows 10 seems to be crawling with gratuitous changes, bugs, and dubious "features", the appeal is a bit like the Unix equivalent of that.
I apologize for being an ignorant for so many years but... who is the OpenBSD target audience? In which areas it is the most popular OS? I worked with Windows, GNU/Linux and macOS (OSX) but never tried OpenBSD.
I run a home brew OpenBSD router. It hosts a vpn server. (Amongst other things) Comes in handy when traveling. Plus, it’s a good way to sharpen my professional skills.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I run a home brew OpenBSD router. It hosts a vpn server. (Amongst other things) Comes in handy when traveling. Plus, it’s a good way to sharpen my professional skills.
I've been thinking about doing the same thing. What hardware did you use?
I used these [0][1] repos as a starting point, I wrote a few helpers to update dynamic dns and a DNS ad blocklist for unbound. This replaced a pfSense install and I'm happy with it so far.
[0] https://github.com/elad/openbsd-apu2 [1] https://github.com/northox/openbsd-apu2
I apologize for being an ignorant for so many years but... who is the OpenBSD target audience? In which areas it is the most popular OS? I worked with Windows, GNU/Linux and macOS (OSX) but never tried OpenBSD.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I run a home brew OpenBSD router. It hosts a vpn server. (Amongst other things) Comes in handy when traveling. Plus, it’s a good way to sharpen my professional skills.
I've been thinking about doing the same thing. What hardware did you use?
What I love about OpenBSD is the documentation. If An openbsd manpage describes it then it will work like that.
The only bummer is it’s a bit of a niche. I’m sure the majority of Linux distros dwarf its development team in warm bodies.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In general, OpenBSD support for Sparc helps with testing - the Sparc is architecturally quite a bit different from other CPUs: https://www.openbsd.org/sparc64.html "The other architectures that OpenBSD supports have benefited because some kinds of bugs are exposed more often by the 64-bit big endian nature of UltraSPARC."
That’s the same reason I include Solaris as a target in my automated build system. It’s arcane enough and independently developed enough to expose incorrect assumptions in C code.
I apologize for being an ignorant for so many years but... who is the OpenBSD target audience? In which areas it is the most popular OS? I worked with Windows, GNU/Linux and macOS (OSX) but never tried OpenBSD.
OpenBSD is great if you enjoy rooting around in the innards. I find the code simple and easy to read. Man pages are extraordinarily complete and accurate. OpenBSD devs go out of their way to delete unused and crufty code.
I noticed this first hand in while submitting a patch for my macbook's touchpad to FreeBSD's wsp driver and then comparing to OpenBSD's driver... The approaches between FreeBSD's and OpenBSD's driver couldn't be more opposite: FreeBSD's is big, explicitly listing each hardware revision/model (hence the reason I had to go in there and add mine), OpenBSD's very minimal, implicitly inferring all hardware revision options so users don't have to add each and every one, it's also very neat and tidy which I think is an underrated quality in source.
Admittedly this is only one file from one small number of devs, far from the whole of FreeBSD, but the contrast matches much of what i've heard of OpenBSD's approach: minimise cruft and bad code, if it's shit and not easy to re-write then delete it, better to be minimal than buggy and insecure.
Full Disclosure: My comment may well be outdated since I moved away from FreeBSD for my desktop 2 years ago, I have nothing against it, I just needed (other) working drivers.