[HN Gopher] OpenBSD Webzine Issue #2
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OpenBSD Webzine Issue #2
Author : hucste
Score : 116 points
Date : 2021-10-15 07:12 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (webzine.puffy.cafe)
(TXT) w3m dump (webzine.puffy.cafe)
| messo wrote:
| I have little experience with OpenBSD, but this webzine reveals a
| playful community that have piqued my interest. A great way to
| mark important releases :)
| foxfluff wrote:
| Playful indeed. https://playonbsd.com/
|
| There's a nice small community of OpenBSD gamers. :)
| binkHN wrote:
| Then you might be pleased to know that OpenBSD also releases
| artwork and a song for every release!
| hyproxia wrote:
| Not always.
| enriquto wrote:
| > To play the first notes of Bach's prelude in C minor (BWV 934)
| (transposed to A minor to ease the writing), you need two OpenBSD
| boxes with beepers, and pipe the two following strings on
| /dev/speaker on both computers at the exact same time. (...)
|
| Hahahah, who writes this thing? It is lovely!
| raspbeguy wrote:
| I wrote this, glad you like it!
| HeckFeck wrote:
| Little trinkets like these give me hope that computing isn't
| lost to the hands of dullards and bugmen!
| mlang23 wrote:
| This brings back fond memories. When I came back from CCC Camp
| 2003, OpenBSD got me interested. So I gave it a try, and had a
| real fun time in the ensuing 12 months. The simplicity, pretty
| good docs and the installer ("Do you want to edit /etc/hosts with
| ed now?") got me really hooked. I eventually didnt make it away
| from Linux for several reasons, but I still miss playing with
| OpenBSD. It felt so right and unbloated, something I cant say
| about Linux anymore these days.
| zibzab wrote:
| I think Arch is very close to the OpenBSD philosophy.
|
| Not necessarily for security reasons, but more as a byproduct
| of keeping things simple so we can manage them manually.
| raspbeguy wrote:
| I do not fully agree on this statement. Arch uses systemd
| which cannot be caled "keeping things simple" in my opinion.
| I think Voidlinux is a bit closer to what you description.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| Void was created by a former NetBSD contributor, if I am
| not mistaken.
|
| Xbps, its packager, is a breeze to use. And I've found no
| major qualms with runit, the init system.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Then use one of the derivatives. Obarun, Artix come to
| mind.
| foxfluff wrote:
| Does Alpine Linux feel bloated too?
| mlang23 wrote:
| No idea, never tried. I went from SuSE straight to Debian,
| and haven't bothered to check any other distros out since.
| foxfluff wrote:
| Well, if you ever have the time to give it a try..
|
| Alpine is the most OpenBSD-like Linux distro I've yet to
| see. Of course, it's still not OpenBSD.
| opan wrote:
| What about Void? It even used LibreSSL out of the box for
| a while.
| foxfluff wrote:
| I'm not super fond of rolling releases. It always feels
| weird when people recommend Arch or Void to an OpenBSD
| user. OpenBSD has very nice releases with a tested &
| documented update process between each.
| raspbeguy wrote:
| OpenBSD has the -current branch, which is actually a
| rolling release
| Shared404 wrote:
| And one of the most common pieces of advice I've seen for
| desktop OpenBSD is to use -current . I don't on desktop
| because I haven't needed to, and wouldn't want to on a
| server though.
| enriquto wrote:
| It's much better than monstrosities like debian and the like,
| but still more bloated than OpenBSD.
|
| I have raw installs of OpenBSD 6.9 and Alpine on virtual
| machines. Running "ps ax" fills half of my terminal screen on
| OpenBSD, and requires several screens on Alpine.
| foxfluff wrote:
| Well, ps on linux shows kernel threads whereas on OpenBSD
| it doesn't.
