What truly suprises me about BSDs is their simplicity and low footprint, OpenBSD being gold standard.
I've been playing with `byve` the last two weeks (I highly recommend vermaden's blog for anyone interested in BSDs and obviously the handbooks of each project) and I'm seriously thinking not doing a dual boot Linux install again. On my old x230 (which is running FreeBSD) I will be installing OpenBSD just to become more familiar with it.
I still don't get why just after installing Debian `top` shows me around 200 proceses. BSDs? Under 20. Other thing that pisses me off is for example how polluted (at least on Ubuntu) mountpoints are. Package management is also fragmented on Linux, while on BSDs is either a flavour of `pkg` or ports.
Perhaps I should still try more minimalistic Linux distributions, just don't know which are good candidates
Don't get me wrong, I love Linux and still recommend it heavily to non-tech people around me but when you taste a BSD is hard to go back.
Top on linux shows kernel threads (all the processes in square brackets), on BSD it doesn't show these afaik. A fresh debian install only lists a handfull of processes (all the expected ones, ssh, systemd, ntp, gettys etc) besides the 200+ kernel-threads.
Uh, ok then. I always thought that those were actually real kernel processes. What's the use of having top report those kernel threads? Is it possible to renice them?
Openbsd has been my router for a decade... I have a ansible playbook that does everything I need... I use a cheap USB drive in a fanless computer the only failure has been the $9 USB drive
If I had a nickel for every time my OpenBSD buddies told me "your ASUS router is not secure, just configure an OpenBSD machine as your router", I'd have a lot of nickels.
The part they never tell me is what hardware they recommend for the Wi-Fi, or rather which devices have OpenBSD driver support and allow for at least 4-5 good connections over 802.11ac?
I'm all for it, I just don't know where to start on the hardware.
You've got this wrong my friend. You don't use Wi-Fi on a router. You get a separate Wi-Fi Access Point device for that. I use a fanless Intel N100 2.5Gb x4 port system from AliExpress as the router with OpnSense and a Ubiquity Wi-Fi 7 access point for the wireless.
I think I get what you're implying. As long as the router itself with its firewall + DNS + NAT, is secure from attacks by actors over there internet, the access point I will connect to it only needs to be secure against people within 100 feet of it.
My only concern here is configuring an access point to just be a dumb antenna that xmits/recvs and AES encrypts/decrypts ethernet packets from a handful of MAC addresses without doing NAT or any other additional processing of those packets. The concerns my OpenBSD buddies have about the software on ASUS routers is well-founded, but I don't think any of us is sufficiently versed in layer 2 security.
What's the extent of your expertise in layer 2? I would rest easy as long as my router and access point are not willy-nilly giving away my MAC addresses to fine institutions like this place.
Yeap, actually I haven't run directly `bhyve` but using the `vm` wrapper as is very convenient.
I haven't looked at passrhrough yet, but I do feel that if I need to use it I would probably have to fight a bit with it, anyone had a hard experience setting it up?
No big fight, you just have to exclude the devices at boot so the vm can take them over [1] and if you have a AMD-System add that [2] and use the nvme virtual harddisk [3]
Nothing useful to add, just a "no". I wasn't trying to do GPU passthrough but instead passthrough a PCI card with four independent USB controllers so I could allocate those ports to VMs.
Excluded the devices at boot with pptdevs. Using vm for bhyve management so added `passthru0="10/0/0"` (device id) to the vm config. Started it up. Device was in the VM.
Saw a splendid thread last week on how thousands of Americans didn't realise "Shaun the Sheep" is a pun. Shorn / Shaun, but apparently, only in UK English.
Bhyve == bee hive == lots of individual cells, the occupants all cooperating and working together...?
While at it, a good minimalistic Linux could be Void Linux, which has several BSD folks on the team. I'm running it for about 7 years, and am happy with it. Unlike BSDs though, it's a rolling release, so I get fresh packages a few days after an upstream release.
Arch Linux is the closest I've seen to BSD in the Linux-verse. I recommend trying it. I'm not sure about production though, or using more exotic things like CUDA.
> Arch Linux is the closest I've seen to BSD in the Linux-verse.
It really isn't. The BSDs are smaller and cleaner, especially OpenBSD, which is positively minimal. Arch is huge.
The closest Linux to OpenBSD is probably Alpine, of all those I've seen. Takes as much disk as most modern distros take RAM, and because of no glibc and no systemd, a tonne of familiar Linux tools aren't available or don't work... just the old fashioned Unixy stuff... which is very much how running a BSD feels.
>and I'm seriously thinking not doing a dual boot Linux install again
Same here, i had dualboot Arch/FreeBSD for some years, but i just don't need that arch install i just stayed in FreeBSD and for games i have a bhyve Win11 VM (with GPU Passthrough) and that's all i need.
The BSDs seem to have their own fragmentation as well. All targeting their own niches and somewhat overlapping work. For example or ZFS or virtualization technologies that aren’t cross-pollinated easily.
Like, it’d be cool to have zfs on openbsd, etc. But you can’t easily mix and match.
At least on the linux side you can usually fit something into a different distro if you wanted without an insane level of effort.
I'm impressed that they still maintain PA-RISC support even though HP discontinued that architecture in 2008.
They maintain all these architectures in such a small, consolidated codebase with such minimal (if any) bloat.
Their built-in httpd is far and away the best experience I ever had setting up a static file server for my local network, and I can't think of many times where I would ever need anything I couldn't do with the built-in FastCGI support.
I'm also pleasantly surprised by how well Chicago95 (a Windows 95-style UI based on xfce) works on OpenBSD, even though the author never intended to run it on anything but xubuntu. I wouldn't recommend trying that unless you're willing to roll up your sleeves, but the payoff definitely justifies the elbow grease if you like that look and feel better than xenodm, XFCE, or GNOME.
You did a lot of cool things, mister. How do I send you pizza (from one of the good places)?
Glad to see how many high-value changes OpenBSD is receiving. You just inspired me to get Chicago95 up and running on an old MacBook I have lying around right now, and replace the battery. I run it off of an old Lenovo Thinkcentre that I use as a server on my local network, but I haven't been using it as my daily driver. The number of things I can run on macOS is a lot smaller than it used to be 15 years ago, so I might give OpenBSD another shot as my daily driver.
P.S. I didn't know there were other people interested in using Chicago95 on OpenBSD, let alone OpenBSD contributors. Good stuff, man!
Yeah, after this was ported to OpenBSD by kn@ earlier this year. I just found the combination to be silly, booting OpenBSD on an Apple Silicon Mac to run a Win95 themed DE with the classic Windows 95 startup sound, it does require some tweaking. I also followed the instructions on the GitHub project page.
> How do I send you pizza (from one of the good places)?
Yeah. When I was a high school student, we set up the new school network (end of the 90s). We used Windows NT on all the desktops and the domain/file server and SuSE Linux as a firewall/router. The whole setup was super stable and NT ran well, even on the modest desktop hardware.
When we graduated, maintenance was taken over by a local consumer PC builder and had no clue experience maintaining corporate/organization networks. They replaced all desktops and servers by Windows 9x (probably 98), as it was all they knew and the network was constantly down, desktops broken/compromised, etc.
NT 4.0 was a really good OS in those days for servers/work desktops. It was less great for games (though IIRC there was DirectX at some point).
Despite Win2k and NT4 kinda having a rep for not for gaming, I found that most games actually did run on them fine. Especially Win2k, probably the most underrated OS of all time in the Windows lineup.
Really I think it got that rep mostly from people trying to run DOS games or shoddy ports from DOS to early Windows that still relied on a bunch of DOS stuff.
I'm a long-time Linux user, but have always been drawn to OpenBSD, in large part due to the team's philosophy on software. I wish I had the willpower to switch to it as my main OS, but unfortunately, my workflow is too dependent on popular software and cutting-edge hardware, which historically don't work too well on OpenBSD. I don't blame the team for it—in fact I applaud their unwavering commitment to their values. It's what makes the system great, after all.
Regardless, I'm grateful that everyone can still benefit from the great set of tools that were started, and most still maintained, in the OpenBSD project. OpenSSH, PF, tmux, etc. They're a beacon of light in the software world.
What is the status on FS journaling/softupdates? I used to like openBSD but it kind of disappeared of my life once they removed support for softupdates a couple of years ago. I am not so fond of those fsck and lost data we used to have on an occasional basis after an unexpected hard shutdown due to a power cut in the 90's.
