[HN Gopher] OpenBSD 7.0
___________________________________________________________________
OpenBSD 7.0
Author : nix23
Score : 297 points
Date : 2021-10-14 10:24 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.openbsd.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.openbsd.org)
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| user3939382 wrote:
| My main use for OpenBSD is as a firewall/router, and they
| frequently make breaking changes to the pf rule syntax so I had
| to abandon it. Last breaking change when I checked was July, but
| it's been going on for many years. If you have one firewall no
| big deal, but if you set them up for customers all over the place
| it's a nightmare. They should take a page out of Microsoft's book
| here.
| [deleted]
| protomyth wrote:
| "My main use for OpenBSD is as a firewall/router, and they
| frequently make breaking changes to the pf rule syntax so I had
| to abandon it."
|
| Uhm... well, I've been using it since 3.0 (when pf was
| introduced) and its been very stable. You have at least 6
| months to convert your pf and its never taken me more than a
| day to get it changed. Its well documented and frankly, even
| with all the horror stories, I've found friendly help each time
| I had a question (do read the manual before asking a question).
| Looking at your firewall rules every 6 months isn't exactly
| stressful.
| lolpython wrote:
| I don't think most people would agree that breaking changes
| every 6 months fits the definition of "stable" for a
| firewall.
| protomyth wrote:
| They don't change it every six months. You look in the
| release notes and check if anything changed. Heck, there
| have been years where no changes were required.
| [deleted]
| jms703 wrote:
| Breaking changes do not occur every 6 months. The OS is
| upgraded every 6 months. Sometimes there are new features.
| Once in a while a line or two in your pf.conf may need to
| be changed as a new feature is added.
| nix23 wrote:
| >They should take a page out of Microsoft's book here
|
| Yeah NO.
|
| OpenBSD is the opposite of backward compatibility by design.
|
| You should have known that before installing at your customers
| site en masse.
|
| That's probably one point why PFsense is based on freebsd and
| OPNsense on hardenedbsd.
| noja wrote:
| ^^ The wording of this response represents exactly why many
| people don't choose OpenBSD.
| 0xdeadb00f wrote:
| They make a good point though. OpenBSD is not known for
| it's stability.
| noja wrote:
| I was referring not to the content of the comment, but
| the wording of its delivery.
| nix23 wrote:
| That one?
|
| >>They should take a page out of Microsoft's book here.
|
| or mine?
|
| >You should have known that before installing at your
| customers site en masse.
|
| Sorry for stating a fact that you should know your OS
| before sprinkle it all over your customers.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ninjin wrote:
| Yes, but you say that as if it was a universally bad thing.
| OpenBSD is largely made by its developers, for its
| developers. It has its own unique culture and does not seek
| mass appeal. To many - such as myself - this is refreshing,
| in particular when you contrast it to how poor open source
| developers are scolded on GitHub by entitled users for not
| putting in more of their free labour to satisfy their
| requirements. Is it for everyone? No and that is fine. You
| are always free to fork it or enjoy the fruits of their
| labour from a distance, such as with OpenSSH, tmux, etc.
| that work just as well for OSs which may have a culture
| closer to your taste (and that is also equally fine).
| [deleted]
| znpy wrote:
| Indeed.
|
| Last time I gave a look at OpenBSD I immediately noticed a
| huge courtain of gatekeeping around pretty much anything.
|
| Meh.
| blacktriangle wrote:
| Honestly that is a compliment. When it comes to evaluating
| tech, the best statements are those where you can walk away
| knowing very clearly that yes, this meets my needs, or no
| this absolutely does not meet my needs.
| nix23 wrote:
| Let that not hear Linus and his wording.
| binkHN wrote:
| Frequently is very subjective. Sometimes you have to make way
| for progress. I've been using pf since 3.0 and the syntax
| changes have been minimal and, I'd say, always for the better
| and to make a drastic improvement.
| fithisux wrote:
| With a port of Dlang :-)
| Koshkin wrote:
| But no Rust, it seems.
|
| (Wouldn't it be nice if the most secure OS was (re)written in
| the safest language available today?)
| gnubison wrote:
| The OpenBSD people value both security and simplicity -- I
| doubt that they would adopt Rust system-wide.
| jzer0cool wrote:
| For learning I used FreeBSD at my university to do some work with
| the kernel. I would be interested to hear more about someone's
| experience if having used all three, Ubuntu, OpenBSD, FreeBSD.
|
| 1) For VM Desktop Usage on a laptop 2) Server only.
| GordonS wrote:
| I used to use CentOS for all my Linux servers, but that's no
| longer an option of course.
|
| I've been using Vmware PhotonOS for Docker host VMs, and I'm
| pretty happy with it.
|
| For everything else though... I'm thinking Ubuntu, but I'm not
| sure. Might a *BSD be a good option? Does it have any real
| advantages over Linux? Or any drawbacks for that matter?
| jadbox wrote:
| "that's no longer an option of course." why?
| GordonS wrote:
| On account of CentOS, in "standard" Linux form, being dead.
|
| I don't want to run CentOS Stream.
| hnarn wrote:
| So run Rocky or Alma? They're both binary compatible
| versions of RHEL8. If you're already used to the Enterprise
| Linux ecosystem, there's no point in switching away from it
| entirely just because of CentOS stream, unless you're just
| interested in trying something new.
| chasil wrote:
| Major drawbacks are closed-source applications intended for
| RedHat. These might work with some kind of binary emulation,
| but the vendor will never support it.
|
| My focus would be database. Microsoft's binary ODBC libraries
| and Oracle Instant Client are Linux binaries. FreeTDS and
| Oracle SQLcl/JDBC are options on a BSD, but there are
| drawbacks, as there likely would be with any binary packages.
|
| I know that both RedHat and Oracle will migrate an installed
| CentOS to their platforms (RedHat does it more violently, by
| replacing every installed package). Alma & Rocky might also be
| migration options.
| dralley wrote:
| CentOS Stream is a perfectly fine option and the practical
| differences from classic CentOS are insignificant for _most_
| users, especially people who are just running a homelab.
|
| But if it makes you uncomfortable there's always Rocky or Alma
| Linux.
| [deleted]
| xbar wrote:
| OpenBSD WireGuard VPN servers make me happy.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Super impressed with all the work going on in BSD to support and
| make it work on M1 macs.
|
| I can't believe this is free. Glad I support the BSDs with the
| pittance every month that I can but wow amazing work.
| GordonS wrote:
| What init system do the *BSDs use? Is systemd an option?
| Koshkin wrote:
| They all borrow one from Slackware Linux.
| pastrami_panda wrote:
| Is this a joke or is there some interesting tidbit here?
| Both?
| snvzz wrote:
| systemd doesn't support anything but Linux, as it is designed
| around Linux-specific APIs.
| chasil wrote:
| *YES*, systemd is an option. It is not the default.
|
| https://lobste.rs/s/jx3cr6/initware_systemd_fork_runs_on_ope...
| hnarn wrote:
| I'm the first to admit that I'm ignorant of the facts here,
| but seeing that a systemd fork ran on OpenBSD for the first
| time two months ago does not give me confidence that it's "an
| option" in the sense that you can trust it to work well.
|
| And to be pedantic (this is an OpenBSD thread, after all),
| it's not "systemd", it's a fork of systemd called "InitWare",
| and the GitHub repo describes it as "alpha software".
|
| Someone also pointed out in the discussion you linked that it
| doesn't seem to include journald. Here's a relevant PR:
| https://github.com/InitWare/InitWare/pull/27
| branzo wrote:
| definitely not.
| upofadown wrote:
| OpenBSD uses a really simple rc.d to get going:
|
| *
| https://www.bsdcan.org/2016/schedule/attachments/337_bsdcan-...
