Been running 6.5 snapshots in my travel laptop for some weeks and everything just works. The laptop is a ThinkPad X200 which is a bit slow for my needs, but upgrading it to ThinkPad X230 later this week should help.
I really enjoy how simple the system is after all these years with Linux. I will always continue using Linux in my main computers, but for surfing, some hobby programming and as a travel OS OpenBSD definitely won me over.
And I guess it runs quite nicely in the X250 and T450 tier already, maybe even newer ThinkPads. And when I say runs, I mean runs much nicer than many Linux distributions with their default installation.
>I really enjoy how simple the system is after all these years with Linux.
I still shake my head when I think back to the 90s and how Linux managed to overtake the BSDs. Good to see they are still very much alive and moving forward.
I love the simplicity of OpenBSD as well, but not all Linuxes are bloated, Alpine for instance is quite reasonable. The main benefits of Linux are ZFS and Docker, as well as wider hardware support.
Odd that you put this on a the travel laptop and not the desktop, I imagine most OS polygot its the inverse for things like battery life, touchpad drivers, webcam driver. Am curious why not make the switch on desktop? Same semantics? Same dotfiles?
Do you use the same window manager across both linux and openbsd?
Also what's the "much nicer" you refer to.. Please sell me
Of all of the places a Bee and Puppycat fan might expect to find Natasha Allegri's work ... release art (?!) for OpenBSD 6.5 is perhaps the last I would have expected.
Oh my, what is the story behind the piece of artwork in this release?
The buzz around OpenBSD always led me to believe it's developed by mole people who subsist on cryptographically secure random donations of soda crackers and water.
Yet here on their release page is a big beautiful image that precedes technical release desiderata.
Can more projects do more beautiful artwork like this?
Also, can I support OpenBSD by buying a tshirt with this artwork on it?
Edit: Just noticed that the stem of the "p" in "OpenBSD" is not obscured by the underline (at least in Chrome). That, along with the italic "Open" with non-italic "BSD" is quite aesthetically pleasing. Is this due to a design whiz who got interested in BSD, or is this just HTML5 doing its thing?
> First release of unwind(8), a validating, recursive nameserver for 127.0.0.1. It is particularly suitable for laptops moving between networks.
When systemd-resolvd was first released it was the biggest mistake ever to write a new recursive resolver instead of using unbound or dnsmasq. Also since DNS ".. wasn't broken, so it did not need fixing".
I wonder if unwind will be received with the same hostility.
Just to say I also love this OS, although I'm very far from a hardcore hacker.
It just worked out of the box on that generic unbranded laptop I retrieved (no touchpad though).
I use Xfce wich is well integrated, and the package manager is plain simple and easy.
Definately better experience than my previous Linux ones.
Some penalty on performance though.
This is some serious OpenBSD artwork.
I would love that they reconsider the 'no product' policy. I understand the logistical nightmare of pressed CDs though...
Well, at this point it'd be pressed dual layer blu rays though, i downloaded the entire version and just the amd64 directories are around 45GB in size. I do not understand why they feel the need to associate OS versions with 3rd party packages though, why have an OpenBSD 6.5 version of -say- the 0ad game instead of an OpenBSD version of it that you say it needs at least OpenBSD 6.5 (or whatever) version to run?
(same question about Linux distros in general, FWIW... i just do not see the point of packaging so much stuff for a single OS version, it is like if Windows did the same thing - ignoring licensing - Windows 10 would include Photoshop, Steam, DOOM, Visual Studio, Maya, 3ds max and pretty much every other program with a bit of popularity ever made)
Well, at least a single arch version still fits on a single disk medium, last time i checked Debian needed several DL BDs (although perhaps a single BDXL disk, once they become available, will work... assuming we also ever burners for those).
As a long time Linux user, I keep thinking about trying a BSD variant, but I get hung up on two things.
1) Which do I pick? NetBSD? OpenBSD?
2) Hardware? I'm thinking about an old ThinkPad for programming, and it looks like OpenBSD at least should run fine on that. What's hardware support like overall?