> I am not so fond of those fsck and lost data we used to have on an occasional basis after an unexpected hard shutdown due to a power cut in the 90's.
Yup, still the case today.
Currently with an SSD, when there’s a power cut, there’s about a 20% chance my router will require me to walk downstairs and plug in a keyboard, type “fsck” manually and press y at all the prompts.
I haven’t actually had any issues with noticeable data loss though.
I’d settle for a default “boot anyway, press y for all fsck questions” mode on boot. I just don’t want to have to physically touch the thing.
> Currently with an SSD, when there’s a power cut, there’s about a 20% chance my router will require me to walk downstairs and plug in a keyboard, type “fsck” manually and press y at all the prompts.
> I’d settle for a default “boot anyway, press y for all fsck questions” mode on boot. I just don’t want to have to physically touch the thing.
Look up where fsck is run in /etc/rc and add the -y there.
Softupdates was never an approach towards journaling. It was removed because it caused more problems than it solved and because its complexity stood in the way of future work to improve FFS2.
AFAIK there's currently no news about plans on getting journaling into FFS2 or bringing one of the other modern file systems onboard. The most "modern" choices you have on OpenBSD is FFS2 and ext3 (supported through OpenBSD's ext2 driver but without journaling).
My own experience with FFS/FFS2 the past 20 or so years is that it's been wholly robust through the relatively few power outages and other incidents I've had. While I wouldn't mind it becoming snappier I do prefer that its fully synchronous. I've never used softupdates.
FFS/FFS2 has been reliable for me, but unfortunately don’t have reliable power. It does frequently require fsck -y on boot. It’s not the most pleasant with my headless units requiring a serial cable.
My solution has been a huge UPS so they never turn off. Softupdates prevented this issue for over a decade (?), so hoping we get HAMMER2 or something down the road.
I’ve been running OpenBSD continuously since 3.4, and no other OS beats it in simplicity IMO. The upgrades have ticked along quickly and flawlessly year over year. I wish more systems would take a page out of that book and implement something like sysupgrade.
Then again, the sentence "tcp is outside of global lock" is very generalized, there are so many parts that got out of the kernel lock in pieces, like ip input, routing lookups and device packet handling that it is hard to talk about it as one singular thing that you just flip a switch on to make it MP-performant.
You could make filesystem code mp, disk device drivers mp and then still run on an IDE-disk which forces all IO to be one at a time and serialized first-come-first-served at which point all the work was for 'nothing'.
Same goes for networking, there are many many layers and places that all need code that actually allows for MP processing to improve its performance, fine grained locks (which reduce perf at this stage), then prove that the fine grained locks are sufficient for ALL use cases, all kinds of layering violations that could possibly happen, then you can unlock this single layer, and move to the next if nothing acts up on any machine.
Network performance has gotten steadily better during the last three or so years, to the tune of most network drivers today seeing around 2x throughput compared to a few years back.
I have a retired mid-2010s Celeron platform which managed about 300 Mbit/s on OpenBSD 7.1/7.2. With OpenBSD 7.6 it reached well over 700 MBit/sec. I also have an early 2020s Atom platform which saturates its 2.5GbE interface without any problems. Not all of the network drivers perform equally but the network stack improvements have all the same made them take pretty big leaps.
Not benchmarked on my system yet but I use OpenBSD on my home router (PCEngines APU2) and even before this stuff, OpenBSD could handle 1Gbit just fine. And that's with VLANs, LACP, a good number of PF rules, etc.
I was wondering about installing OpenBSD on my MacBook Air with M2.
I think I need to use Asahi Linux bootloader or something like that... I could not find if Wi-Fi, Sound, Bluetooth, etc will work. Please, someone let me know what is not working? I could not find one video on youtube about it.
Ditto here; upgrades are very boring under OpenBSD. You can keep the same setup for ages,
even more with cwm, xterm, mupdf, mpv and a bunch of CLI/TUI tools and games...
The only thing I hate about how boring OpenBSD upgrades are is that I often forget that there are new features I could be exploiting for my server configs. Everything works too smoothly so I'm rarely (if ever) forced to dive into the docs to fix things.
It really is and not just that. WireGuard being natively supported makes configuring your peers as easy as dumping the last of these example lines into /etc/hostname.wg[0-9]:
Simple, text-file based configuration for everything in the extensive base system and no drama between upgrades is really what makes you a happy OpenBSD user.
I'm surprised seeing improvements in Suspend/Hibernate support.
I've used OpenBSD on laptops before and it was _fine_. I thought they primarily target servers. This feels like laptop specific improvements. Perhaps to the benefits only to those developing OpenBSD.
On laptops with good support openbsd is sublime. I have a thinkpad x131 that I still use as a daily driver. Mainly because it runs obsd perfectly. never any problems suspending and resuming. I replaced the wifi when it was new to a supported model along with much cursing about lenovo card whitelist. perhaps the only black mark on it's record. It is getting quite long in the tooth by now but it still meets my needs. I shall be very sad when it dies.
Honestly the most underrated feature on at least this thinkpad is it has three physical mouse buttons. So nice. Now I have to check if lenovo still does that.
Apple generally has excellent sleep support, even on my old falling-to-pieces unibody which would KP if you looked at it funny I don’t remember résume ever being a concern.
I’m not going to say their ever degrading software quality won’t affect that one day, and I know that some updates have caused issues for some people, but I genuinely can’t remember it ever failing me and not doing its job correctly.
I run OpenBSD on two old laptops at home, two virtual machines, and one old former SOHO router/firewall appliance. So far I've upgrade all but one laptop, and once again I am impressed how painless the process is these days. And how reliable. One laptop has been running OpenBSD since 6.8-ish, and it's never given me any problems.
SEV and CC in general looks interesting seeing the slides. I hadn't heard of it yet.
Someone more knowledgeable than me will say if these encrypted VMs are also protected from bugged modules within the SoC or on the bus besides being protected from the hypervisor.
It also seems that they are adding inter-core features but I don't know whether they are related to removing locks within the kernel, embedded applications, or if they are moving to micro-kernel internally.
No, these encrypted VMs are not protected from buggy or malicious on-die components. SEV assumes that the SoC hardware is trusted.[1] And we don't even have to go that deep: both AMD SEV and Intel's equivalent, Intel SGX, have historically been vulnerable to side-channel and speculative-execution attacks, among others, that can undermine their isolation guarantees.[2]
[1]: "As with the previous SEV and SEV-ES features, under SEV-SNP the AMD System-on-Chip (SOC) hardware, the AMD Secure Processor (AMD-SP), and the VM itself are all treated as fully trusted." https://www.amd.com/content/dam/amd/en/documents/epyc-busine...
backdoors in the supply chain are always hard to avoid but if it can't even protect against third-party attackers including any of the hardware attached what's the point
Rip-packs and drill guards are designed for running system protection. Those don't protect against compromised components, though, so select your hardware with care?
Unfortunately no, I don't. At the very least we'll likely need to wait for support in Asahi Linux which provides for us the m1n1 bootloader, device trees, etc., as a first-stage.
The most compact, minimalist general purpose OS out there by far. Tiny memory footprint and loaded with network services built-in.
Linux has become so bloated its users can't in good conscience make fun of Microsoft anymore, they are worse.
Debian refuses to install with less than 512MB RAM, the text only installer will choke with less than that, it's pathetic. That's a console-only install, no GUI.
Meanwhile OpenBSD running all the default network services like sshd and smtpd uses < 32 MB RAM and that's with full ksh and real tools. That doesn't happen by accident.
Is that fair? Busybox has fewer features than OpenBSD coreutils but those in turn have fewer features than GNU coreutils. All three implement the entire POSIX spec as far as I am aware.
>Linux has become so bloated its users can't in good conscience make fun of Microsoft anymore, they are worse.
Please show me where Linux comes pre installed with ads, ai and other 3rd party adware and uses a start menu written in react that makes your CPU fans spin up when you press it a couple time
There is a enormous difference between bloat for the sake of feature or profit maximizing. If you think gnome and systemd are bloat then simply don't use them.
The parent commenter stated that even booting in text mode 512MB are not enough.
20 years ago you could run a whole KDE3 stack pretty happily among a live installer if you cared.