| mirekrusin wrote:
| I'd love to try but I'm experiencing hardcore option paralysis
| every time I start thinking about it.
|
| FreeBSD, OpenBSD or NetBSD - _that_ is the question.
|
| Wait, maybe DragonFly actually? illumos? ...wait, I mean
| OpenIndiana, I think... wait, what's OmniOS? Is Darwin a thing,
| like I could just have BSD and macOS for free or something?
| chousuke wrote:
| I recommend giving OpenBSD a try over the others. It's just...
| a clean OS, and the base system is extremely well documented;
| to the point that I think it's the only OS you can learn inside
| out without ever using Google.
|
| OpenBSD might not be the _best_ choice for any given use, but
| it 's so remarkably consistent and understandable that I think
| everyone interested in alternative OSes should try it out at
| least once.
| kazen44 wrote:
| OpenBSD has been the OS with the lowest amount of maintenance
| in my opinion.
|
| used it as a webserver and VPN appliance for a couple of
| years now.
|
| only thing in terms of maintenance is the following when a
| new release is released.
|
| pkg_add -u ( i usually update extra packages every 6 months,
| which is mainly lets encrypt). syspatch sysupgrade
|
| reboot:
|
| after reboot
|
| sysmerge to see if i need to do a config diff.
|
| Has been rocksolid and very future rich in base aswell.
| snvzz wrote:
| While sysupgrade is convenient, there's usually some manual
| steps.
|
| Always read the upgrade guide before upgrading.
| wahern wrote:
| For the OpenBSD curious:
|
| This release only includes changes related to SNMP, which
| I imagine are irrelevant to most people, though probably
| exciting for a subset of OpenBSD users.
| https://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade70.html
|
| The upgrade guide for 6.9 gives a better flavor for how
| OpenBSD handles and documents subsystem and configuration
| changes: https://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade69.html
|
| Notice how succinct and consistent (across decades!) are
| the upgrade guides. The above have the same basic format
| and content as this one from 2004:
| https://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade35.html I've been
| doing remote upgrades of OpenBSD and Linux (mostly
| Debian, but also occasionally Red Hat derivatives) for
| over 20 years. While I've fortunately only rarely
| encountered significant problems with any of them,
| OpenBSD upgrades are the only ones where I can have any
| confidence in understanding and tracking how the system
| evolves across upgrades. Follow the upgrade guide and
| delete outdated files (much easier since sysclean(8)),
| and a 10-year-old OpenBSD box can have a filesystem as
| pristine as a freshly installed system.
|
| I'm not one of those people who wants pristine for the
| sake of pristine. But pristine is important when you care
| about security, and maintenance burden is a huge
| component of security, as are simplicity and
| transparency.
| matja wrote:
| Lack of ZFS, or any checksumming filesystem at all is a hard
| "no" for me.
| melony wrote:
| I don't _want_ a OS where I have to read man pages and
| documentation to get around. The whole self documentation
| excuse is the same reason why Emacs is slowly losing market
| share. People want software that is intuitive, and failing
| that, have all answers available on their favorite search
| engine. Short of baking a chatbot or search engine into
| OpenBSD, relying purely on self documentation is not
| sustainable. Though the idea of Clippy being powered by GPT3
| does sound appealing.
| xet7 wrote:
| Oh, having man pages included is much better than "read the
| source code".
|
| Unfortunately search engines are unreliable, some "search
| engine optimized" virus pages could be first, and not some
| bank or docs website.
| [deleted]
| lcall wrote:
| You can still use search engines, but once you learn your
| way around the documentation, you might find it is more
| reliable and quicker.
|
| To me, it seems worthwhile to have fewer 0-day bugs to
| worry about, and more reliable separation between user
| accounts (fewer privilege escalation bugs, etc etc). (I
| also recommend setting default umask to 0077 for the same
| reason, except while using pkg_add -- I have a wrapper
| script that undoes it temporarily for that due to issues
| encountered.)
|
| There are reasons people use Windows or Apple (perceived
| convenience), and reasons not to (long-term cost/benefit
| decisions for known uses).
|
| In case it becomes useful to anyone: One way to traverse
| the docs is (occasionally helpful) is using something like
| http://man.bsd.lv/ for OBSD docs, like putting in an "="
| (w/o quotes) in the search field then clicking "apropos"
| shows all the commands -- a useful way to learn "what is
| available in the base system"; or doing full-text searches
| (can be learned locally, I have an awkward script for it if
| needed),
|
| (Edit: s/what is available/what is available in the base
| system/ .)
|
| And: I find the ~"only 2 remote holes in the default
| install since about 1996" to be very impressive.
|
| Edit: Another way to look at it might be by priorities. I
| have come to see priorities of some systems roughly as:
|
| OpenBSD: security, openness, correctness (including of
| documentation), portability.
|
| Linux: features, performance, openness, breadth of
| everything, compatibility, convenience (distributions vary
| in specifics of course; debian and/or devuan continue to
| impress me in their own way).
|
| FreeBSD: performance, stability, openness.
|
| NetBSD: portability, stability?, maybe enjoyment for its
| developers, openness. (I know least here.)
|
| Windows / Apple: profitability while targeting preferences
| of specific groups who want different specific kinds of
| convenience, it seems.
| ori_b wrote:
| > _and failing that, have all answers available on their
| favorite search engine._
|
| Luckily, the manpages are available on your favorite search
| engine!
| szundi wrote:
| This is not math what you can derive from some axioms, this
| is a system and software that other people invented. Good
| luck feeling and thinking just like all of those 41234
| people involved.
| chousuke wrote:
| "Intuitive" is often a code word for "familiar to me". A
| full-blown general purpose OS _cannot_ be completely
| intuitive; the user always needs something to build from.
|
| For what it's worth, I think OpenBSD _is_ intuitive because
| of its consistency. It 's certainly been more intuitive to
| me than any other OS; it just _makes sense_ as a whole in a
| way that no other OS quite does, and that 's refreshing in
| a world where users are expected not to understand what
| their tools are and how they work.
|
| OpenBSD just builds its intuitive bits on things you may
| not yet know. Fortunately, it has excellent documentation
| to get you started.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Don't take this as argumentation against what you're
| saying, because it makes a lot of sense. However, I would
| love for my phone or Mac to at least have the option of
| reading the documentation, but it's not easily accessible.
| Some things a deemed so intuitive that it doesn't need
| documentation, yet I still can't use it or find it.
|
| On OpenBSD, if you're stuck on something in ksh, cwm, pf or
| any other built in tool, the man page is right there.
| Easily accessible, easy to read and comprehensive. When I
| play around on my OpenBSD box, the man pages is often my
| first choice over a search engine.
|
| Also, not confuse man pages on OpenBSD with Linux man
| pages. Those two are remarkably different. Many Linux tools
| have good and comprehensive man pages. On OpenBSD
| everything has great man pages.
| Koshkin wrote:
| Sure, you could make the OS CLI "intuitive" (by which I am
| sure you mean discoverable) by supplying the 'help'
| command, but in the end wouldn't this still amount to
| reading a bunch of text?..
| bluejekyll wrote:
| This isn't all that different from choosing the Linux OS of
| choice. That decision often is partnered with the package
| manager that's desired, and how quickly things are upstreamed
| in it. Do you want apt, nix, yum/rpm? Then how stable do you
| want it? Debian, Ubuntu, etc? How much support are you looking
| for? Redhat, etc.
|
| I guess I don't see a major difference in the complexity of
| that decision process in the Linux space, which might have been
| alluded to.
| anthk wrote:
| Not even close. Each BSD is it's own OS.
