I'm using Manjaro Linux. I'm thinking of partitioning or dual booting with a BSD (likely OpenBSD). I have a few questions. reddit / BSD ---------------------------------------------------------------------- koavf · 2021-09-18 21:05 My understanding is that GNU/Linux software can usually be made to run on BSDs. Is this usually true? What would I likely miss out on? What would be the biggest changes I would notice in operating systems for daily use? For context, I mostly use Firefox and work or read on the Web. I don't need any cutting-edge video editing software or new games or anything. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- reddit_original · 2021-09-18 21:15 I use Firefox and work on the web for two decades using FreeBSD. I don't know about the other BSDs but FreeBSD has the so-called "Linuxaltor" which, according to Phoronix, can run some Linux applications faster than Linux can. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- koavf · 2021-09-18 21:18 Nice. Thanks. Do you find any limitations on the kinds of software you need to use? As long as I have Firefox, LibreOffice, and Thunderbird, that handles 99% of anything I ever have to do. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- passthejoe · 2021-09-18 21:27 BSD are definitely a YMMV situation. I'd say put it on a computer and give it a try. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- willemdeb · 2021-09-18 22:01 Depending on the peripherals of your system, you'll probably run into issues with bluetooth on OpenBSD in the sense that it's not implemented. You could opt for a desktop focussed FreeBSD derivative like GhostBSD to get started. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- koavf · 2021-09-18 22:02 Nice, thanks. I'm also considering a totally airgapped machine (MNT Reform) and may use it on that. The one that I mentioned above is a Pinebook Pro. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- yourhelpfulfriend · 2021-09-18 22:08 Most of the software you use on Linux is open source software. Typically, it will work on other open source, Unix-like operating systems. In some cases, the code has Linux-specific features that have to be patched before it will run, but that's all handled by the developers who create packages for their BSD. In other cases, the software you're running on Linux _was developed on BSD to begin with_. But anyway, lots of "Linux" software runs on OpenBSD. Here are some big names from the upcoming 7.0 release: Asterisk 18.6.0 Audacity 2.4.2 CMake 3.20.3 Chromium 93.0.4577.82 Emacs 27.2 FFmpeg 4.4 GCC 8.4.0 and 11.2.0 GHC 8.10.6 GNOME 40.4 Go 1.17 JDK 8u302, 11.0.12 and 16.0.2 KDE Applications 21.08.1 KDE Frameworks 5.85.0 Krita 4.4.8 LLVM/Clang 11.1.0 LibreOffice 7.2.0.4 Lua 5.1.5, 5.2.4 and 5.3.6 MariaDB 10.6.4 Mono 6.12.0.122 Mozilla Firefox 92.0 and ESR 91.1.0 Mozilla Thunderbird 91.1.0 Mutt 2.1.3 and NeoMutt 20210205 Node.js 12.22.6 OCaml 4.10.0 OpenLDAP 2.4.59 PHP 7.3.30, 7.4.23 and 8.0.10 Postfix 3.5.11 PostgreSQL 13.4 Python 2.7.18, 3.8.12 and 3.9.7 Qt 5.15.2 and 6.0.4 R 4.1.1 Ruby 2.6.8, 2.7.4 and 3.0.2 Rust 1.55.0 SQLite 3.35.5 Shotcut 21.01.29 Sudo 1.9.7p2 Suricata 6.0.2 Tcl/Tk 8.5.19 and 8.6.8 TeX Live 2020 Vim 8.2.3394 and Neovim 0.5.0 Xfce 4.16 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- koavf · 2021-09-18 22:50 Thank you kindly: this is a great rundown. It also seems like the sorts of things I'm interested in doing with a computer are compatible with a BSD. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- yourhelpfulfriend · 2021-09-18 23:39 Likely! I'm using OpenBSD on my laptop and work computer (plus my server and my router) and it is lovely. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- extraordinary_weird · 2021-09-19 00:39 You won't have widevine support on any BSD. Therefore you can't use services like Spotify, Netflix, ... natively (there are alternatives like ncspot or torrents though) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- koavf · 2021-09-19 02:20 Good, since I don't use Spotify anyway! Widevine DRM is gross but I appreciate the heads-up. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LiamW · 2021-09-19 03:12 Save yourself the headache and use rEFInd as your boot manager. Was dual booting Manjaro and FreeBSD and it auto detected GhostBSD and OpenBSD drives. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- koavf · 2021-09-19 03:56 Thanks a lot. I had never heard of this before. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- reddit_original · 2021-09-19 08:43 I use all that except I no longer use Thunderbird. I used to and know many others do, too. They all run natively on FreeBSD. You don't need Linux emulation for any of that and I never have. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- koavf · 2021-09-19 15:11 My understanding is that those Mozilla products are unofficial ports but have been around for awhile and are well-maintained. Good point. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- reddit_original · 2021-09-19 15:38 I question why anyone would think they were unofficial. The updates come out the same time Mozilla announces them--for Firefox at least-- but I've never bothered to look into it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- koavf · 2021-09-19 15:39 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Firefox&oldid=1044755666#Un official_ports ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Other_Account_2507 · 2021-09-19 18:12 Can I just ask why? I run exclusively CentOS and Debian on my servers now. Why use a BSD for a server? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- yourhelpfulfriend · 2021-09-19 19:51 Sure! At the outset, let me say I use Debian sid on one of my desktops. It has two advantages over OpenBSD: it is faster and it has _way_ more packages. But that's it (for me). The whole system feels complicated and sloppy. Let me give you a few examples before I go on to my general arguments for OpenBSD. First, consider how OpenBSD does packages. I literally worry about one line in one file: www$ cat /etc/installurl https://mirrors.gigenet.com/pub/OpenBSD www$ On Debian, I have an entire `/etc/apt` directory with two files and six directories, with one of those directories having 11 files in it! 11 files with names like `20listchanges` or `50appstream`. What? Plus `apt` is a frontend to `apt-get` and other tools, which in turnwork with `dpkg`. Layers on layers. To me, Fedora is even more confusing -- `dnf` has _so_ many options. Second, on my OpenBSD laptop, `/etc` has 112 files or directories. On my Debian desktop, it has 235 files or directories. I don't even know what some of these are. What the hell is `/etc/ucf.conf.