Ok pitty, I was about to install it on a 486DX4 with 32MB RAM for use as a webserver, maybe I will link a blog with my findings about it later here on HN.
Is there a cheap SBC in which it runs without hassle? I would like to give it a try. I've used Freebsd from 2000 up to 2015 or so, but never used openbsd
If you can get an Edgerouter Lite 3 it will run fine() on that, serial console, three gig ports, fanless and not-x86 and probably available for cheap if you look at used hw sites.
) as far as its hw goes, that is. Will not be competing in speed competitions, but cheap SBCs just never will, do they?
Which systems are limited to 512MB RAM today? Seems more like a case for a museeum. As such, use them with OSes from that epoch. Or upgrade, even if it seems wasteful.
I'd leave NetBSD for sub Pentium III machines, where OpenBSD's KALR and some security features
would hurt the performance notability. If you have a Pentium Pro/II@300 MHZ machine with 64-128MB of RAM NetBSD would be a nice choice.
You can always install cwm, oksh and some nice OpenBSD software from pkgin.
When I was in the college in the early 2000s, I had a friend who ran OpenBSD. He always sang its praises, mostly because it was the most secure operating system.
I tried a bunch of Linux Distributions and FreeBSD before mostly settling on MacOS, but never actually got around to running it.
Glad to see OpenBSD is still being actively developed.
I love obsd A perhaps unjustified amount, but not because it's security, I like it... well it's hard to explain, it's a small understandable system, but it's not a minimal system, there are enough built in services to put any linux distro to shame but they are all small, well built, well documented services, the OS as a whole hits well above it's punching weight. I find obsd makes for perhaps the best unix desktop system, but I don't mean desktop how mac or windows or even the linux desktop environments mean desktop. It is far simpler than that, I mean unix command line, window manager only style desktop. There is something about it, something that I find hard to put into words, but may be best described as comfortable.
But honestly, despite all that it's mainly what you are used to. I tolerate linux, it is one of the good guys, fighting the good fight and all that. But I still find it a bewildering mess compared to obsd. I am sure a primary linux user feels the same way about obsd.
I used to use it at University after one of the guys I was in labs with was using it for his daily driver. The first release I tried was 3.8.
It was quite a shock coming from SuSE 9.2. It was much easier to install than FreeBSD, however the installer is even more archaic than FreeBSD. Someone wrote a graphical installer years ago and but nobody bothered with it.
The BSDs really need at least something like the archinstall.
It is certainly different than Linux. You really need to read the FAQ and manuals as you won't find much out by doing a web search, unlike Linux. One of the other things that differs from Linux is that supported hardware / software will work, however Linux hardware support is obviously a lot better than in 2005 when I first started looking at OpenBSD.
Hard disagree, the Openbsd installer is the gold standard to which all other installers compare poorly.
When I picked a linux distro to put on my system to play games on, the one I choose was void linux, why, mainly because the installer looks and feels directly ripped off from obsd.
> Hard disagree, the Openbsd installer is the gold standard to which all other installers compare poorly.
No not really. I recently took my friend through it and there is several places where it is pretty easy to screw something up. Whenever people say stuff like this, they are usually accustomed to the quirks.
> When I picked a linux distro to put on my system to play games on, the one I choose was void linux, why, mainly because the installer looks and feels directly ripped off from obsd.
Choosing distros based on the installer is kinda a bit silly. I've done a Linux From Scratch build and I can tell you there is very little difference between one distro an another.
>> Hard disagree, the Openbsd installer is the gold standard to which all other installers compare poorly.
> No not really. I recently took my friend through it and there is several places where it is pretty easy to screw something up. Whenever people say stuff like this, they are usually accustomed to the quirks.
Like what places, and how are they pretty easy to screw up on? I'm genuinely curious, as to me it's the cleanest and most straight-forward console installer I've ever experienced. I managed to get it done the very first time I, 25 years ago, with zero *nix experience, decided to try OpenBSD. Also, you can always exit the installer and restart the process. You're not "screwed" unless you reboot at the end without having reflected over your instructions.
> Like what places, and how are they pretty easy to screw up on? I'm genuinely curious, as to me it's the cleanest and most straight-forward console installer I've ever experienced.
To you it is. I installed on 3.8 and it was not straightforward. I used to go to university with a guy that used OpenBSD and he even said the installation at the time was straight forward. So it isn't just me.
I can't remember specifics as it was about 4-6 months. It was something to do with drive labelling IIRC, it was super confusing and I think I just ended up removing drives temporarily.
> you can always exit the installer and restart the process.
Nope. I tried that. It did not work.
> You're not "screwed" unless you reboot at the end without having reflected over your instructions.
The installer is a plain *sh script. You simply ctrl+c to break out and return to the shell, then run "install" to start the script again. I can't see why you would end up with an installation medium containing a different installer than everyone else.
> The installer is a plain *sh script. You simply ctrl+c to break out and return to the shell, then run "install" to start the script again
I ended up in situation where that wasn't possible. I wasn't sure how that happened. But it did.
I have done many installations over the years on real hardware and VMs. It only happened once, but it can happen.
I could also bring up the issues with the auto partition layout that is suggest which can make impossible to install any larger of software after installation. Or how the disks can be confusingly labelled in some cases (especially in VMs).
The point being communicated is that it isn't as straightforward as many people claim.
I first started mucking about with it in like 3.8/3.9, and you had to do something which was very archaic (even for 20 years) with calculating partition size, so it has improved.
> I can't see why you would end up with an installation medium containing a different installer than everyone else.
I don't appreciate how you worded this.
I am not lying about my experience. I just can't remember the exact set of steps of what happened because it happened several months ago now.
> very little difference between one distro an another
These days the differences come down to systemd or no systemd. I joke that we should refer to it all as SystemD/Linux (akin to how "GNU/Linux" was used).
I did the LFS build with SysV init scripts. I think there is a systemd version of LFS. LFS was a good learning exercise to see generally how everything was put together. I wouldn't want to manually manage all of this myself.
If you look at the LFS compile instructions for each package they are essentially the same as the PKGBUILDs scripts in Arch, I suspect it is similar with Gentoo, Void or any other similar Linux distro.
It feels like Alpine tries to imitate the OpenBSD installer somewhat as well, but it is just not the same as it forces you to make choices between SSH servers, NTP daemons, etc. So, it still very much feels like the Linux "pick and mix box". What makes OpenBSD so special is that there is one choice, it tends to be a good choice, and it is the only choice they will support and therefore they will put in the hours to make it solid.
> the Openbsd installer is the gold standard to which all other installers compare poorly.
Very hard disagree.
It took me half a dozen installs in VMs before I dared try on hardware. I never managed to get the Arm64 version installed at all, due to the cryptic minimalist info the installer gave me, which wasn't anywhere near enough to go on.
I have it on hardware now. It took a day or 2 of work but now it runs it's totally stable. However, the Byzantine partitioning scheme it uses means that although I gave it 32GB of disk, I don't have enough disk space to install Xfce.
It is on a Thinkpad W500, on a ~250GB SSD, multibooting with WinXP64, and NetBSD 10, and both Crunchbang++ Linux and Alpine Linux.
I tend to find that people who praise the installer tell me that it's never crossed their mind to dual-boot and they find it simple because they single-boot it on a very over-specced system where space restraints don't matter much.
Similar thing with the disk layout happened to me in a VM. I just did auto layout and one of the partitions were so small I couldn't install any other software. I ended up remaking the VM and just using two partitions for the entire disk IIRC.
They have gotten used to stuff like this and think is normal.
Debian has similar issues with making partitions too small. It makes the /boot partition so small that if you have more than a couple kernel images, you run out space. If you use the LUKS crypt with LVM, the suggest layout would have vg-root too small.
If you use archinstall as I said you can be up and running in 20 minutes on a fast connection. You literally just state what you want setup through a menu, make a hot drink and you have a working desktop. It is pretty hassle free in my experience.
I haven't tried the FreeBSD installer in a couple of years but I always find that I end up lost in the menus or something doesn't work correctly. Then I am kinda left faffing trying to get X working, ports or something else working. I couldn't set the desktop resolution properly and I suspect there was some magic flag I had set somewhere or install firmware.
I just can't be bothered when I can install Debian or Arch in about 15-20 minutes and everything works fine.
>I just can't be bothered when I can install Debian or Arch in about 15-20 minutes and everything works fine.