An Thinkpad up to the 4-Series (x240,t440,t540) can run any BSD, but after that, OpenBSD is your best bet. NetBSD (the one I learned about Unix with) has fallen a bit behind in features and hardware support, it is rarely used for production any more (makes me sad, but that is how it is). FreeBSD has a giant set of features and has the most current and largest software library, yet it does not run perfect on newer Laptops. OpenBSD ist more conservative and very pure, is used in some production environments, is actively developed but has the smallest and least up-to-date software library. So you can choose which disadvantage you can live most with. NetBSD is said to run on the largest number of platforms, but I'd argue that in practice Linux took its place long ago.
You won't know until you try them out. My best advice is to download them all and fire up some virtual machines and get installing. Build each of the systems to meet your needs and see how you feel about the admin process.
For my more basic needs which is development I chose OpenBSD based on their simple, pragmatic design coupled with tight security practices in coding. Their documentation is excellent and their man pages are easy to grok and can get you 80% of the way to your goal most of the time without resorting to a search engine for help. Their FAQ pages are also full of simple, straightforward information and how-to guides that are very newbie friendly. I'm not an IT expert or unix admin, I do this for fun and as a semi serious hobby. So it's really comforting when you can type 'man networking' and figure out how to assign a static ip to an ethernet interface without having to resort to a search engine.
Hardware support is pretty good and I have it running on an older athlon x4 system, IBM T40 laptop, and my APU2 board from PC Engines (No problem installing to the SD card). Everything just works and I've yet to find a machine that can't properly run OpenBSD.
The rub is the system is more old school unix than "modern" Linux desktop. So don't expect things to be "Linux Gnome desktop easy". But it is by no means difficult to install, configure and use if you are somewhat knowledgeable with the comand line. If this intimidates you, perhaps you could go with a more desktop oriented BSD like TrueOS, a FreeBSD fork and start there. That's how I got familiar with the unix world; start with a hand holding distro and work your way down to the engine rooms ;-)
Most OpenBSD devs seem to do their development on OpenBSD-running ThinkPads, so I'd say that's a good choice.
I ran OpenBSD 6.something (wanna say 6.1?) on my work laptop (ThinkPad T470) for awhile. Only significant issue was that the keyboard would intermittently wig out when booted via UEFI (affected Linux, too; legacy booting was not affected). I ended up switching to Slackware (needed to be able to run Google Hangouts and Zoom, both of which require Linux), but I'm strongly considering switching back now that vmd is a thing (since it can theoretically satisfy my Linux-requiring needs via exposing an X server to the VM or using VNC or something).
I just got a ThinkPad X230 with an IPS screen and an i7 CPU for 180 euros. It's the last one with a non-ULV CPU, which means it's still quite fast. And it all works perfectly, except maybe the bluetooth and fingerprint reader. With a 9-cell battery you'll get easily enough hours of usage, with apmd I'm clocking around 5-6 hours, which is fine for my use.
I, like you, am quite curious about it. I've given OpenBSD a few tries and it runs quite well in a VM, but I've never managed to get it running properly with wifi. I guess it's time to give it a new go, considering there's a bunch of wifi-improvements listed.
I use OpenBSD as firewall appliance, router, SSH bastion, even a general purpose terminal server that takes care of a few cron automated bash scripts.
For the typical workstation - being able to run Linux VMs, Docker/Containers are a blocker for me to use OpenBSD. The closest I have got to the OpenBSD experience is with Void linux. No Systemd, No frills minimal Linux. It is as safe/bloated/feature rich as you configure it to be.
Good to see another version of OpenBSD out. I love it for servers, the easy setup, solid package management, and security are first rate. The only reason I can't switch to it for desktop is that the Jetbrains IDEs have some issues due to no OpenBSD support Pty libraries, so debugging doesn't work, otherwise I'd be a full convert.
Still no unified buffer cache. :-( The lack of coherence and memory reuse between mmap(2) and read(2) is my single biggest beef with OpenBSD right now. It's a great system in terms of robustness, documentation, and philosophical unification. It's a shame its kernel still thinks Ronald Reagan is president.
What coherence is lacking? OpenBSD supports msync(2), which is the only POSIX mechanism I know of for ensuring coherency between read(2) and shared file mappings. Otherwise relying on unspecified behavior sounds dangerous.