` Oh, the comment says it is "sourced by the ucf configuration script for configuration?" What? Third, OpenBSD stopped shipping `sudo` by default (even though its maintainer is an OpenBSD developer). It now uses something called `doas`. `doas` is configured through one file (with a very simple configuration syntax). On my Debian machine, I see four `sudo` config files or directories in `etc`, each with `sudo`'s weird configuration style! Anyway, here are some things I like about OpenBSD in general. These are, IMO, advantages over Linux, Windows, and -- frankly -- other BSDs. 1. There is a real focus on simplicity. That means having tools that are simple to configure (e.g., doas, httpd, pkg_*). They have even forked big programs to create simpler, more secure alternatives (e.g., `openssl` forked to create `libressl`, `xdm` forked to create `xenodm`). And while I'm systemd agnostic, I can't deny that it's simpler for me to make sense of a few lines in `/etc/rc.conf.local` than it is to figure out all the systemd binaries and config files. As Theo de Raadt said in [a mailing list post](https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=147397229604712&w=2), "I'm hearing a tone that only people who know how to configure complex situations should be secure. That stands against my principles." 2. OpenBSD (and other BSDs) are developed as a single userland and kernel. That means big changes can be made very quickly. That means if developers find a bug or a bad practice in one file, they can scan the entire OS for the same problem. They can also introduce new security features very quickly. For example, the pledge and unveil features have been added to most of the programs in the base operating system. On Linux you'd need to get all kinds of separate projects to commit to using new features! As [one blog post summarized](https://www.mulva.net/wiki/openbsd_reasons.html), "Making global changes is an important part of what makes OpenBSD's approach to improving security, code maintenance, and so on work. Because it directly maintains everything as a unit, OpenBSD is in a position to introduce new C library or kernel APIs (or change them) and then immediately update all sorts of things in user level programs to use the new API. This takes a certain amount of work, of course, but it's possible to do it at all." 3. Because the source code is developed as a unified whole, the rest of the development process follows. There is one set of mailing lists. There is one set of documents. There is one website. There is one place to go to find every commit for the project's 25-year history. Etc. 4. OpenBSD may have fewer drivers than Linux, but they are often better designed. As developer [stsp said](https://lobste.rs/s/zr7qo4/systemd_kills_background_processes), "Linux not only has more drivers. It has big, fat ones, larger than you’ll want to read through in your life. Most are written by engineers working for hardware vendors, under stress, on a very tight schedule in time to market. Some are riddled with security issues (just follow the debian-security mailing list and pay attention to changelogs of kernel package updates)." 5. The documentation is very good and is all in man pages. I don't need to switch between `man`, `info`, a wiki, or hope that `--help` does something. 6. OpenBSD has one development branch. Even though it's "cutting edge," it's ridiculously stable. The biggest problem I've had the last few years is that my USB security stopped working for a one snapshot. Problems get fixed _quick_, and that typically goes for popular third party packages as well. 7. Really good defaults. I'm comfortable putting a machine on the internet even if I don't make changes to OpenBSD's defaults. Anyway, are there reasons to prefer Linux? I'm sure there are. They just don't matter to me. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- VENTDEV · 2021-09-20 04:11 FYI, Internal Wifi isn't working on the BSDs for the Pinebook Pro. You'll have to use the dongle. Besides that, NetBSD is my go-to choice for PBP, and it's pretty rock solid. FreeBSD is my go to choice for a Workstation. OpenBSD is my choice for secure server. (Firewall, router, server that stores people's PII.) My PBP right now is running Debian, because I am using the PBP for work and I need internal wifi. But I will eventually switch to NetBSD when the wifi gets sorted. As for software. You'll be able to run pretty much any open source posix software on BSD that you can run on Linux. There are a few notable exceptions, like Box86, Android Emulators, etc. But you're unlikely to be using them if you have to ask these questions. FreeBSD will have the biggest collection of software of the bunch. Followed by NetBSD and then OpenBSD. Closed sourced software is another story. You're not going to have access to Widevine (netflix) on the BSDs. Let alone ARM BSDs. Then being on ARM, a number of other things won't work. The FreeBSD linux emulator I don't believe works for ARM (might be mistaken). WINE doesn't work (Box86/Box64 is a solution for WINE, but I haven't tried it on BSDs yet, but I doubt it works.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- koavf · 2021-09-20 05:00 Thanks: great rundown. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- cargolax · 2021-09-25 13:14 It says there are few unofficial rebranded Firefox's versions available for various OS, but it doesn't mean that Firefox ports on BSD\* are unofficial. To me FF is maintained as well as it is on Linux, on FBSD I've got the latest one installed from pkg '92.0\_3,2'. I think what they wanted to explain is that it exists unofficial ports that's all, but may be I don't get it ... BTW welcome on BSD OSs :-)