| snvzz wrote:
| *its
| bluejekyll wrote:
| Is Debian a different OS from Redhat?
| anthk wrote:
| Can you run Debian stuff on a RedHat chroot without
| needing different ABI compat libraries? Yes.
|
| Can you run FreeBSD binaries under OpenBSD? No.
| bluejekyll wrote:
| This depends on the glibc version, but sure, that's a
| valid difference between the two.
|
| edit: and oddly if you only go with this definition, that
| is Windows with WSL also a Linux OS? I'm guessing most
| people wouldn't say yes...
| xet7 wrote:
| WSL2 does include full Linux kernel.
|
| I would presume Linux OS to run Linux kernel on host OS.
| By default Windows runs Windows kernel.
| szundi wrote:
| WSL2 uses HyperV for that.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| Most Linux distributions are much more similar to each other
| than BSDs are. At least that's my impression after spending
| the last month at work porting a bunch of scripts from Linux
| to several BSDs (Free, Open, and Net). The differences are
| too many to describe here, from where they install third
| party libraries, to configuration file locations and formats,
| to how basic tools work (essential things like grep/sed/awk
| have (sometimes very) different feature sets, flags, and
| runtime characteristics (for example, how exactly do they
| handle signals)). Default shells are also very different,
| though that's a pretty minor thing.
|
| If you compare something like Debian, Alpine, and NixOS, then
| maybe..
| bluejekyll wrote:
| I find each Linux OS that's based around a different
| package manager to generally feel like a different
| operating system. That's my point.
|
| The BSDs all have a common ancestor. The Linux's tend to
| all have a GNU user space, the kernels are mostly the same,
| but the OS layout tends to differ in important ways.
| foodstances wrote:
| They all feel different, I would encourage you to install each
| in a VM and play around and see which one you like the best.
| epitactic wrote:
| This is why I've setup my homelab with a hypervisor, you don't
| have to choose and can run each of these operating systems, for
| specific purposes they are best suited for. This is what I do:
|
| OpenIndiana: file server (ZFS)
|
| OpenBSD: firewall, router, network services (DHCP, DNS, NAT)
|
| DragonflyBSD: game server
|
| FreeBSD: other general application services
|
| I haven't found a personal use case for NetBSD yet, though I
| would like to (it is great for embedded systems).
| johnisgood wrote:
| Why did you choose DragonflyBSD for the game server vs.
| another BSD?
| amatecha wrote:
| Also, which games? curious what is easily hosted on BSD :)
| na85 wrote:
| Which games are you hosting on dragonfly, and is the
| performance actually better than freebsd?
| bpye wrote:
| Is OpenIndiana really better than FreeBSD or ZFS on Linux
| today? I've had a pretty great experience using ZFS with
| NixOS but I'm curious if I'm missing anything.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| "All of them" is an interesting answer.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| Which hypervisor are you using for that? I used to run Xen
| for a similar purpose, but I ended up just running normal
| debian with a bunch of lxc containers instead after dealing
| with some Xen issues that were difficult to unravel.
| epitactic wrote:
| ESXi (free version), it works well though if I had to do it
| again from scratch today, I'd probably go with KVM
| Datagenerator wrote:
| Tried Proxmox?
| NexRebular wrote:
| Or SmartOS?
| hackbinary wrote:
| If you are looking to dip your toe in and have a tinker with
| BSD, FreeBSD is probably the best place to start because it has
| spread of compatibility.
|
| But if you are looking for more focused projects, then
| Dragonfly for best out of box desktop experience, openbsd for
| security and firewall, and netbsd for compatibility and
| portability across loads of devices.
| rgacote wrote:
| It's not like there's not 42 different flavors of Linux...
| theonemind wrote:
| I'd recommend trying one of the big three. If you value
| performance, FreeBSD. If you like a really well-documented,
| simple, coherent system, OpenBSD. If you've got a real tinkerer
| mindset, NetBSD--like, kernel extensions in Lua, run it on
| anything you can find with a processor in it.
|
| They're all good. I wouldn't over-complicate it. Just look at
| the one with known strengths that most match what you most
| value and dip in. A lot of the knowledge crosses over if you
| want to try other ones anyway, they're all related.
| ink_13 wrote:
| IME it depends on your use case.
|
| If you want something you can use as a border router/firewall,
| OpenBSD.
|
| If you want something for more general-purpose computing (like
| a desktop or home server), FreeBSD.
|
| If you want something you can install on your toaster, NetBSD.
| messe wrote:
| I think this is a bit limiting. FreeBSD's networking
| performance can be significantly higher than OpenBSD's
| (although IMO OpenBSD's pf has nicer syntax), so it's a great
| firewall choice.
|
| Similarly, on desktop, OpenBSD can be pretty nice if you're a
| developer comfortable in the terminal; it runs the same
| graphics drivers as FreeBSD and Linux (other than NVIDIA).
| It's defaults tend to be a bit more sensible on
| desktop/laptops too IMO as its developers are more likely to
| dogfood it. There's been good progress on NetBSD desktops
| over the past few years as well, but I'm less familiar with
| it, so I can't comment too much.
|
| With regards to portability, NetBSD supports more systems,
| but often I've found that OpenBSD is a _little bit_ more
| stable on the ones they do support as they insist on not
| using cross compilation: so every system they do support is
| at least stable enough to build itself, which is a good
| stress test, especially on older machines.
| undoware wrote:
| My advice? Go with OpenBSD.
|
| These are the folks that brought you the word 'hackathon', and
| OpenSSH. (Ever use ssh? Thank OpenBSD.)
|
| These are the folks that actually bother to read not just a PR,
| but actual full codebases, just to make sure their pointers
| don't dangle.
|
| It's been years since the DevOps space was first told to prefer
| 'livestock' -- disposable, nearly-identical instances -- to
| pets -- long-lived customized instances and servers -- but as
| every farmer knows, if you have lots of sheep, the job is a lot
| easier if you have a sheepdog. Not quite a pet, but not cattle,
| either.
|
| OpenBSD is my sheepdog. It keeps my git repos, it runs my
| wireguard VPN, and it, above all the other systems I touch, is
| trusted.
|
| But trust is ultimately about people, not about systems.
| Systems get their trusthworthiness from their creators, the way
| the moon gets light from the sun.
|
| And in trustworthiness, the OpenBSD community has a
| breathtaking superpower: They can say no. They are _good_ at
| saying no. Do you know how hard that is -- to have someone ask
| for a feature, and just tell them off? That 's the hardest
| thing any manager ever has to do, and these guys are _good_ at
| it. Rare, in FOSS space.
|
| These are the folks that are so good at saying 'no' that they
| ship with a literal actual bespoke copy of 'vi', that does
| exactly what it is supposed to, does not take packages, and
| also does not have a package manager pulling in raw github
| HEADs. (I love you, neovim, but you are so trusting!)
|
| OpenBSD has been around for most of my 20+ career in this
| industry and it's sort of always been this aggressively
| reliable paperweight of a distro. I'm never quite sure what to
| do with it (NixOS is my go-to for my workstations -- NixOS +
| Wayland + Sway + Alacritty + Neovim is as close to godliness as
| a user interface can come) but OpenBSD finds its uses, and in
| those uses, it is smooth and heavy and reliable, making it the
| perfect foil for the rest of my infra: For where NixOS is
| neurotic and brittle, OpenBSD is saturnine and malleable.
|
| I think of my infra as sort of being like a knife blade, with a
| glittering Nixos/Wayland/Neovim edge supported by a soft, heavy
| core of OpenBSD.
|
| If everything else breaks, so long as I have my OpenBSD
| instances, I can recover.