And that's perfectly fine, i would also never criticize people who just buy a Mac, some people are just interested in different stuff. However if you have problems getting lost in "menus" but wanna try out a BSD try GhostBSD:
> And that's perfectly fine, i would also never criticize people who just buy a Mac, some people are just interested in different stuff.
I used to be an operating system enthusiast. I've tried them all at one time. I just have a job now (I have to use Windows at work) and I just not interested in faffing to get graphics working. The experience hasn't changed that much with FreeBSD in 20 years. Some might be okay with that, but I don't really want to have to spend 3 days getting a basic desktop environment behaving properly.
OpenBSD is better in this regard than FreeBSD, I've found.
> However if you have problems getting lost in "menus" but wanna try out a BSD try GhostBSD: https://www.ghostbsd.org/
This is kinda like distro-hopping. I don't want to run some weird fork of the OS, because you will end up with a new set problems potentially. I don't use derivative distros for this very reason and only use mainline distros.
I don't understand why (I don't care for wanky reasons that often quoted) that there isn't a mechanism for me to quickly get up an running with a desktop. The situation hasn't changed in 20+ years. Whereas Linux (for all the faults that it has) has effectively had this problem solved for over a decade now.
> It's really a YOU problem, i have working X on all my machines, have a good day.
Not at all. I can read the man pages and docs fine. Stuff like this should work out of the box by now. It doesn't with the BSDs typically. That is the reality.
Also, it isn't just X. It is other issues once you have X working.
Once you spent a good few hours sorting things out, there is almost no benefit over running a decent Linux distribution where almost all of this working OOTB.
I don't understand why you are getting bent out of shape. I am simply stating the facts as I see them.
> You do You and that's good, just use what you like.
Well obviously I am going to use what I like.
However stating that doesn't mean you stop me (or anyone else) from making constructive criticisms of something you like.
I have used tried many of the *nix variants over the last 20 years. It is just easier to use Linux if you want a desktop OS.
> Super happy for you, you found your OS and that's fine,
That isn't what I said. I said that Linux is easier than BSD for a desktop and there is no real reason why that should be the case. That is an objective fact.
I would rather use neither of these systems, but the alternatives are worse. At the moment Linux is the least worst option if you want a Desktop OS.
> but also super proud of myself that i can setup X on every FreeBSD machine so nonchalant ;)
As I said it isn't just X.
The point that you don't want to engage with (bit childish tbh), is that a lot of this should completely unnecessary. There really should need to be a fork of the OS for having a desktop configuration that works reasonably well out of the box.
That is failure of both the OS and the community, which judging by your username you seem to be a member.
False. There is some config required (these are in the READMEs that are in each package that specified what options need setting) and BTW some of it doesn't work on supported hardware.
I currently run a PC Engines APU2 as my home firewall/router. Been doing so for years and I really like it, yet I am still an OpenBSD newb. When I ran a sysupgrade from 7.5 -> 7.6, I completely ran out of space on /usr and the upgrade utterly failed. Had to reinstall full system at that point. The issue is that my hard drive is very small and the auto format utility only allocates 1.8G to /usr. Right now, I currently have 1.5G out of 1.8G in use. On the OpenBSD mailing lists, a user asked a question that is virtually identical to the situation I am in – they are worried that if they do another sysupgrade, it will fail and they will need to reinstall. A potential solution was proposed here [0] but the process seems somewhat complex for an OpenBSD newb like me. Could anyone point me in the right direction to guides that would detail the process, which the person on the mailing list describes, that basically involves deleting /usr/obj and /usr/src and allocating that ‘saved space’ back to /usr? Thanks.
Easier fix might be if you aren't using /usr/src (or /usr/opt) to move the contents of /usr/share/relink into /usr/src (make sure you move it, not copy, so that /usr/share/relink is empty), and then change the /usr/src mount point in /etc/fstab to /usr/share/relink. Reboot the machine and hopefully it works. If you ran out of space during the installation, you may have to repeat sysupgrade to reinstall the 7.8 sets to get all the object files where they belong.
If you look further down the thread you'll see more suggestions, I think this one would be an easier option than deleting partitions and creating a new partition mounted as /usr, since it's more or less just a change to fstab of what mounts towards which partition.
What truly suprises me about BSDs is their simplicity and low footprint, OpenBSD being gold standard.
I've been playing with `byve` the last two weeks (I highly recommend vermaden's blog for anyone interested in BSDs and obviously the handbooks of each project) and I'm seriously thinking not doing a dual boot Linux install again. On my old x230 (which is running FreeBSD) I will be installing OpenBSD just to become more familiar with it.
I still don't get why just after installing Debian `top` shows me around 200 proceses. BSDs? Under 20. Other thing that pisses me off is for example how polluted (at least on Ubuntu) mountpoints are. Package management is also fragmented on Linux, while on BSDs is either a flavour of `pkg` or ports.
Perhaps I should still try more minimalistic Linux distributions, just don't know which are good candidates
Don't get me wrong, I love Linux and still recommend it heavily to non-tech people around me but when you taste a BSD is hard to go back.
Top on linux shows kernel threads (all the processes in square brackets), on BSD it doesn't show these afaik. A fresh debian install only lists a handfull of processes (all the expected ones, ssh, systemd, ntp, gettys etc) besides the 200+ kernel-threads.
>on BSD it doesn't show these afaik
Your right, you can show the system-processes in top with Shift+S, threads with Shift+H
Uh, ok then. I always thought that those were actually real kernel processes. What's the use of having top report those kernel threads? Is it possible to renice them?
>What's the use of having top report those kernel threads?
Just a different "flavor"-default-setting of top, there's not much more behind it.
Linux views them all as tasks, and yes you can (although I don't know if top does that).
Openbsd has been my router for a decade... I have a ansible playbook that does everything I need... I use a cheap USB drive in a fanless computer the only failure has been the $9 USB drive
If I had a nickel for every time my OpenBSD buddies told me "your ASUS router is not secure, just configure an OpenBSD machine as your router", I'd have a lot of nickels.
The part they never tell me is what hardware they recommend for the Wi-Fi, or rather which devices have OpenBSD driver support and allow for at least 4-5 good connections over 802.11ac?
I'm all for it, I just don't know where to start on the hardware.
You've got this wrong my friend. You don't use Wi-Fi on a router. You get a separate Wi-Fi Access Point device for that. I use a fanless Intel N100 2.5Gb x4 port system from AliExpress as the router with OpnSense and a Ubiquity Wi-Fi 7 access point for the wireless.
I think I get what you're implying. As long as the router itself with its firewall + DNS + NAT, is secure from attacks by actors over there internet, the access point I will connect to it only needs to be secure against people within 100 feet of it.
My only concern here is configuring an access point to just be a dumb antenna that xmits/recvs and AES encrypts/decrypts ethernet packets from a handful of MAC addresses without doing NAT or any other additional processing of those packets. The concerns my OpenBSD buddies have about the software on ASUS routers is well-founded, but I don't think any of us is sufficiently versed in layer 2 security.
What's the extent of your expertise in layer 2? I would rest easy as long as my router and access point are not willy-nilly giving away my MAC addresses to fine institutions like this place.
My concern with the mini pcs from china (all global brands really accept dell/hp/lenovo) is a lack of prompt bios updates (let alone any)
Every few months there’s a new cpu/bios/firmware vuln since spectre
>>I've been playing with `byve` the last two weeks
I believe you meant "bhyve".
Yeap, actually I haven't run directly `bhyve` but using the `vm` wrapper as is very convenient.
I haven't looked at passrhrough yet, but I do feel that if I need to use it I would probably have to fight a bit with it, anyone had a hard experience setting it up?
No big fight, you just have to exclude the devices at boot so the vm can take them over [1] and if you have a AMD-System add that [2] and use the nvme virtual harddisk [3]
[1] https://dflund.se/~getz/Notes/2024/freebsd-gpu/#bhyve-passth...
[2] https://wiki.freebsd.org/bhyve/pci_passthru#Additional_Notes
[3] Creating a Windows Server 2019 VM using vm-bhyve : https://klarasystems.com/articles/from-0-to-bhyve-on-freebsd...
Nice! Thanks for sharing the links.
> anyone had a hard experience setting it up?
Nothing useful to add, just a "no". I wasn't trying to do GPU passthrough but instead passthrough a PCI card with four independent USB controllers so I could allocate those ports to VMs.