Well, simplicity is one thing, but I was shocked to learn that it doesn't even come with the complete POSIX toolbox (e.g. out of the box awk is missing). And finding out that `ftp` also handles http and https was a bit weird too.
To some extent, I like that simplicity too (especially security wise) but I wonder if they are taking it too far.
> ROP mitigations in clang(1) have been improved, resulting in a significant decrease in the number of polymorphic ROP gadgets in binaries on i386/amd64.
Does anybody know if there's a writeup somewhere? Or what are the commits to look at.
Sorry for noob question, but why would one use OpenBSD instead of FreeBSD? I like latter, but also hear good things about former, although there are some limitations (e.g. no ZFS).
Simplicity. I have a long love for FreeBSD, but the project has different aims than OpenBSD.
Linux and FreeBSD are novels. OpenBSD strives to be a short poem.
Linux and FreeBSD push really hard to add cutting-edge features, but OpenBSD pushes hard to see what can be removed and still retain essential functionality. OpenBSD packs a remarkable amount of functionality into a code footprint that doesn’t feel like it has grown appreciably since I first ran it in the late 90s.
At the same time, this flensing process has allowed OpenBSD to move quickly on some innovations like “doas” instead of sudo. They also maintain cononical implementations of their other products like OpenSSH and were able to move quickly to their cleaned-up OpenSSL implementation LibreSSL.
As for laptop support, I wouldn’t say their hardware support compares to Linux. That is, they don’t support everything. Rather, for supported laptop (and desktop!) hardware, that suppport is excellent. Put another way: that which is supported is supported very well.
t's very compact and simple and you don't need Google to solve problems because the base system is thoroughly documented.
It has everything I need, and nothing more.
OpenBSD isn't suitable for every use case because rarely used features tend to get removed instead of falling into disrepair from lack of maintenance, but when it does work, it works predictably and reliably. I was able to run OpenBSD on my desktop and have everything work flawlessly out-of-the-box, whereas with FreeBSD I encountered frequent crashes when using dual monitors. I suppose my configuration isn't something that the FreeBSD developers use, so while it "works", it doesn't work.
In the end I returned to Linux because I sometimes play games using Steam and Wine, neither of which is likely to ever be supported on OpenBSD, but if OpenBSD provides everything you need, it's certainly worth trying it out.
* security -- the code is audited and hardened to a greater degree than any other general purpose OS on the planet (embedded safety critical microkernel systems would be the exception)
* routing suite -- one of the most well integrated open source routing suites out there (alternatives include BIRD and free range routing / quagga)
* firewall -- their firewall is flexible, fully featured, and easy to configure. It has been adopted by other BSDs, but development and new features happen in OpenBSD first.
Weaknesses of OpenBSD:
performance -- security is valued over optimized code, so the OS will not be as efficient or handle as many connections as a Linux or FreeBSD server could
* lack of ZFS
Compared to OpenBSD, FreeBSD has a slightly worse firewall implementation (originally sourced from OpenBSD), better networking and computing performance, and ZFS.
What type of device are you considering using OpenBSD or FreeBSD for?
Replying from the latest -current snapshot on my desktop (AMD Ryzen 7 / B450 chipset / ECC RAM) and have nothing but good things to say about OpenBSD. As others have iterated, this operating system is extremely reliable, secure by default, very well documented, and I have not found performance to be an issue whatsoever. Definitely recommend everyone, especially Linux users, to check it out!
[+] [-] pimeys|6 years ago|reply
I really enjoy how simple the system is after all these years with Linux. I will always continue using Linux in my main computers, but for surfing, some hobby programming and as a travel OS OpenBSD definitely won me over.
And I guess it runs quite nicely in the X250 and T450 tier already, maybe even newer ThinkPads. And when I say runs, I mean runs much nicer than many Linux distributions with their default installation.
[+] [-] mikece|6 years ago|reply
I still shake my head when I think back to the 90s and how Linux managed to overtake the BSDs. Good to see they are still very much alive and moving forward.
[+] [-] makz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fmajid|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sdfsdfsdfsdf3|6 years ago|reply
Do you use the same window manager across both linux and openbsd?
Also what's the "much nicer" you refer to.. Please sell me
[+] [-] MuffinFlavored|6 years ago|reply
Mac OS X has won me (and many others) over when it comes to these topics. I'm curious why BSD would be your choice. It sounds painful?