|
| One final word: At my end, I just finished upgrading my
| instance at openbsd.amsterdam; big shoutout to that amazing
| team for their incredible support. (Mischa, in particular, is a
| force of nature, and I am fan. ;D)
| bpye wrote:
| OpenBSD is definitely the free OS than I enjoyed running the
| most. I now use NixOS for most of my server and VM uses
| because I really appreciate being able to trivially keep all
| the configuration state in version control.
|
| However when I ran OpenBSD on an old Chromebook I did really
| enjoy using it, I made a point of trying to use just the base
| system and aside from needing a web browser it was extremely
| usable. The documentation is universally good all the built
| in tools are well maintained. In the near future I'm gonna
| setup a separate firewall/router machine from my NixOS box
| and I think I'm going to use OpenBSD there too.
| undoware wrote:
| I too have the nixos vs openbsd decision nibbling at me
| every time I spin something up.
|
| Here's what helps me decide: I simulate a disaster. Since
| I'm just me, I do it on paper (empirical ways are best but
| are also the most expensive, and in a pinch, a thought
| experiment can illuminate as well. Not always the same
| things, but light is light.)
|
| Try it -- open a scratch.txt and write about things that
| would happen, and then the things that would probably
| happen as a result of that.
|
| The one that often comes up for NixOS is "I lose network
| connectivity." While NixOS is phenomenal in its ability to
| roll changes back, the fact that I need _a stable Internet
| connection_ in order to make any change whatsoever to the
| current config makes that little piece of CAT-8 a SPOF for
| any number of unexpected (and intuitively unrelated)
| matters, making the overall system hard to reason about.
|
| You can mitigate this by hosting your own NixOS channels,
| which is sort of the equivalent of hosting your own apt-get
| repo.
|
| But, as you might expect, that's actually a fair amount of
| extra work. So I don't, especially not on laptops, where
| space can (still) be limited.
|
| So, every time I do `home-manager switch` I need a viable
| network connection.
|
| This is especially galling if you (like me) manage most of
| your apps with Nix' `home-manager`. Think it through; Nix
| manages (say) your word processor; you want to change the
| font size in your word processor; you edit your home.nix
| and hit `home-manager switch`.
|
| But look at what this entails! My apartment building's
| fibre-optic cabling should never be a depenency on altering
| the font size in my word processor, but here I am.
| Ironically, for the sake of convenience.
|
| Now, none of this is to slag on NixOS. As I mentioned
| above, it's my favourite way to encounter reality. I'm
| typing this to you on NixOS right now. For me, the pros
| outweigh the cons. Provided, of course, I have something
| less brittle than NixOS to back me up, and for me, that
| means OpenBSD.
|
| I have an OpenBSD instance in the cloud and a break-glass
| procedure for getting into it. It backs up via another old-
| school friend, tarsnap. It hosts the git repos that contain
| my nixos and home-manager configs. If I can talk to it, I
| can simply zap my NixOS config onto some new edge device
| and be back up and running in no time.
|
| I also typically have a NUC running OpenBSD present as
| well, in case that apartment-building fibre gets
| troublesome (again,) but not at the moment, because my
| beloved PCEngines device has apparently become unstable
| under any OS. But when I get that OBSD NUC set (back) up,
| it will absolutely have a NixOS channel on it, and it will
| serve as a firewall, a SAN, serving NixOS channels to the
| edge devices. It will have an actual serial port and a
| password on a wax-sealed bit of paper in my fireproof safe.
| Because I think ahead, and that's what I need to get back
| up and running under the worst circumstances.
|
| I simply can't imagine a non-hardware-failure disaster that
| could take out an aggressively boring OpenBSD bastion
| instance. They are just relentless in their persistence.
|
| As I keep saying, NixOS and OpenBSD pair together like
| honey and mustard. Contrastive but unexpectedly delicious.
|
| Take-home: If you're building infra, try adding some
| OpenBSD to the mix. It can make the unrecoverable
| recoverable.
| Datagenerator wrote:
| Thank you for writing this. Analogous to spinning wheels, the
| outside rotating very fast ( NixOS/Arch) and near the stable
| center we have several BSD's. FreeBSD for the excellent ZFS,
| OpenBSD for vital network functions, Wireguard etc.
|
| Cheers, happy donations to the BSD Foundation!
| t-3 wrote:
| OpenBSD for laptops, VM guests, and VPSs. It has a very
| coherent userland, and the devs dogfood heavily, my go-to for
| anything I have to actually administer.
|
| FreeBSD for servers and NAS, desktop. FreeBSD has high
| performance all around, ZFS, jails, bhyve, linux compatability,
| etc. But it's not as nice to administer as OpenBSD. I want to
| love it, but it's tedious.
|
| NetBSD is an OK choice for anything, and very capable, but
| doesn't stand out for anything other than portability. If you
| enjoy hacking on things, you might find a lot of use in it.
| rjsw wrote:
| I use NetBSD because I want the same OS on the things that
| I'm hacking on and on my development machine.
| na85 wrote:
| Openbsd has consistently scored towards the bottom in all
| performance benchmarks that I've seen in the last few years,
| when compared to FreeBSD and various linuxen.
|
| I would personally never use it for a laptop.
| anthk wrote:
| If you cared about actual security, you would use it in a
| laptop thanks to bioctl and full disk encryption.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| OpenBSD is not really as secure as people make it out to
| be: https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/openbsd.html
|
| And plenty of other OSes have FDE and everything in-
| between.
| na85 wrote:
| I don't think OpenBSD's reputation for security is
| warranted. Their vaunted claims of only two remote holes
| in the default install is useless because if you're using
| it for a daily driver you're going well beyond the
| default install.
| wowtip wrote:
| Scores are one thing, using it is another.
|
| I ran OpenBSD on a Thinkpad T450 for over a year, but
| recently switched to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, not because of
| lack of speed, but some missing applications and blutooth
| support.
|
| Given I don't run a heavy desktop environment, rather just
| StumpWM, but still I did not in any way feel OpenBSD was
| slower than Linux, using the same applications.
|
| OpenSUSE is the most solid Linux I have used so far, but
| OpenBSD was more to my liking setting up and maintaining.
| It is well thought out, simple, and... just makes sense.
| t-3 wrote:
| OpenBSD has way better ACPI, power management, and less
| setup hassle than FreeBSD, and way cleaner and nicer out of
| the box than any linux distro. You don't generally have to
| hack on anything to get basic laptop functionality working,
| and the small loss of performance from mitigations,
| disabling SMT, etc. is really not as big a deal for me,
| because my laptop is used for ssh and web browsing, not
| compiling huge projects or playing games.
| ndiddy wrote:
| Even using it for web browsing, I found that Firefox was
| much slower on OpenBSD than it was on either Linux or
| Windows on the same hardware.
| wyager wrote:
| I haven't used OpenBSD yet, but I found FreeBSD to be a total
| breeze to administer compared to Linux. You've gotten me very
| excited about OpenBSD...
| bilinguliar wrote:
| In the case of OpenBSD, it is more "drinking your own
| champagne" than "eating your own dog food."
| [deleted]
| thuccess129 wrote:
| Next level-up cornucopia of options for postunix wannabe
| irckidz is 9P: 9legacy, 9front, 9fans. That is the cool as
| quantumcomputing question.
| snvzz wrote:
| Try them all. Or as a start, try any. You can eventually try
| them all.
| proxysna wrote:
| If you are looking for a great server system give
| Omnios/Smartos and other Illumos distributions a try. Rock
| solid, well engineered and legitimately fun to tinker with.
| OpenIndiana is the desktop option, heard a lot, but i have no
| experience myself.