Excluded the devices at boot with pptdevs. Using vm for bhyve management so added `passthru0="10/0/0"` (device id) to the vm config. Started it up. Device was in the VM.
Nah the h is needless bloat
Ruins the pun, though. ;-)
Saw a splendid thread last week on how thousands of Americans didn't realise "Shaun the Sheep" is a pun. Shorn / Shaun, but apparently, only in UK English.
Bhyve == bee hive == lots of individual cells, the occupants all cooperating and working together...?
While at it, a good minimalistic Linux could be Void Linux, which has several BSD folks on the team. I'm running it for about 7 years, and am happy with it. Unlike BSDs though, it's a rolling release, so I get fresh packages a few days after an upstream release.
Arch Linux is the closest I've seen to BSD in the Linux-verse. I recommend trying it. I'm not sure about production though, or using more exotic things like CUDA.
> Arch Linux is the closest I've seen to BSD in the Linux-verse.
It really isn't. The BSDs are smaller and cleaner, especially OpenBSD, which is positively minimal. Arch is huge.
The closest Linux to OpenBSD is probably Alpine, of all those I've seen. Takes as much disk as most modern distros take RAM, and because of no glibc and no systemd, a tonne of familiar Linux tools aren't available or don't work... just the old fashioned Unixy stuff... which is very much how running a BSD feels.
The closest to OpenBSD in the Linux-verse clearly is Void Linux.
This was true before they switched to systemd. Now the pstree and mounts are as polluted with noise as any other distro.
>and I'm seriously thinking not doing a dual boot Linux install again
Same here, i had dualboot Arch/FreeBSD for some years, but i just don't need that arch install i just stayed in FreeBSD and for games i have a bhyve Win11 VM (with GPU Passthrough) and that's all i need.
The BSDs seem to have their own fragmentation as well. All targeting their own niches and somewhat overlapping work. For example or ZFS or virtualization technologies that aren’t cross-pollinated easily.
Like, it’d be cool to have zfs on openbsd, etc. But you can’t easily mix and match.
At least on the linux side you can usually fit something into a different distro if you wanted without an insane level of effort.
https://flak.tedunangst.com/post/ZFS-on-OpenBSD
I'm impressed that they still maintain PA-RISC support even though HP discontinued that architecture in 2008.
They maintain all these architectures in such a small, consolidated codebase with such minimal (if any) bloat.
Their built-in httpd is far and away the best experience I ever had setting up a static file server for my local network, and I can't think of many times where I would ever need anything I couldn't do with the built-in FastCGI support.
I'm also pleasantly surprised by how well Chicago95 (a Windows 95-style UI based on xfce) works on OpenBSD, even though the author never intended to run it on anything but xubuntu. I wouldn't recommend trying that unless you're willing to roll up your sleeves, but the payoff definitely justifies the elbow grease if you like that look and feel better than xenodm, XFCE, or GNOME.
> Chicago95
I did a thing. :-)
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/brynet_openbsd-activity-73074...
You did a lot of cool things, mister. How do I send you pizza (from one of the good places)?
Glad to see how many high-value changes OpenBSD is receiving. You just inspired me to get Chicago95 up and running on an old MacBook I have lying around right now, and replace the battery. I run it off of an old Lenovo Thinkcentre that I use as a server on my local network, but I haven't been using it as my daily driver. The number of things I can run on macOS is a lot smaller than it used to be 15 years ago, so I might give OpenBSD another shot as my daily driver.
P.S. I didn't know there were other people interested in using Chicago95 on OpenBSD, let alone OpenBSD contributors. Good stuff, man!
Yeah, after this was ported to OpenBSD by kn@ earlier this year. I just found the combination to be silly, booting OpenBSD on an Apple Silicon Mac to run a Win95 themed DE with the classic Windows 95 startup sound, it does require some tweaking. I also followed the instructions on the GitHub project page.
> How do I send you pizza (from one of the good places)?
You certainly don't have to, but I appreciate it!
https://brynet.ca/wallofpizza.html
hmmmmm youth.
I remember running windows95 overnight so that it could be a "server".
The next morning, moving the mouse was making the harddrive go nuts, it was paging just by moving the cursor!
Memory leak galore.
This makes me want to run linux as my daily driver! [1]
[1] https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95/blob/master/Screensho...
Well Windows 95 was never a server. MS already had the much better NT and in those days it was not bloated.
Yeah. When I was a high school student, we set up the new school network (end of the 90s). We used Windows NT on all the desktops and the domain/file server and SuSE Linux as a firewall/router. The whole setup was super stable and NT ran well, even on the modest desktop hardware.
When we graduated, maintenance was taken over by a local consumer PC builder and had no clue experience maintaining corporate/organization networks. They replaced all desktops and servers by Windows 9x (probably 98), as it was all they knew and the network was constantly down, desktops broken/compromised, etc.
NT 4.0 was a really good OS in those days for servers/work desktops. It was less great for games (though IIRC there was DirectX at some point).
NT4 ran quake perfectly, including glquake.
What other game was needed in the 90s?
Unreal; and later, Deus Ex, based on Unreal too :D.
But Windows 2000 was much better for gaming. NT4 supported DX3 and DX5 unnoficially'.
W2k had a DLL call flag to enable a Windows XP like compat mode:
http://www.activewin.com/tips/win2000/1/2000_tips_43.shtml
It only worked on desktop shortcuts, but enough to run most quirky Win95/98 games.
I think Unreal Tournament ran on NT4 as well.
Despite Win2k and NT4 kinda having a rep for not for gaming, I found that most games actually did run on them fine. Especially Win2k, probably the most underrated OS of all time in the Windows lineup.
Really I think it got that rep mostly from people trying to run DOS games or shoddy ports from DOS to early Windows that still relied on a bunch of DOS stuff.
I always suspected Microsoft tried to market it as such otherwise their Windows ME (remember that sh1t?) wouldn't sell...
win2k's support for games was miles ahead of NT4 because of DX 8.1? support. If not DX8, DX7 0a was for sure supported.
I'm a long-time Linux user, but have always been drawn to OpenBSD, in large part due to the team's philosophy on software. I wish I had the willpower to switch to it as my main OS, but unfortunately, my workflow is too dependent on popular software and cutting-edge hardware, which historically don't work too well on OpenBSD. I don't blame the team for it—in fact I applaud their unwavering commitment to their values. It's what makes the system great, after all.
Regardless, I'm grateful that everyone can still benefit from the great set of tools that were started, and most still maintained, in the OpenBSD project. OpenSSH, PF, tmux, etc. They're a beacon of light in the software world.
OpenBSD 7.8 release artwork by "Apsephion"
https://www.openbsd.org/images/Terraodontidae.png
https://www.openbsd.org/images/puffy78.gif
https://www.openbsd.org/78.html
Too bad they haven't done a release song since 7.3: https://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#73
What is the status on FS journaling/softupdates? I used to like openBSD but it kind of disappeared of my life once they removed support for softupdates a couple of years ago. I am not so fond of those fsck and lost data we used to have on an occasional basis after an unexpected hard shutdown due to a power cut in the 90's.
Are they any new FS supported nowadays?
> I am not so fond of those fsck and lost data we used to have on an occasional basis after an unexpected hard shutdown due to a power cut in the 90's.
Yup, still the case today.
Currently with an SSD, when there’s a power cut, there’s about a 20% chance my router will require me to walk downstairs and plug in a keyboard, type “fsck” manually and press y at all the prompts.
I haven’t actually had any issues with noticeable data loss though.
I’d settle for a default “boot anyway, press y for all fsck questions” mode on boot. I just don’t want to have to physically touch the thing.
> Currently with an SSD, when there’s a power cut, there’s about a 20% chance my router will require me to walk downstairs and plug in a keyboard, type “fsck” manually and press y at all the prompts.
> I’d settle for a default “boot anyway, press y for all fsck questions” mode on boot. I just don’t want to have to physically touch the thing.
Look up where fsck is run in /etc/rc and add the -y there.
It is a router, not a file server. Add the sync flag to fstab.
Softupdates was never an approach towards journaling. It was removed because it caused more problems than it solved and because its complexity stood in the way of future work to improve FFS2.
AFAIK there's currently no news about plans on getting journaling into FFS2 or bringing one of the other modern file systems onboard. The most "modern" choices you have on OpenBSD is FFS2 and ext3 (supported through OpenBSD's ext2 driver but without journaling).