[+] [-] ixtli|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cpach|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jancsika|6 years ago|reply
The buzz around OpenBSD always led me to believe it's developed by mole people who subsist on cryptographically secure random donations of soda crackers and water.
Yet here on their release page is a big beautiful image that precedes technical release desiderata.
Can more projects do more beautiful artwork like this?
Also, can I support OpenBSD by buying a tshirt with this artwork on it?
Edit: Just noticed that the stem of the "p" in "OpenBSD" is not obscured by the underline (at least in Chrome). That, along with the italic "Open" with non-italic "BSD" is quite aesthetically pleasing. Is this due to a design whiz who got interested in BSD, or is this just HTML5 doing its thing?
[+] [-] justinsaccount|6 years ago|reply
When systemd-resolvd was first released it was the biggest mistake ever to write a new recursive resolver instead of using unbound or dnsmasq. Also since DNS ".. wasn't broken, so it did not need fixing".
I wonder if unwind will be received with the same hostility.
[+] [-] bigato|6 years ago|reply
That is really great!
[+] [-] snazz|6 years ago|reply
From a security standpoint this makes sense, of course, but how are you supposed to deal with a half-desktop-half-server system?
[+] [-] doodpants|6 years ago|reply
Woah, it's from the future!
[+] [-] eb0la|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ptidhomme|6 years ago|reply
It just worked out of the box on that generic unbranded laptop I retrieved (no touchpad though). I use Xfce wich is well integrated, and the package manager is plain simple and easy.
Definately better experience than my previous Linux ones. Some penalty on performance though.
PS : I've put it on my Raspberry Pi too.
[+] [-] fstephany|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] badsectoracula|6 years ago|reply
(same question about Linux distros in general, FWIW... i just do not see the point of packaging so much stuff for a single OS version, it is like if Windows did the same thing - ignoring licensing - Windows 10 would include Photoshop, Steam, DOOM, Visual Studio, Maya, 3ds max and pretty much every other program with a bit of popularity ever made)
Well, at least a single arch version still fits on a single disk medium, last time i checked Debian needed several DL BDs (although perhaps a single BDXL disk, once they become available, will work... assuming we also ever burners for those).
[+] [-] Accacin|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geff82|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MisterTea|6 years ago|reply
For my more basic needs which is development I chose OpenBSD based on their simple, pragmatic design coupled with tight security practices in coding. Their documentation is excellent and their man pages are easy to grok and can get you 80% of the way to your goal most of the time without resorting to a search engine for help. Their FAQ pages are also full of simple, straightforward information and how-to guides that are very newbie friendly. I'm not an IT expert or unix admin, I do this for fun and as a semi serious hobby. So it's really comforting when you can type 'man networking' and figure out how to assign a static ip to an ethernet interface without having to resort to a search engine.
Hardware support is pretty good and I have it running on an older athlon x4 system, IBM T40 laptop, and my APU2 board from PC Engines (No problem installing to the SD card). Everything just works and I've yet to find a machine that can't properly run OpenBSD.
The rub is the system is more old school unix than "modern" Linux desktop. So don't expect things to be "Linux Gnome desktop easy". But it is by no means difficult to install, configure and use if you are somewhat knowledgeable with the comand line. If this intimidates you, perhaps you could go with a more desktop oriented BSD like TrueOS, a FreeBSD fork and start there. That's how I got familiar with the unix world; start with a hand holding distro and work your way down to the engine rooms ;-)
[+] [-] yellowapple|6 years ago|reply
OpenBSD :)
> Hardware?
Most OpenBSD devs seem to do their development on OpenBSD-running ThinkPads, so I'd say that's a good choice.
I ran OpenBSD 6.something (wanna say 6.1?) on my work laptop (ThinkPad T470) for awhile. Only significant issue was that the keyboard would intermittently wig out when booted via UEFI (affected Linux, too; legacy booting was not affected). I ended up switching to Slackware (needed to be able to run Google Hangouts and Zoom, both of which require Linux), but I'm strongly considering switching back now that vmd is a thing (since it can theoretically satisfy my Linux-requiring needs via exposing an X server to the VM or using VNC or something).