| nanna wrote:
| Any BSD fans out there wish to persuade a happy Debian desktop
| user to take a BSD for a spin?
| drewpc wrote:
| Be curious; learn it. Figure out pros/cons for yourself. You'll
| have more breadth of knowledge, more depth in specific areas,
| and will likely make better architecture choices in the future
| because of it.
| 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
| I love OpenBSD because it is as close to "just works" as it
| gets in an ideal world. I love using it for my personal website
| because it is very easy to get a proper overview over the OS as
| a whole and because it comes with some of my favourite pieces
| of software and all I need for a personal website is part of
| the system: httpd, pf etc. Also OpenBSD has some of the best
| docs out there, I rarely need to websearch anything.
|
| Unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world, so I rarely get
| to spin up OpenBSD outside of that due to a number of reasons
| like a lack of filesystems for interoperability (USB media) and
| firmware drivers (got to be specific in the hardware you buy
| for it).
| [deleted]
| UI_at_80x24 wrote:
| Easy: text log files, text config files, no systemd.
| m4r35n357 wrote:
| I use Debian and love OpenBSD.
| hda111 wrote:
| Savaged by systemd
| Koshkin wrote:
| This has a rather deep philosophical basis.
| eacafdcbac wrote:
| Playing with OpenBSD will be a learning experience. For me,
| that's usually enough to install something on a non-daily
| driver machine.
|
| Are you a software engineer or CS student? If so, I'd say that
| OpenBSD really shines in code simplicity, clarity, and
| consistency. This is also a matter of taste. What drew me in
| initially was the quality and consistency of the kernel source
| code, consistent high standards in documentation, and the
| design of system interfaces and libraries.
|
| I like being able to answer my own questions and I find that
| easier in OpenBSD than in Linux. Sometimes I sit for hours and
| simply flip back and forth between documentation and code
| exploring how things work. I feel that this level of
| consistency and availability of information within the system
| feed creative urges on my part.
|
| I like to write code and I feel like I have an easier time
| doing that in OpenBSD than Linux (again, a matter of tastes.)
| This is in large part because my workflow tends to happen at
| the terminal.
|
| I would be surprised to find that VSCode, Slack, Discord, and
| other electron-y applications can be made to work in OpenBSD at
| all... maybe they do, but I've never felt the need to try, so
| if they don't I'm fine with that.
|
| I think OpenBSD is well adapted to a specific kind of user and
| a specific kind of problems. If you're paranoid, or a
| developer, or just like the terminal window, or prefer design
| consistency over broad compatibility and feature variety, you
| might find that you really enjoy using OpenBSD.
|
| By all means, give it a spin if for no other reason than to
| learn about a thing that's out there that a bunch of people
| enjoy.
|
| If OpenBSD is not for you, that's okay too. I don't think that
| the user base, developers, or community have ever been looking
| run campaigns aimed at growing the popularity of the system.
| For me that's a good thing, the developers seem less prone to
| chasing the next thing that will expand their share in a
| market, and are more focused on making a thing they want to use
| - which translates well for me. YMMV.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| Im a life long linux user and decided to use FreeBSD as a
| platform for my most recent hobby project. It was surpising how
| enlightening it was to use a different tool. It does somethings
| the same way, somethings different, what was most pleasant was
| discovering the things it did better. I don't think you can
| read about it, really worth experiencing this.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| I recently built my latest server in FreeBSD just to get some
| hard experience with it...
|
| ...and I love it! Documentation is generally excellent,
| readable, and centralized. There are only a dozen or two
| processes running on a fresh system without much of anything
| installed, and idle CPU usage is the zeroyist zero I've ever
| seen for a server OS. The directory structure in `man hier` is
| actually _used_ , and it feels like the surface area of what I
| have to learn to be proficient is _sooooooooooo_ much smaller.
| It 's not perfect (home and end keys don't work consistently)
| but definitely a breath of fresh air.
|
| Plus, many programs (ezjail, for example) integrate tightly
| with ZFS, which is also awesome. I know linux finally got
| quality ZFS support but BSD (along with solaris) are OG
|
| Plus, now I am learning a great deal about how MacOS is built.
|
| Funny enough, I have a DJ controller (Pioneer XDJ-XZ) that uses
| BSD for its operating system. So it seems to be a great
| embedded audio OS as well!
| fbhabbed wrote:
| Definitely try it in a VM first or at least image your Debian
| drive before going at it. You are going to miss your perfectly
| working Debian install
| gigatexal wrote:
| This link is for OpenBSD but I have the most experience with
| FreeBSD. Reasons to try out a BSD, even FreeBSD:
|
| 1. ZFS -- by far and away the best filesystem there is. (A
| hella partisan take but try it out and you'll likely fall in
| love like the rest of us did)
|
| 2. The handbook. The handbook is gold. It's up there with some
| of the best documentation available.
|
| 3. Less fragmentation. The BSDs have 3 main derivatives:
| NetBSD, OpenBSD, and FreeBSD. (There are others but these are
| the main)
|
| 4. If you like LXD then you'll love Jails.
|
| 5. The BSD license. (If being the most free means something to
| you. I kind of like it but maybe this isn't a selling point.)
|
| 6. Can be rolling or used in an LTS fashion. It's rather easy
| to track -current all the time or just stick with a stable
| release and do periodic binary package updates.
| [deleted]
| yabones wrote:
| Linux systems are made by dozens of disparate teams, and it
| shows. Every command has a different syntax - just think about
| how "help" could be -h, --help, -help, -? etc
|
| BSDs are very tightly integrated. The entire OS is very
| consistent and 'correct', down to the tiny and pedantic details
| like putting things under /usr that are usually installed in
| /bin, because that's _the way it 's supposed to be_. (Ex.
| `/usr/local/bin/bash`)
|
| Think of it like reading Wikipedia, no matter which page you
| read it seems like it was written by the same person. That's
| the kind of consistency that OpenBSD intends to create.
| space_ghost wrote:
| Why is that "the way it's supposed to be," and how is it
| going to improve my user experience? It just seems like
| unnecessary complexity to me.
| andai wrote:
| When things are consistent, less mental effort goes into
| remembering arbitrary differences.
| adamrt wrote:
| Just to clarify, Bash is installed under /usr/local because
| it's from packages and not part of the base system.
|
| The base shell, ksh, is at /bin/ksh.
|
| You probably know that but I just felt like being pedantic
| this morning :).
| yabones wrote:
| Yes, absolutely true. The idea is that `ksh` is _good
| enough_ , and the extra features of bash are extraneous or
| unnecessary, making it an add-on rather than a core
| feature.
|
| It's an interesting idea, and while I feel bash is
| absolutely 'good enough' to be part of the base system, I
| wouldn't want zsh or fish part of _my_ base system - so it
| 's then a matter of opinion whose shell is bloat and whose
| is essential. So I respect their decision to not include
| bash in the base image - it's meant to be uncompromisingly
| lean and simple.
| chasil wrote:
| Another issue is size. This is what I see on CentOS:
| $ ls -l /bin/bash /bin/dash /bin/mksh -rwxr-xr-x.
| 1 root root 964536 Nov 22 2019 /bin/bash -rwxr-
| xr-x. 1 root root 113536 Nov 5 2018 /bin/dash
| -rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 296192 Jan 27 2018 /bin/mksh
|
| The Debian Almquist shell has nearly nothing beyond POSIX
| (I believe that local function variables are the only
| extension). This is the Ubuntu system shell, and it
| tolerates no bashisms. Alternate POSIX shell
| implementations in OCaml (and somewhat ADA) accuse
| Almquist of not using formal grammars and imply that dash
| is not a safe implementation.
|
| https://www.irif.fr/_media/rencontres/pps2018/regis-
| gianas.p...