|
| The list is pretty short on my alpine install if you
| exclude kernel threads: # ps ax | grep -v
| ']$' PID USER TIME COMMAND 1
| root 0:01 /sbin/init 1985 root 0:00
| /sbin/udevd 2361 root 0:00 /sbin/syslogd -t
| 2387 root 0:00 supervise-daemon wpa_supplicant --start
| /sbin/wpa_supplicant -- -i wlan0
| -c/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf 2388
| root 0:00 /sbin/wpa_supplicant -i wlan0
| -c/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf 2473
| root 0:00 /sbin/udhcpc -b -R -p
| /var/run/udhcpc.wlan0.pid -i wlan0 -x hostname:pi4
| 2567 chrony 0:00 /usr/sbin/chronyd -f
| /etc/chrony/chrony.conf 2592 root 0:00
| /usr/sbin/crond -c /etc/crontabs 2621 root
| 0:00 sshd: /usr/sbin/sshd [listener] 0 of 10-100 startups
| 2652 root 0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty1 2653
| root 0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty2 2654 root
| 0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty3 2655 root 0:00
| /sbin/getty 38400 tty4 2656 root 0:00
| /sbin/getty 38400 tty5 2657 root 0:00
| /sbin/getty 38400 tty6 3099 root 0:00 sshd:
| root@pts/0 3102 root 0:00 -ash 3109
| root 0:00 ps ax 3110 root 0:00 grep -v
| ]$
|
| I don't think kernel threads are a good measure of bloat.
| And a base install of Alpine is smaller than OpenBSD.
|
| But that's a fair point about presentation. OpenBSD seems
| to be more 'quiet' by default, and tends to only show
| relevant information. dmesg on OpenBSD seems much cleaner
| compared to the mess that Linux outputs.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > I don't think kernel threads are a good measure of
| bloat.
|
| It kinda is. Totally unrelated, but there is nothing
| quite like seeing hundreds of [nfsd] tasks hard-blocking
| in D on each server in a cluster. Time to reboot...
| well... everything.
| flatiron wrote:
| what are you trying to measure?
|
| openbsd will definitely feel from 10000 feet more
| "bloated" because its simply not as performant as linux.
| that's not a bad thing, it purposely does things the
| "right" way for security purposes and doesn't take any
| shortcuts.
|
| alpine is a lot smaller than openbsd but it really was
| created for an entirely different purpose. i always take
| alpine as "a muscl distro that makes a good docker
| container, oh and it runs on bare metal too, i guess".
| i've never seen alpine on metal in prod and i've been
| around the block a whole bunch. ive seen it in a metric
| ton of docker containers though.
|
| a chatty dmesg also isn't really bloat as well. although
| dmesg is a bit of a mess (and only recently default
| restricted to privileged accounts at least on arch).
| foxfluff wrote:
| I don't consider poor performance to be bloat (though
| poor performance can be a symptom of excess bloat). Bloat
| is more about obesity, and it shows in disk usage
| (upgrades take forever? yeah two gigabytes of data across
| 2000 packages; kernel doesn't fit in flash? keep
| unticking those kbuild options..), excessive memory
| usage, ridiculously long man pages, etcetra. Bloat
| doesn't necessarily impact performance in normal use,
| e.g. those 2000 packages I got on Fedora mostly sit on my
| disk untouched. But it's still there and it shows when
| it's time to update (and sometimes while doing other
| stuff).
|
| OpenBSD might not scale well to a large number of cores,
| and the program running on a 8-bit microcontroller (with
| 512 bytes of ram) on my breadboard isn't fast, but
| neither are particularly obese.
|
| I don't think the purpose between Alpine and OpenBSD are
| that far apart. Alpine aims to be a simple, small, and
| secure general purpose OS. OpenBSD is very similar, even
| if Theo has been pushing the "research OS" angle. There's
| obviously a big difference in how much software include
| in the base install.
| enriquto wrote:
| Thanks for the clarification! It is indeed true that
| alpine is very clean an not bloated at all; just that
| openbsd seems more _intentionally_ polished.
|
| As a matter of fact, I don't think this has anything to
| do with linux itself, just with the large distributions.
| If you use alpine, slackware or void you get a similar
| streamlined experience.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| You can build Debian up to anything you want. I prefer
| installing new systems from the netinstall image and
| skipping the mirror configuration step completely. This
| produces a very minimal system that has all the basics
| (bash, ssh client, vi, and coreutils), but without anything
| else. If you throw away apt caches, it weights around 500
| MB (half of which are various kernel modules).
|
| You then install the minimum amount of software necessary
| to cover the use case # apt install --no-
| install-{recommend,suggest}s xxx
| [deleted]
| ainar-g wrote:
| This might sound like a bit of a weird question, considering that
| there is an ATOM feed, but is there a way to receive these by
| E-Mail? The format seems almost perfect for a regular-ish
| subscription list.
| raspbeguy wrote:
| This is called a newsletter, and managing a newsletter asks
| more time and legal measures. So I cannot speak for solene, but
| that's not likely to happen.
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(page generated 2021-10-15 23:04 UTC)