[+] [-] pfortuny|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pimeys|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ahje|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enriquto|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reacharavindh|6 years ago|reply
For the typical workstation - being able to run Linux VMs, Docker/Containers are a blocker for me to use OpenBSD. The closest I have got to the OpenBSD experience is with Void linux. No Systemd, No frills minimal Linux. It is as safe/bloated/feature rich as you configure it to be.
[+] [-] brobdingnagians|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gfiorav|6 years ago|reply
Can anyone here share their "switch to BSD" story and what advantages it offered over their departing distro?
[+] [-] ben_bai|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quotemstr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DblPlusUngood|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _wldu|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crehn|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arendtio|6 years ago|reply
To some extent, I like that simplicity too (especially security wise) but I wonder if they are taking it too far.
[+] [-] alecco|6 years ago|reply
Does anybody know if there's a writeup somewhere? Or what are the commits to look at.
[+] [-] colinhb|6 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.openbsd.org/papers/eurobsdcon2018-rop.pdf
[+] [-] brynet|6 years ago|reply
Slides: https://www.openbsd.org/papers/asiabsdcon2019-rop-slides.pdf
Paper: https://www.openbsd.org/papers/asiabsdcon2019-rop-paper.pdf
[+] [-] nprescott|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rooam-dev|6 years ago|reply
Thank you in advance.
[+] [-] peatmoss|6 years ago|reply
Linux and FreeBSD are novels. OpenBSD strives to be a short poem.
Linux and FreeBSD push really hard to add cutting-edge features, but OpenBSD pushes hard to see what can be removed and still retain essential functionality. OpenBSD packs a remarkable amount of functionality into a code footprint that doesn’t feel like it has grown appreciably since I first ran it in the late 90s.
At the same time, this flensing process has allowed OpenBSD to move quickly on some innovations like “doas” instead of sudo. They also maintain cononical implementations of their other products like OpenSSH and were able to move quickly to their cleaned-up OpenSSL implementation LibreSSL.
As for laptop support, I wouldn’t say their hardware support compares to Linux. That is, they don’t support everything. Rather, for supported laptop (and desktop!) hardware, that suppport is excellent. Put another way: that which is supported is supported very well.
[+] [-] chousuke|6 years ago|reply
t's very compact and simple and you don't need Google to solve problems because the base system is thoroughly documented.
It has everything I need, and nothing more.
OpenBSD isn't suitable for every use case because rarely used features tend to get removed instead of falling into disrepair from lack of maintenance, but when it does work, it works predictably and reliably. I was able to run OpenBSD on my desktop and have everything work flawlessly out-of-the-box, whereas with FreeBSD I encountered frequent crashes when using dual monitors. I suppose my configuration isn't something that the FreeBSD developers use, so while it "works", it doesn't work.
In the end I returned to Linux because I sometimes play games using Steam and Wine, neither of which is likely to ever be supported on OpenBSD, but if OpenBSD provides everything you need, it's certainly worth trying it out.
[+] [-] pimeys|6 years ago|reply
FreeBSD is nice for a file server, OpenBSD for a laptop.
[+] [-] CameronNemo|6 years ago|reply
* security -- the code is audited and hardened to a greater degree than any other general purpose OS on the planet (embedded safety critical microkernel systems would be the exception)
* routing suite -- one of the most well integrated open source routing suites out there (alternatives include BIRD and free range routing / quagga)
* firewall -- their firewall is flexible, fully featured, and easy to configure. It has been adopted by other BSDs, but development and new features happen in OpenBSD first.
Weaknesses of OpenBSD:
performance -- security is valued over optimized code, so the OS will not be as efficient or handle as many connections as a Linux or FreeBSD server could
* lack of ZFS
Compared to OpenBSD, FreeBSD has a slightly worse firewall implementation (originally sourced from OpenBSD), better networking and computing performance, and ZFS.
What type of device are you considering using OpenBSD or FreeBSD for?
[+] [-] bigato|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oil25|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cpach|6 years ago|reply
https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg49128.html
Does anyone know if that driver eliminates the need for doing NTP sync in the guest VM?
[+] [-] JdeBP|6 years ago|reply
* https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/467632/5132
[+] [-] mugwort13|6 years ago|reply