|
| I would say that mksh implements 80% of bash
| functionality in much less space, and closely follows
| ksh88; mksh is also licensed such that Android uses it as
| /bin/sh.
|
| Apple has switched from bash to zsh. I don't know the
| motivations for this, but preferences for shells wax and
| wane. BSD doesn't include bash (in base) more because of
| license than code quality.
|
| POSIX seems to be all that we can agree on, but I do wish
| that standard could grow; it's stuck in the '70s.
| rsfinn wrote:
| Apple avoids GPLv3-licensed software, which may explain
| why they continue to ship an older version of bash (3.2,
| the last GPLv2 version). Eventually they must have
| decided that was too outdated to keep as the default
| shell and switched to zsh, which has an MIT-derived
| license.
| petre wrote:
| > Apple has switched from bash to zsh. I don't know the
| motivations for this
|
| GPLv3 vs BSD or MIT license. I lived zsh anyway, switched
| some of my BSD shells to it afterwards.
| edgyquant wrote:
| I love zsh but it's history doesn't segregate based on
| the tty and it locks up a lot during autocompletion for
| me (on Ubuntu.)
| massysett wrote:
| This is not typically the default setting in zsh (it is
| if it's acting like ksh.) Your distributor has probably
| "helpfully" set it up this way. man zshoptions and look
| for "SHARE_HISTORY".
| chasil wrote:
| ...and that ksh descended from pdksh, and is distributed as
| the oksh portable project here:
|
| https://github.com/ibara/oksh
|
| The MirBSD Korn Shell also descended from pdksh, and it can
| be found here:
|
| http://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm
|
| I don't know about the feature differences and code quality
| between these two; they both implement most of ksh88, and a
| small amount of ksh93.
|
| I prefer mksh when I need something more than a POSIX
| shell.
| gtirloni wrote:
| And that would make me switch from Linux why exactly?
|
| Don't get me wrong, I was a BSD user for many years (FreeBSD
| 3.5-5.0) but I don't think that's enough reason to switch.
| stiray wrote:
| Reason for my switch was that some key things (for me) were
| designed in a way that seemed more right that on linux and
| this is totally subjective opinion.
|
| I am still running ubuntu on laptop and will switch when
| the next install is a thing, but I am running freebsd on
| server for years now and while i tremble on each update for
| the laptop, I dont for freebsd, even when updating from
| 12.x to 13.x.
|
| Based on years of experience on both operating systems. I
| was surprised only once when freebsd made change where the
| base network settings weren't by default copied into fibs
| (you wont encounter this... probably ever) and even then I
| needed an hour to figure what the change was.
|
| On the other side, I no longer count the nasty surprises
| the linux distributions played on me (like /etc/resolv.conf
| being overwritten by systemd resolv, just as trivial
| change). My laptop is unbootable for a year as they messed
| something regarding the order of zpool import (bpool being
| imported before rpool - probably a race condition) so i
| have to import it manually or it doesnt boot, while I have
| freebsd zfs root for ~10 years and it never failed me.
|
| Details like that made me insecure about linux. And on the
| other side, made me highly secure about freebsd.
|
| I think that (again, this is subjective, speaking only for
| myself)...
|
| I... trust... BSD... guys. Based on experience.
|
| I... dont trust linux... distributions. Based on
| experience.
|
| But it might just be me.
| dijit wrote:
| Not to be _that_ guy, but your Linux complaints sound
| like systemd complaints.
|
| Not sure the teething process has finished there, but I
| share the sentiment.
| stiray wrote:
| Naah, systemd is not bothering me at all, i dont have
| issues if they change the way how resolve information is
| stored.
|
| What bothers me that the old way is still there
| (/etc/resolv.conf) while it is being generated by
| systemd. I can accept the change where the dns
| information is stored. Fine, it is no longer the same
| file, I dont care. While on the other side, if I get
| parallel mechanism, that is keeping the old, this is
| really an annoyance. That is hard to identify.
|
| The ZFS has nothing to do with systemd and I havent even
| touched stuff like jails/lxc, byhve/kvm, memory
| consumption, quality of code,... as I have said it, it is
| subjective and it is about trust into operating system.
| Linux distributions dont have it. They blew it just too
| many times. BSD didnt.
|
| It is hard to be objective there, just try the BSD. And
| please do report your findings.
| blacktriangle wrote:
| It made me switch from Linux.
|
| If it doesn't sound compelling to you, that's okay too,
| Linux is great. But I do think focusing on the consistency
| of design really is the best high-level summary of the
| difference between Linux and OpenBSD.
| Filligree wrote:
| Consistency is great, but there's no equivalent to NixOS
| for the BSDs -- that I know of.
|
| Am I actually wrong about that? Is there some declarative
| configuration system I should be using, which I've simply
| never heard of?
| blacktriangle wrote:
| I think we're talking about different definitions of
| consistency.
|
| In the BSD context, consistancy is that human effort has
| been put in to get the userspace to look similar. Similar
| behavior of command line tools, similar documentation,
| similar configuration, etc.
|
| It looks like you're talking about consistancy of
| packages across installs, which is a totally different
| issue.
| Filligree wrote:
| No, that's the sort of consistency I was thinking of. I
| simply want that _and_ all the niceties I 'd get from
| NixOS.
| bpye wrote:
| There are a couple issues tracking FreeBSD support for
| Nix [0,1], the package manager indicating it works there.
| Depending on the level of integration you want that might
| be sufficient, that would already be enough to generate
| the system config files for example, but to get the sort
| of integration you get on NixOS with different
| generations and the ability to rollback at boot would
| require more work. This would look something more like
| nix-darwin [2] than NixOS really.
|
| I wouldn't be entirely surprised if OpenBSD works too, I
| might spin up a VM and see...
|
| [0] https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/3280
|
| [1] https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/81459
|
| [2] https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin
| rgrmrts wrote:
| I was actually looking into this as well. I recently
| switched my server to NixOS and the declarative
| configuration has been really nice to work with and fits
| easily into my workflow/tools (emacs with tramp).
|
| I'd be really interested in seeing a variant on top of
| openbsd that has a comparable declarative layer. If
| anyone knows of such projects, please share!
| tharne wrote:
| I used open BSD for a little while. It's very simple, clean,
| and elegantly designed. If you're looking to learn more about
| Unix, then you'll have a lot of fun with OpenBSD.
|
| If you want to use it as a daily driver, you're probably going
| to run into some headaches. That being said, if you're willing
| to put in some time, learn a little bit and forgo some software
| here and there, you certainly *could* use OpenBSD as a daily
| driver. One really cool thing about OpenBSD is that the OpenBSD
| devs use the OS as their daily driver.
|
| You'll likely keep hearing about how good the OpenBSD man pages
| are. I always thought this was a weird thing to mention and
| make a big deal about. But holy crap, the OpenBSD documentation
| is amazing. Reading it has definitely made my own documentation
| at work significantly better.
|
| The downside? There are a couple. The biggest two are that, 1)
| you're not going to find a lot of the software you might
| normally use; and 2) The performance is not great and battery
| life is not very good.
| 35fbe7d3d5b9 wrote:
| > If you want to use it as a daily driver, you're probably
| going to run into some headaches
|
| This all depends on the hardware you bring to the table. A
| random Acer laptop with a questionable ACPI table is probably
| going to have problems, but a previous-gen Thinkpad X1 should
| be great because that's what the devs use.
|
| > you're not going to find a lot of the software you might
| normally use
|
| This really depends on your use cases - I can do most of the
| development I want on my OpenBSD laptop. But there are some
| gaps, absolutely.
|
| > The performance is not great and battery life is not very
| good.