My own experience with FFS/FFS2 the past 20 or so years is that it's been wholly robust through the relatively few power outages and other incidents I've had. While I wouldn't mind it becoming snappier I do prefer that its fully synchronous. I've never used softupdates.
>Softupdates was never an approach towards journaling.
Ehmm it is a alternative approach for fs consistency then journaling:
>>The use of soft updates obviates the need for a separate log or for most synchronous writes.
https://www.mckusick.com/softdep/
FFS/FFS2 has been reliable for me, but unfortunately don’t have reliable power. It does frequently require fsck -y on boot. It’s not the most pleasant with my headless units requiring a serial cable.
My solution has been a huge UPS so they never turn off. Softupdates prevented this issue for over a decade (?), so hoping we get HAMMER2 or something down the road.
I’ve been running OpenBSD continuously since 3.4, and no other OS beats it in simplicity IMO. The upgrades have ticked along quickly and flawlessly year over year. I wish more systems would take a page out of that book and implement something like sysupgrade.
There is a hammer2fs port for openbsd that is actively maintained
https://github.com/kusumi/openbsd_hammer2
Somehow it was just never taken over the finish line though. I don't know why.
Can anyone expect booting from it?
Has anyone benchmarked TCP performance now that it's outside of the global kernel lock?
I wonder how useful this will be for the modest but still multicore systems used for firewalls.
Yes, at http://bluhm.genua.de/perform/results/perform.html (a bit down on the page) which was also mentioned during bluhm@s talk on EuroBSDCon 2025() recently.
Then again, the sentence "tcp is outside of global lock" is very generalized, there are so many parts that got out of the kernel lock in pieces, like ip input, routing lookups and device packet handling that it is hard to talk about it as one singular thing that you just flip a switch on to make it MP-performant.
You could make filesystem code mp, disk device drivers mp and then still run on an IDE-disk which forces all IO to be one at a time and serialized first-come-first-served at which point all the work was for 'nothing'.
Same goes for networking, there are many many layers and places that all need code that actually allows for MP processing to improve its performance, fine grained locks (which reduce perf at this stage), then prove that the fine grained locks are sufficient for ALL use cases, all kinds of layering violations that could possibly happen, then you can unlock this single layer, and move to the next if nothing acts up on any machine.
) https://www.youtube.com/live/wEM-E-IJ6sY?si=X3lLX9tEIO2mcEJl...
Network performance has gotten steadily better during the last three or so years, to the tune of most network drivers today seeing around 2x throughput compared to a few years back.
I have a retired mid-2010s Celeron platform which managed about 300 Mbit/s on OpenBSD 7.1/7.2. With OpenBSD 7.6 it reached well over 700 MBit/sec. I also have an early 2020s Atom platform which saturates its 2.5GbE interface without any problems. Not all of the network drivers perform equally but the network stack improvements have all the same made them take pretty big leaps.
Not benchmarked on my system yet but I use OpenBSD on my home router (PCEngines APU2) and even before this stuff, OpenBSD could handle 1Gbit just fine. And that's with VLANs, LACP, a good number of PF rules, etc.
Ooh, looks like the Raspberry Pi 5 is now supported!
Not sure if wifi and bluetooth work though?:
since:
> o Implement support for "vmmc-supply" in sdhc(4), needed to power on the WiFi chip on the Raspberry Pi 5.
There's no bluetoot stack at least that part is definitely not supported
In other word, Bluetooth on Raspi is supported 100% as well as Bluetooth on all other platforms. ;-)
wifi works, it's bwfm(4).
I was wondering about installing OpenBSD on my MacBook Air with M2. I think I need to use Asahi Linux bootloader or something like that... I could not find if Wi-Fi, Sound, Bluetooth, etc will work. Please, someone let me know what is not working? I could not find one video on youtube about it.
Congrats on another release. Upgrading my machines went without a hitch :)
Same.sysupgrade went flawlessly.
Ditto here; upgrades are very boring under OpenBSD. You can keep the same setup for ages, even more with cwm, xterm, mupdf, mpv and a bunch of CLI/TUI tools and games...
The only thing I hate about how boring OpenBSD upgrades are is that I often forget that there are new features I could be exploiting for my server configs. Everything works too smoothly so I'm rarely (if ever) forced to dive into the docs to fix things.
> TCP stack is now running in parallel on multiple CPUs.
This should be a nice improvement for my firewalls, some testing on the cards today me thinks.
Yeah, my home connection goes through a very low-spec protectli, but "low-spec" these days means "4 cores"...
Yeah agreed
Great work from the OpenBSD team. Happily suprised to the continued commitment to support new hardware.
Connecting to wifi on OpenBSD terminal is wonder simple, one reflection to the meticulous work behind the system.
It really is and not just that. WireGuard being natively supported makes configuring your peers as easy as dumping the last of these example lines into /etc/hostname.wg[0-9]:
https://man.openbsd.org/wg#EXAMPLES
Simple, text-file based configuration for everything in the extensive base system and no drama between upgrades is really what makes you a happy OpenBSD user.
I'm surprised seeing improvements in Suspend/Hibernate support.
I've used OpenBSD on laptops before and it was _fine_. I thought they primarily target servers. This feels like laptop specific improvements. Perhaps to the benefits only to those developing OpenBSD.
The OpenBSD developers (in)famously use ThinkPads almost exclusively, so it works really great on ThinkPads, and much less well on other laptops.
Incidentally it was also on a thinkpad that I had installed it.
Honestly I've never owned any other laptops than thinkpads and macbooks. Every other laptop I've ever touched in a computer shop left me with "eww".
On laptops with good support openbsd is sublime. I have a thinkpad x131 that I still use as a daily driver. Mainly because it runs obsd perfectly. never any problems suspending and resuming. I replaced the wifi when it was new to a supported model along with much cursing about lenovo card whitelist. perhaps the only black mark on it's record. It is getting quite long in the tooth by now but it still meets my needs. I shall be very sad when it dies.
Honestly the most underrated feature on at least this thinkpad is it has three physical mouse buttons. So nice. Now I have to check if lenovo still does that.
Every computer I have ever owned has regularly failed miserably at suspended, or more accurately resuming.
Even my Steam Deck, with it's top down firmware and OS development regularly fails to suspend our freezes on resume.
Apple generally has excellent sleep support, even on my old falling-to-pieces unibody which would KP if you looked at it funny I don’t remember résume ever being a concern.
I’m not going to say their ever degrading software quality won’t affect that one day, and I know that some updates have caused issues for some people, but I genuinely can’t remember it ever failing me and not doing its job correctly.
I'll bite. You ever owned a macbook?
Sounds like they only thing they've owned. But maybe I'm running the perfect windows and linux distros.. and my macs are out of spec.
I bought a new dell latitude 3550 recently. No issues on OpenBSD.
I run OpenBSD on two old laptops at home, two virtual machines, and one old former SOHO router/firewall appliance. So far I've upgrade all but one laptop, and once again I am impressed how painless the process is these days. And how reliable. One laptop has been running OpenBSD since 6.8-ish, and it's never given me any problems.
Thank you to everyone who made this possible!
What is the filesystem story in OpenBSD? Anything CoW/snapshot'able on the horizon?
As I understand it, it's supported by muxfs.
https://hackmd.io/EkYP__XaQRebEZDokSQNjA
SEV and CC in general looks interesting seeing the slides. I hadn't heard of it yet. Someone more knowledgeable than me will say if these encrypted VMs are also protected from bugged modules within the SoC or on the bus besides being protected from the hypervisor.
It also seems that they are adding inter-core features but I don't know whether they are related to removing locks within the kernel, embedded applications, or if they are moving to micro-kernel internally.
No, these encrypted VMs are not protected from buggy or malicious on-die components. SEV assumes that the SoC hardware is trusted.[1] And we don't even have to go that deep: both AMD SEV and Intel's equivalent, Intel SGX, have historically been vulnerable to side-channel and speculative-execution attacks, among others, that can undermine their isolation guarantees.[2]
[1]: "As with the previous SEV and SEV-ES features, under SEV-SNP the AMD System-on-Chip (SOC) hardware, the AMD Secure Processor (AMD-SP), and the VM itself are all treated as fully trusted." https://www.amd.com/content/dam/amd/en/documents/epyc-busine...
