How is the binary compatibility between different BSDs? reddit / BSD ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SkyyySi · 2021-04-10 16:57 While it doesn't really matter in practice (for me), which BSD binaries are compatible with which other BSDs? I'm primarily talking about the "base" ones (Free-, Open- and NetBSD) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BumpitySnook · 2021-04-10 17:00 None, at least for Free/Open. And I wouldn't attempt to rely on it anywhere else. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nu0or · 2021-04-10 17:55 no ---------------------------------------------------------------------- joscher123 · 2021-04-10 19:17 Dragonflybsd can run freebsd binaries I think Otherwise you need to compile separately for openbsd and netbsd ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2021-04-10 19:23 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- McDutchie · 2021-04-10 22:03 Nonexistent. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- williewillus · 2021-04-10 23:07 The BSD's are very source-oriented. OpenBSD in particular reserves the right to change the ABI every stable release (meaning at most every year, since 2 releases are supported at once and a release is made every 6 months). So you would have to recompile even on the same OS. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- pseydtonne · 2021-04-11 01:26 How did they ever expect to be a business-level OS with that kind of underpinning? That makes MacOS sound history-friendly, and it's based on BSD. What's the point of being security-centric if your only plan is to run on home boxes? No business could plan around that. Eesh. That's nutty. I'm sorry, that's vekakte and meshuggah. There's gotta be a goyische kopf in charge. If we can go more than a year between reboots, why would we recompile software every other year? Dang yakub can be so dim. Edit: today I learned a lot. Thank you to all three commenters. ...oh, and I am a corporate whore. (And how!) I came from very wrong conclusions about OpenBSD. I was thinking of it as a small version of a big-time project, rather than the long-term version of an indie project. Perhaps OpenBSD is like The Smithereens. Every song is in E7 and even the slow tunes are kinda the same. However you will always get a consistent performance from any Smithereens song you pick at random. You don't even need to finish side one of Green Thoughts: you got the idea and you can always come back. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2021-04-11 01:43 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TeamAzimech · 2021-04-11 02:26 TBF, OpenBSD was never about mainstream acceptability nor business friendly, just being a secure OS, and the project just happened to have had a very positive impact on Open Source security, especially with LibreSSL OpenBSD is something I’d like to install on an older laptop someday should I ever visit relatives, but I’d rather look into HardenedBSD for a future desktop system, because they are binary compatible with FreeBSD, support for ZFS, Linux binaries, WINE etc while they work on being more secure than the project they forked away from. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- calmkelp · 2021-04-11 02:41 I don't think being a business level OS is really the priority for OpenBSD. There have been times where Theo has said it's a research operating system. It's essentially made for the OpenBSD developers by the OpenBSD developers. That said, I do think a number of businesses do use it, regardless. If you only use software from the ports collection, you most likely don't have to recompile software. There are binary packages provided that will take care of that for you. Occasional pkg\_add -u and 'sysupgrade' will take care of it all for you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- moosepile · 2021-04-11 03:17 OpenBSD has never in my knowledge sought to be anything but what the people who develop it want it to be. The story and motivations aren’t hard to come by on the web iirc. I used it in the business world but with the full knowledge that I was the one adapting. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- deaddodo · 2021-04-11 07:12 MacOS and Windows go to pains to keep their binary compatibility intact. In fact, between the two, Windows still puts macOS to shame. But this is also why they have so much “legacy cruft” which is what *everyone* complains about with Windows. In both directions. “My scanner driver that worked with win95/98/me/2k, doesn’t work on Vista!” when they do break it or “why do graphics cards still BSOD Windows 98!?” when they refuse to. In addition, FreeBSD keeps a pretty strong ABI compatibility through many versions. But for source focused OSS OSes that aren’t seeking commercial software? Why? Just rebuild the software for each version. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TeamAzimech · 2021-04-12 23:17 While it’s not great, there’s been attempts to rectify it, like with this project: “The NetBSD Packages Collection (*pkgsrc*) is a framework for building third-party software on NetBSD and other UNIX-like systems, currently containing over 13000 packages. It is used to enable freely available software to be configured and built easily on supported platforms.” [https://www.netbsd.org/docs/software/packages.html](https://www.netbs d.org/docs/software/packages.html) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gnemmi · 2021-04-13 10:14 Can confirm. Dragonfly has its own dports collection: https://man.dragonflybsd.org/?command=dports§ion=ANY and it uses its very own Dsynth as bulk dports builder utility https://man.dragonflybsd.org/?command=dsynth§ion=ANY