|
| Harder to argue this one. It's getting better release by
| release, though :)
| upofadown wrote:
| I don't care that much about the security claims but I have to
| acknowledge that they are probably true to some extent. I value
| OpenBSD most for its minimalism. The OpenBSD project seems to
| have managed to avoid the feature bloat that other systems are
| now suffering from. You have to learn it, but there is not a
| lot there to learn.
|
| Once you figure out how to set it up then the audio just works.
| That is a killer feature compared to the situation I had to
| deal with when I was doing Debian on the desktop.
| nix23 wrote:
| No why? If your happy an you know it, clap your hands.
|
| But if you want to try out something else, clap your hand and
| start installing, why?
|
| https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2020/09/07/quare-freebsd/
| yrui wrote:
| I've been running OpenBSD more than 15 years, and it does have
| a learning curve.
|
| One area to consider as a happy Debian desktop user is using
| OpenBSD as a router OS. PC Engines (I have no affiliation to
| them) makes a very nice router called "Alix" and OpenBSD works
| well on it. Previously, people were installing it on Soekris
| routers before they went out of business.
|
| OpenBSD's firewall pf is by far my favorite, and it and OpenBSD
| have a lot of nice networking features and tools to tinker
| with. It's free of blobs (in the default install), free of
| known bugs (in the default install--but generally your router
| will work well with only the default install), and configured
| to be reasonably secure by default. The documentation is also
| frequently praised.
|
| How many other modern, full-fledged, well-maintained and open
| code OSes run in 32 Mb of RAM?
| thijsvandien wrote:
| ALIX is EOL. Nowadays you'll want to use their APU (excellent
| too).
| umanwizard wrote:
| You're obviously curious and want to try it, or you wouldn't
| have posted that, so why not go for it? You have nothing to
| lose.
|
| For me the coolest thing about OpenBSD is it's the simplest OS
| that is still of practical use (i.e., not counting ones that
| are purely for research or education). So if you're curious
| about how any part of the system works, it's easy to just dive
| into /usr/src and figure it out. It's also entirely configured
| via simple text files rather than some opaque systemd
| monstrosity.
| tazjin wrote:
| systemd is configured via simple text files
| umanwizard wrote:
| What simple text file is, for example, the list of WiFi
| SSIDs to try to connect to stored in?
| nix23 wrote:
| /etc/systemd/network/25-wireless.network
|
| https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/systemd-
| networkd#network_fi...
|
| But simple i would not call it...compared to bsd ;)
| coffeecat wrote:
| I believe this is incorrect. Systemd-networkd handles
| layer-3 routing and some amount of layer-2 stuff (MAC
| addresses, etc), but it doesn't handle wifi connections.
| Wifi connections are handled by wpa_supplicant (the
| older, and still more common wifi daemon) or iwd (newer,
| but not yet widely adopted).
|
| The vast majority of users control wpa_supplicant
| indirectly through NetworkManager, so it's not widely
| known that it can be configured using simple text files.
| But it can! On Arch linux, the default config file
| location (for network card wlan0) is:
| /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant-wlan0.conf.
|
| iwd is similarly straightforward to configure using text
| files. Using the CLI front-end is typically a nicer
| experience, since you get to pick the SSID from scan
| results and you get quick feedback if you mess up the
| password. But if you want to do it manually, just create
| one file per wifi network (containing SSID, password,
| etc) in /var/lib/iwd/.
| enriquto wrote:
| This file does not exist on my rather plain ubuntu 20.04
| LTS.
|
| I tried finding similarly named files, to no avail.
| Knowing the notorious ADHD of the systemd developership,
| I wouldn't be surprised if this file is moved, renamed,
| and uses a different format every six months.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| That's not a systemd thing, that's a distro thing. The
| default path is where it gets put if it's part of the
| base system, if it's installed from a package or if the
| distro makers decide to change it (because maintainers
| forks of projects often change things) it'll be
| elsewhere. But the systemd project doesn't control that.
|
| EG Debian's systemd fork puts it in /lib/systemd/network/
| (and lots of other network files in
| /usr/lib/systemd/network/).
| nix23 wrote:
| /lib/systemd/network
|
| http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/focal/man5/systemd.ne
| two...
|
| or
|
| find / -name '*.network'
|
| But yeah, BSD's would have them at one place -> /etc
| ...linux-distro standardization is a terrible mess.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| How are remote updates in Ubuntu configured by text file
| under systemd?
| tazjin wrote:
| I don't know, I don't use distributions with imperative
| state management.
| nix23 wrote:
| Remote Updates..systemd? Do you mean apt?
|
| /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/
|
| https://wiki.debian.org/UnattendedUpgrades
| Koshkin wrote:
| Coherency, security, stability, ZFS... Perfect on a server
| (e.g. a VPS), may not be as good as a desktop or as something
| to run on a laptop (depending on hardware).
| mrweasel wrote:
| > Coherency, security, stability, ZFS...
|
| My only sort of complaint in regards to FreeBSD is actually
| ZFS. Not that it's not fantastic, or that it shouldn't be
| there. ZFS does however clearly comes from Solaris, and there
| have been no effort to make the ZFS command line tools feel
| more BSD like.
|
| Changing the tooling around ZFS probably isn't a great idea,
| but coherency has clearly taken a backseat to features in
| this case.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > Changing the tooling around ZFS probably isn't a great
| idea, but coherency has clearly taken a backseat to
| features in this case.
|
| Right, because ZFS is a foreign piece of software that runs
| on other operating systems. At that point you are better
| off keeping those tools coherent with other ZFS
| implementations. This is a good compromise.
| gtirloni wrote:
| It's coherent with the other ZFS implementations in Linux
| and Solaris.
| nrr wrote:
| Likewise, apropos storage systems that handle logical
| volume management, Linux's LVM tools are extremely
| reminiscent of those from HP-UX[0], and NetBSD's LVM
| guide explicitly calls out their tooling being built from
| Linux's lvm2tools[1].
|
| There's a modest amount of precedent for this kind of
| thing.
|
| 0: lvcreate(1M) from HP-UX 11i https://nixdoc.net/man-
| pages/HP-UX/man1/lvcreate.1m.html
|
| 1: http://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-lvm.html
| umanwizard wrote:
| > ZFS
|
| NB: Not on OpenBSD.
| pastrami_panda wrote:
| > Coherency
|
| What does this refer to in this context?
| tbrock wrote:
| Things are where you'd expect, patterns and conventions
| cary on throughout the system, etc... Vs the disjoint
| feeling linux has.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Part of the job of a Linux distribution is to provide
| policy, conventions, and similar consistency.
|
| If you install everything from sources directly, or
| directly from upstream vendors, you may get
| inconsistencies, but if you install everything from your
| Linux distribution, you should get reasonable
| consistency, just as if you install everything from your
| BSD distribution.
| [deleted]
| agumonkey wrote:
| even in a distro, you'll get various syntax variations
| for instance
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Syntax of what?
| agumonkey wrote:
| cli programs, they all have different ways to handle
| arguments, options, help
|
| ps: another instance, albeit not a BSD strength either,
| would be data format, every output is different, I, like
| a few people too wanted some json as pivot representation
| to cut the thousands of papercuts, that kind of
| uniformity is what I expect from "system"
| evh wrote:
| Lots (just some? most? I haven't really used it much) of
| FreeBSD system utilities are using libxo for output, so
| you can use e.g. ps --libxo json
|
| and get json output, or xml/html
| agumonkey wrote:
| I didn't know bsd already adopted it, only heard a few
| passing mentions. That's great, though, and note that I
| mostly meant that about linux.
| zokula wrote:
| I already have that with Linux.