[2]: https://libroot.org/posts/trusted-execution-environments/
bummer
nice overview article btw
backdoors in the supply chain are always hard to avoid but if it can't even protect against third-party attackers including any of the hardware attached what's the point
Rip-packs and drill guards are designed for running system protection. Those don't protect against compromised components, though, so select your hardware with care?
> On Apple variants, enter DDB when exuart(4) detects a BREAK.
Is this OpenBSD on Apple silicon?
Yes, OpenBSD/arm64 runs on M1/M2 machines.
I understand M3 and M4 are (by some accounts gratuitously) different and harder to support. Do you know of any future plans toward those?
Unfortunately no, I don't. At the very least we'll likely need to wait for support in Asahi Linux which provides for us the m1n1 bootloader, device trees, etc., as a first-stage.
The most compact, minimalist general purpose OS out there by far. Tiny memory footprint and loaded with network services built-in.
Linux has become so bloated its users can't in good conscience make fun of Microsoft anymore, they are worse.
Debian refuses to install with less than 512MB RAM, the text only installer will choke with less than that, it's pathetic. That's a console-only install, no GUI.
Alpine Linux is similar in spirit to openbsd, slim and secure but perhaps with less features oobe.
They cheat and use busybox.
Meanwhile OpenBSD running all the default network services like sshd and smtpd uses < 32 MB RAM and that's with full ksh and real tools. That doesn't happen by accident.
Is that fair? Busybox has fewer features than OpenBSD coreutils but those in turn have fewer features than GNU coreutils. All three implement the entire POSIX spec as far as I am aware.
>Linux has become so bloated its users can't in good conscience make fun of Microsoft anymore, they are worse.
Please show me where Linux comes pre installed with ads, ai and other 3rd party adware and uses a start menu written in react that makes your CPU fans spin up when you press it a couple time
There is a enormous difference between bloat for the sake of feature or profit maximizing. If you think gnome and systemd are bloat then simply don't use them.
The parent commenter stated that even booting in text mode 512MB are not enough. 20 years ago you could run a whole KDE3 stack pretty happily among a live installer if you cared.
I love it you can still install the latest OpenBSD on 32MB RAM systems.
But you can't effectively run it on that little memory, since over a decade.
Ok pitty, I was about to install it on a 486DX4 with 32MB RAM for use as a webserver, maybe I will link a blog with my findings about it later here on HN.
lol Linux Mint with latest KDE is WAY snappier and quicker to start than Win10 on my laptops
you're right, 60MB for alpine is really pushing hardware capabilities in 2025
Is there a cheap SBC in which it runs without hassle? I would like to give it a try. I've used Freebsd from 2000 up to 2015 or so, but never used openbsd
If you can get an Edgerouter Lite 3 it will run fine() on that, serial console, three gig ports, fanless and not-x86 and probably available for cheap if you look at used hw sites.
) as far as its hw goes, that is. Will not be competing in speed competitions, but cheap SBCs just never will, do they?
Which systems are limited to 512MB RAM today? Seems more like a case for a museeum. As such, use them with OSes from that epoch. Or upgrade, even if it seems wasteful.
No love for NetBSD?
I'd leave NetBSD for sub Pentium III machines, where OpenBSD's KALR and some security features would hurt the performance notability. If you have a Pentium Pro/II@300 MHZ machine with 64-128MB of RAM NetBSD would be a nice choice.
You can always install cwm, oksh and some nice OpenBSD software from pkgin.
When I was in the college in the early 2000s, I had a friend who ran OpenBSD. He always sang its praises, mostly because it was the most secure operating system.
I tried a bunch of Linux Distributions and FreeBSD before mostly settling on MacOS, but never actually got around to running it.
Glad to see OpenBSD is still being actively developed.
I love obsd A perhaps unjustified amount, but not because it's security, I like it... well it's hard to explain, it's a small understandable system, but it's not a minimal system, there are enough built in services to put any linux distro to shame but they are all small, well built, well documented services, the OS as a whole hits well above it's punching weight. I find obsd makes for perhaps the best unix desktop system, but I don't mean desktop how mac or windows or even the linux desktop environments mean desktop. It is far simpler than that, I mean unix command line, window manager only style desktop. There is something about it, something that I find hard to put into words, but may be best described as comfortable.
But honestly, despite all that it's mainly what you are used to. I tolerate linux, it is one of the good guys, fighting the good fight and all that. But I still find it a bewildering mess compared to obsd. I am sure a primary linux user feels the same way about obsd.
I used to use it at University after one of the guys I was in labs with was using it for his daily driver. The first release I tried was 3.8.
It was quite a shock coming from SuSE 9.2. It was much easier to install than FreeBSD, however the installer is even more archaic than FreeBSD. Someone wrote a graphical installer years ago and but nobody bothered with it.
The BSDs really need at least something like the archinstall.
It is certainly different than Linux. You really need to read the FAQ and manuals as you won't find much out by doing a web search, unlike Linux. One of the other things that differs from Linux is that supported hardware / software will work, however Linux hardware support is obviously a lot better than in 2005 when I first started looking at OpenBSD.
Hard disagree, the Openbsd installer is the gold standard to which all other installers compare poorly.
When I picked a linux distro to put on my system to play games on, the one I choose was void linux, why, mainly because the installer looks and feels directly ripped off from obsd.
> Hard disagree, the Openbsd installer is the gold standard to which all other installers compare poorly.
No not really. I recently took my friend through it and there is several places where it is pretty easy to screw something up. Whenever people say stuff like this, they are usually accustomed to the quirks.
> When I picked a linux distro to put on my system to play games on, the one I choose was void linux, why, mainly because the installer looks and feels directly ripped off from obsd.
Choosing distros based on the installer is kinda a bit silly. I've done a Linux From Scratch build and I can tell you there is very little difference between one distro an another.
>> Hard disagree, the Openbsd installer is the gold standard to which all other installers compare poorly.
> No not really. I recently took my friend through it and there is several places where it is pretty easy to screw something up. Whenever people say stuff like this, they are usually accustomed to the quirks.
Like what places, and how are they pretty easy to screw up on? I'm genuinely curious, as to me it's the cleanest and most straight-forward console installer I've ever experienced. I managed to get it done the very first time I, 25 years ago, with zero *nix experience, decided to try OpenBSD. Also, you can always exit the installer and restart the process. You're not "screwed" unless you reboot at the end without having reflected over your instructions.
> Like what places, and how are they pretty easy to screw up on? I'm genuinely curious, as to me it's the cleanest and most straight-forward console installer I've ever experienced.
To you it is. I installed on 3.8 and it was not straightforward. I used to go to university with a guy that used OpenBSD and he even said the installation at the time was straight forward. So it isn't just me.
I can't remember specifics as it was about 4-6 months. It was something to do with drive labelling IIRC, it was super confusing and I think I just ended up removing drives temporarily.
> you can always exit the installer and restart the process.
Nope. I tried that. It did not work.
> You're not "screwed" unless you reboot at the end without having reflected over your instructions.
Again it wasn't that straight forward.
> Nope. I tried that. It did not work.
The installer is a plain *sh script. You simply ctrl+c to break out and return to the shell, then run "install" to start the script again. I can't see why you would end up with an installation medium containing a different installer than everyone else.
> The installer is a plain *sh script. You simply ctrl+c to break out and return to the shell, then run "install" to start the script again
I ended up in situation where that wasn't possible. I wasn't sure how that happened. But it did.
I have done many installations over the years on real hardware and VMs. It only happened once, but it can happen.
I could also bring up the issues with the auto partition layout that is suggest which can make impossible to install any larger of software after installation. Or how the disks can be confusingly labelled in some cases (especially in VMs).
The point being communicated is that it isn't as straightforward as many people claim.
I first started mucking about with it in like 3.8/3.9, and you had to do something which was very archaic (even for 20 years) with calculating partition size, so it has improved.
> I can't see why you would end up with an installation medium containing a different installer than everyone else.
I don't appreciate how you worded this.
I am not lying about my experience. I just can't remember the exact set of steps of what happened because it happened several months ago now.
> very little difference between one distro an another
These days the differences come down to systemd or no systemd. I joke that we should refer to it all as SystemD/Linux (akin to how "GNU/Linux" was used).
I did the LFS build with SysV init scripts. I think there is a systemd version of LFS. LFS was a good learning exercise to see generally how everything was put together. I wouldn't want to manually manage all of this myself.