| yung_steezy wrote:
| I would recommend FreeBSD if you were going to try one of them.
| The BSD experience a bit like using linux was like 15 years
| ago. Online DRM for sites like Netflix will not work for
| example. Specifically in the case of FreeBSD the filesystem is
| well curated and cohesive, if you feel a file ought to be in a
| certain location it is usually there. Additionally the manpages
| and docs are a joy to read.
|
| I'm less familiar with OpenBSD but it is similar in terms of
| prioritising being a cohesive operating system and docs. Some
| design choices the team have made for reasons such as security
| make the system feel sluggish by modern standards, even
| compared to other BSDs. You might get a lot of mileage out of
| it if you enjoy old school C programming and reading the source
| code for coreutils libraries.
| ToddWBurgess wrote:
| I got FreeBSD running on a Raspberry PI. It isn't too hard to
| install and get up and running. I primarily use FreeBSD on
| the Pi for ARM assembly programming. All BSDs are great for
| devs.
| blacktriangle wrote:
| ooc why didn't you try NetBSD? Isn't running on every
| little device kinda their wheelhouse?
| ToddWBurgess wrote:
| I did try NetBSD first on the Pi but the install wasn't
| working for me. Getting FreeBSD up and running on the
| Raspberry Pi was a lot less painful. If I really want to
| kick around NetBSD I can run an instance of it in GNU
| Boxes on one of my Linux boxes.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| >prioritising being a cohesive operating system and docs
|
| This is one of the areas where OpenBSD really shines. Their
| documentation is really good. FreeBSD is also quite good, but
| I've been consistently impressed with OpenBSD's docs since
| 2.5.
|
| Linux distros can't reach the same level of quality due to
| being less cohesive at the base, though they do make up for
| it with quantity. You can search for most Linux issues and
| find an answer.
| bluedino wrote:
| Arch was the most BSD-ish when I tried it a few years back
| Koshkin wrote:
| This is usually said about Slackware. (It uses the BSD
| style init system.)
| puffyn wrote:
| I can only comment on OpenBSD. It's a minimal unix system. I
| like the minimalism. OpenBSD is mainly a router/server/firewall
| system but you can use OpenBSD on a desktop. If your hardware
| is supported everything works out of the box. Firefox/Chromium
| have pledge/unveil security which prevent them from accessing
| your file system. Something like apparmor but works put of the
| box. However it's not designed as a desktop system (installing
| a browser introduces many security risks). They have some
| additional security features like encrypted swap and others. In
| terms of security, the OpenBSD kernel is a lot smaller than the
| linux kernel. Can't have holes in code that doesn't exist. All
| together it's just a minimal small unix system.
|
| If you want to use it on the desktop, you can use it for basic
| surfing or 90s video games. I'm using it for fun mainly. There
| is no jails / docker / virtualbox so I don't use it for coding.
|
| OpenBSD isn't really a desktop OS, desktop users typically use
| FreeBSD because there are many more packages. FreeBSD is a
| completely different OS.
| amatecha wrote:
| There is virtualization with vmm:
| https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq16.html
| anthk wrote:
| >If you want to use it on the desktop, you can use it for
| basic surfing or 90s video games
|
| Why? You have PPSSPP, Dolphin, maybe some current-gen
| emulators, and lots of sourc ports. And fnaify for Mono
| games.
|
| https://playonbsd.com/shopping_guide/
| lcall wrote:
| After learning some things (see my umask comment etc,
| elsewhere here on this page, and my way around the FAQs etc),
| I have found it very useful for my desktop and am happy with
| it. Even before I learned things like tmux and fvwm, xfce etc
| worked nicely.
|
| (Having said that, my needs might be atypical.)
|
| Edit/ps: last I knew, it had something like 10_000 binary
| packages available, in addition to the base system.
| snvzz wrote:
| >basic surfing
|
| With recent versions of chrome/firefox and 3d acceleration on
| amd/intel graphics, you're not limited to "basic surfing".
|
| The only reason I can think of that you would say that is
| that perhaps you do e.g. have an NVIDIA card (why...) and
| thus you're stuck with no accelerated graphics.
| Panino wrote:
| Since timeout(1) was imported I can pkg_delete coreutils, nice.
| Lots of other goodies too.
| e12e wrote:
| Where/how do you use it? The description is pretty
| straightforward:
|
| https://man.openbsd.org/timeout.1
|
| But it's not something I'd miss - unless it's used in some
| scripts I'm unaware of..
| jmclnx wrote:
| Just see this:
|
| https://www.openbsd.org/goals.html
|
| But if your video is Nvidia, you are out of luck until they open
| their drivers.
| ksec wrote:
| From https://www.openbsd.org/goals.html
|
| >Be as politics-free as possible; solutions should be decided
| on the basis of technical merit.
|
| Someone has the wisdom to put this in nearly 20 years ago.
| bluGill wrote:
| OpenBSD split from NetBSD years ago for political reasons. So
| it isn't a surprise that 20 years ago politics and the issues
| thereof were high on everyone's mind.
| ksec wrote:
| >OpenBSD split from NetBSD years ago for political reasons.
|
| I was naive in thinking it was always about the focus on
| priorities, as in Security vs NetBSD's portability. So I
| decided to read up on it [1]. Since Wiki seems to be
| purposely quiet / unclear on the incident.
|
| Turns out Open Source Politics isn't that much different 25
| years later.
|
| [1] https://www.theos.com/deraadt/coremail.html
| zokula wrote:
| That would assume that OpenBSD is secure the first place.
| macintux wrote:
| Nothing is 100% secure.
| ToddWBurgess wrote:
| Theo de Raadt wanted to make security the number one
| priority and the NetBSD team did not. So Theo de Raadt
| forked NetBSD in order to create OpenBSD which would
| become security first. It was a political decision. My
| source on that is a NetBSD kernel dev.
| xvilka wrote:
| Everyone is out of luck until NVIDIA open their drivers. I am
| sure their proprietary ones are complete garbage, for
| compatibility and application-specific tweaks. I wish more open
| source systems and progress tell them the same thing that Linus
| did.
| ptidhomme wrote:
| Not yet as it seems.
| protomyth wrote:
| Did the sysupgrade on one server and the home page looks to be
| updated now.
| pwrplus1 wrote:
| Exactly, everyone knows it's not official until the artwork is
| out.
| nix23 wrote:
| The song is the important stuff, if there is no song you
| should jump that release.
| pwrplus1 wrote:
| For generations the people of the artwork have been at war
| with the people of the song.
| nix23 wrote:
| Yes, since the "Shut up and Hack" release had some long
| lyrics. It's a cold war since then ;)
| nix23 wrote:
| Released Oct 14, 2021. (51st OpenBSD release)
|
| https://cdn.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/7.0/amd64/
| ptidhomme wrote:
| I'm well aware, but still not official (no artwork released
| for example)
| nix23 wrote:
| But the "Style Hymn" :)
|
| https://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#70
|
| But hey, if the Artwork is the release point for you,
| that's fine with me ;)
| pwrplus1 wrote:
| Also the homepage is a bit of a giveaway:
|
| > The current release is OpenBSD 6.9, released May 1,
| 2021.
| nix23 wrote:
| Press the Download button and be amazed ;)
|
| But no release for you, until homepage is.
| NexRebular wrote:
| Time to upgrade the T-series SPARCs. Nice to have a free modern
| OS to keep that amazing hardware still in usable state.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| Can anyone comment on how hardware support is these days? The
| last BSD I tried (4.4) wasn't that great with my laptop at the
| time
| brynet wrote:
| Link to announcement: https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-
| announce&m=163422237101753&w=2
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2021-10-14 23:01 UTC)