If you look at the LFS compile instructions for each package they are essentially the same as the PKGBUILDs scripts in Arch, I suspect it is similar with Gentoo, Void or any other similar Linux distro.
It feels like Alpine tries to imitate the OpenBSD installer somewhat as well, but it is just not the same as it forces you to make choices between SSH servers, NTP daemons, etc. So, it still very much feels like the Linux "pick and mix box". What makes OpenBSD so special is that there is one choice, it tends to be a good choice, and it is the only choice they will support and therefore they will put in the hours to make it solid.
> the Openbsd installer is the gold standard to which all other installers compare poorly.
Very hard disagree.
It took me half a dozen installs in VMs before I dared try on hardware. I never managed to get the Arm64 version installed at all, due to the cryptic minimalist info the installer gave me, which wasn't anywhere near enough to go on.
I have it on hardware now. It took a day or 2 of work but now it runs it's totally stable. However, the Byzantine partitioning scheme it uses means that although I gave it 32GB of disk, I don't have enough disk space to install Xfce.
It is on a Thinkpad W500, on a ~250GB SSD, multibooting with WinXP64, and NetBSD 10, and both Crunchbang++ Linux and Alpine Linux.
I tend to find that people who praise the installer tell me that it's never crossed their mind to dual-boot and they find it simple because they single-boot it on a very over-specced system where space restraints don't matter much.
Similar thing with the disk layout happened to me in a VM. I just did auto layout and one of the partitions were so small I couldn't install any other software. I ended up remaking the VM and just using two partitions for the entire disk IIRC.
They have gotten used to stuff like this and think is normal.
Debian has similar issues with making partitions too small. It makes the /boot partition so small that if you have more than a couple kernel images, you run out space. If you use the LUKS crypt with LVM, the suggest layout would have vg-root too small.
>>The BSDs really need at least something like the archinstall.
For what it's worth, I've never been able to properly install Arch or Gentoo but I can install FreeBSD in 10 minutes.
I haven't touched Gentoo in 20 years.
If you use archinstall as I said you can be up and running in 20 minutes on a fast connection. You literally just state what you want setup through a menu, make a hot drink and you have a working desktop. It is pretty hassle free in my experience.
I haven't tried the FreeBSD installer in a couple of years but I always find that I end up lost in the menus or something doesn't work correctly. Then I am kinda left faffing trying to get X working, ports or something else working. I couldn't set the desktop resolution properly and I suspect there was some magic flag I had set somewhere or install firmware.
I just can't be bothered when I can install Debian or Arch in about 15-20 minutes and everything works fine.
>I just can't be bothered when I can install Debian or Arch in about 15-20 minutes and everything works fine.
And that's perfectly fine, i would also never criticize people who just buy a Mac, some people are just interested in different stuff. However if you have problems getting lost in "menus" but wanna try out a BSD try GhostBSD:
https://www.ghostbsd.org/
> And that's perfectly fine, i would also never criticize people who just buy a Mac, some people are just interested in different stuff.
I used to be an operating system enthusiast. I've tried them all at one time. I just have a job now (I have to use Windows at work) and I just not interested in faffing to get graphics working. The experience hasn't changed that much with FreeBSD in 20 years. Some might be okay with that, but I don't really want to have to spend 3 days getting a basic desktop environment behaving properly.
OpenBSD is better in this regard than FreeBSD, I've found.
> However if you have problems getting lost in "menus" but wanna try out a BSD try GhostBSD: https://www.ghostbsd.org/
This is kinda like distro-hopping. I don't want to run some weird fork of the OS, because you will end up with a new set problems potentially. I don't use derivative distros for this very reason and only use mainline distros.
I don't understand why (I don't care for wanky reasons that often quoted) that there isn't a mechanism for me to quickly get up an running with a desktop. The situation hasn't changed in 20+ years. Whereas Linux (for all the faults that it has) has effectively had this problem solved for over a decade now.
It's really a YOU problem, i have working X on all my machines, have a good day.
You do You and that's good, just use what you like.
> It's really a YOU problem, i have working X on all my machines, have a good day.
Not at all. I can read the man pages and docs fine. Stuff like this should work out of the box by now. It doesn't with the BSDs typically. That is the reality.
Also, it isn't just X. It is other issues once you have X working.
Once you spent a good few hours sorting things out, there is almost no benefit over running a decent Linux distribution where almost all of this working OOTB.
I don't understand why you are getting bent out of shape. I am simply stating the facts as I see them.
> You do You and that's good, just use what you like.
Well obviously I am going to use what I like.
However stating that doesn't mean you stop me (or anyone else) from making constructive criticisms of something you like.
I have used tried many of the *nix variants over the last 20 years. It is just easier to use Linux if you want a desktop OS.
>I have used tried many of the *nix variants over the last 20 years. It is just easier to use Linux if you want a desktop OS.
Super happy for you, you found your OS and that's fine, but also super proud of myself that i can setup X on every FreeBSD machine so nonchalant ;)
> Super happy for you, you found your OS and that's fine,
That isn't what I said. I said that Linux is easier than BSD for a desktop and there is no real reason why that should be the case. That is an objective fact.
I would rather use neither of these systems, but the alternatives are worse. At the moment Linux is the least worst option if you want a Desktop OS.
> but also super proud of myself that i can setup X on every FreeBSD machine so nonchalant ;)
As I said it isn't just X.
The point that you don't want to engage with (bit childish tbh), is that a lot of this should completely unnecessary. There really should need to be a fork of the OS for having a desktop configuration that works reasonably well out of the box.
That is failure of both the OS and the community, which judging by your username you seem to be a member.
>you don't seem to want to engage with is that you shouldn't have to.
Na i really don't want that, have a good day
I don't believe you (you put the winky face after what you said) and I suspect you are just being contrarian for the sake of it.
Your first error it's to put every BSD in the same place. They aren't the same. OpenBSD requires nearly no config.
False. There is some config required (these are in the READMEs that are in each package that specified what options need setting) and BTW some of it doesn't work on supported hardware.
I use OpenBSD on daily bases. These are not per each package, but for some of them with rough cases (/usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readmes).
So, stop telling lies and missinformation.
> Make vi(1) 'p' command paste in the correct place.
I am really surprised to see something seemingly so simple in the changelog at this stage of development.
I switched my firewall to freebsd because of performances. I wonder how this release performs with mellanox cards.
I still have a preference for OpenBSD.
I currently run a PC Engines APU2 as my home firewall/router. Been doing so for years and I really like it, yet I am still an OpenBSD newb. When I ran a sysupgrade from 7.5 -> 7.6, I completely ran out of space on /usr and the upgrade utterly failed. Had to reinstall full system at that point. The issue is that my hard drive is very small and the auto format utility only allocates 1.8G to /usr. Right now, I currently have 1.5G out of 1.8G in use. On the OpenBSD mailing lists, a user asked a question that is virtually identical to the situation I am in – they are worried that if they do another sysupgrade, it will fail and they will need to reinstall. A potential solution was proposed here [0] but the process seems somewhat complex for an OpenBSD newb like me. Could anyone point me in the right direction to guides that would detail the process, which the person on the mailing list describes, that basically involves deleting /usr/obj and /usr/src and allocating that ‘saved space’ back to /usr? Thanks.
[0] https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=175952911527704&w=2
Easier fix might be if you aren't using /usr/src (or /usr/opt) to move the contents of /usr/share/relink into /usr/src (make sure you move it, not copy, so that /usr/share/relink is empty), and then change the /usr/src mount point in /etc/fstab to /usr/share/relink. Reboot the machine and hopefully it works. If you ran out of space during the installation, you may have to repeat sysupgrade to reinstall the 7.8 sets to get all the object files where they belong.
If you look further down the thread you'll see more suggestions, I think this one would be an easier option than deleting partitions and creating a new partition mounted as /usr, since it's more or less just a change to fstab of what mounts towards which partition.
https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=175957920514820&w=2
You know you're in deep when the OpenBSD release logs start to read like normal english...
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45660634
See also perhaps HTML release notes on their website (and not the CDN):
* https://www.openbsd.org/78.html
Well I know what I will be doing, I read the upgrade guide:
https://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade78.html
It is even easier then last time, no manual file removal.
Easy as pie, maybe I should bake a pie during the upgrade :)
Must OS maintenance be this laborious?
from what point of view are you looking for?
From the point of view of complexity.