Why OpenBSD? Simply because it is the best tool for the job for me for my new-to-me Lenovo Thinkpad T420. Additionally, I do care about security and non-bloat in my personal operating systems (business needs can have different priorities, to be clear).
I will try to detail what my reasons are for going with OpenBSD (instead of GNU/Linux, NetBSD, or FreeBSD of which I’m comfortable using without issue), challenges and frustrations I’ve encountered, and what my opinions are along the way.
I’ve never managed to really get into the BSDs, as Linux has always served my needs for a UNIX-like operating system quite well. I feel like the BSDs are more pure and less messy than Linux, but is that actually true, or just my perception?
It’s totally true, BSDs in general are less messy and much more consistent than almost any Linux distro (with the exception of Slackware). In the Linux distro’s world changing everything from version to version, breaking things unexpectedly and hurting user’s ass is an accepted behavior. Linux people don’t have too much problem with it. Changing and breaking things is inherent to Linux philosophy and mindset. Not in BSD. At least, not in FreeBSD and OpenBSD. Both are predictable and sane, specially OpenBSD.
I love GNU, I love GNU tools and I even love the Linux kernel but Linux distros are a complete mess and the user always pays the cost, nobody cares about stability or predictability, “changes and features” are much more important than sanity… that’s why I jumped to FreeBSD many years ago and I don’t regret it at all. I have to use Red Hat Linux at work though… and it’s ok… but for personal use I prefer FreeBSD anyday, it’s better in every way and I more akin to the BSD way of thinking (maybe because I’m older).
Thom Holwerda,
I feel I should have more experience with BSDs than I do, but linux has more market share and therefor better hardware & software support in my industry. I’ve tried BSDs briefly in the past but left due to having worse support and development stretched thin. This says absolutely nothing about the relative merits of each technology, but explains why a lot of people go to linux first for better or worse.
Anyways, my opinion is that the linux kernel development is unstable in part due to the “good enough for me” philosophy of many principal developers (you know who you are) and the assumption that all OS development happens in tree. From the perspective of a developer who works on out of tree modules, the regular breakages and lack of ABI can be irritating!
I keep reading about BSD with interest, but it would be difficult to justify switching. I already have my own linux distro for the use cases where I’d want to use BSD and it would be a lot of work to switch.
Linux has more market share, but look at what BSD is actually used for.
1. PS4
2. Nintendo Switch
3. Half the world’s storage solutions. (freenas, isilon, etc)
4. Parts are used in Juniper products for their OS
5. Netflix streaming platform
6. a brand of televisions (panasonic?)
7. various firewalls (pfsense, opnsense, etc)
For me, the thing that bugs me the most is the lack of AMD binary drivers for BSD. FreeBSD is the base of 2 gaming platforms.
laffer1,
I think it would be fair to say that proprietary platforms like BSD particularly because the licensing is accepting of commercial entities using the code in proprietary products without the “viral” open source terms applying to redistribution as with the GPL.
When will people understand that users don’t buy code, they buy platforms. Doesn’t matter if FreeBSD is 99% similar to PS4 OS (it’s not), if they don’t run the same user-land software and drivers they are different things.
So, what is bugging you? Just because some other OS that shares some DNA strands with FreeBSD has AMD GPU drivers, FreeBSD should have too?
laffer1,
Funny how none of those companies contribute back to the BSDs as much as they should.
“as much as they should” highly subjective.
Sony has contributed a few patches back. Juniper has contributed back a lot more, as well as a fair amount of funding. Nintendo uses a parts of the kernel (not clear which parts), but it isn’t a huge part.
So how much should a company contribute back to an organization who specifically wants users of its software to be not obligated to do so?
Er … that would be “legally required” not “obligated”. Even if there are no legal requirements to contribute back to *BSD, there is still a moral obligation to do so … as many companies have.
Weird ‘article’, totally not representative to most other prospective users I guess. One fine example: can’t get wifi to work? No biggie, I still have wired.
I can’t remember the last time I plugged in a network cable into my laptop if it wasn’t for troubleshooting a networking issue.
In fairness, I think he just plugged in the network cable to be able to install the wireless drivers. Happens on a few Linux distributions too.
@tingo: Needing wired network to get wireless network to work can either be a major issue or indeed no biggie depending on having an actual wired network available ;). This has happened to me on Windows as well (with very new Wifi on an older Windows and with very old Wifi on a new Windows)
What worries me more is this: “OpenBSD will go down the list trying to connect until it is able to”. I would hope that in 2019 the process for determining which Wifi-network to connect to is a lot more sophisticated than “top to bottom in the list”. Network-speed and reliable connectivity should also play a role.
I am also very interested in the BSD’s, but when I read about the benefits (no-bloat, speed) versus the negatives (software-issues, no virtualization) I prefer to run software with some bloat in the OS. After all it is the applications that you use most of the time, not the OS
This is indeed an issue with OpenBSD, as the article author speaks of. There are a lot of applications that started out on Linux and are ported to the BSDs which will often crash on the latter. The downside of using an OS like OpenBSD daily which focuses on correctness is that it doesn’t have all the little tweaks and workarounds to make badly written software usable.
This is correct, and it’s due to the OpenBSD team not willing to ship closed firmware with the install media. Earlier releases would not automatically run a script to install firmware when the hardware that needs it was detected, but I’ve noticed the last few releases do this now. It’s a careful balance between user friendliness (especially for new users) and maintaining their stance on closed source blobs and packages. Also, some WiFi hardware has enough functionality to at least connect to a network during install, even if it doesn’t have all the features provided by the firmware blob. This is where choosing your hardware carefully comes into play, something the Linux crowd doesn’t have to worry as much about these days.
Another boon to user friendliness is including a default /etc/installurl that points to the main OpenBSD repository, making it easier for someone used to “apt install” or similar to get going from a fresh installation.
Well… For me I do not remember the last time I’ve used a WIRELESS connection for my desktop!
Seen actual hardware evolution I ditch my old Precision laptop to an assembled desktop, thankfully I work nearly only from home, so mobility it’s a minor issue. For conferences etc I still have an ancient Precision 5000 that’s slow with NixOS and EXWM but suffice for slides and live demos.
I even do not have ANY wifi at home. However I have to agree that *BSD nowadays suffer too much from reduced hardware support from “modern” graphics (FreeBSD with nvidia is probably the best option) and printers witch is a pain for desktop use…
Edit: formatting, forgot to unfill-region before posting 🙁
I tend to stick to printers which support postscript (or perhaps PCL), every os supports postscript and you’re not going to find that updating to a new os prevents your drivers from working.
I have been using OpenBSD as my OS for years because (and I can’t repeat this enough), it is easy to use. The documentation is first rate, it is really is all there. I use OpenBSD for home and school and I have yet to run into any issue that prevents me from getting any work done. I did I have to keep my network cable plugged in during and after install to get the firmware for my wifi card and I haven’t plugged my network cable in ever since (two years).
It really depends on your use case and priorties. I love Many of the *BSD’s. I also don’t use them much at all. I mean they are great! Just under used. So, I want to run modern code bases and some cutting edge software that makes the fullest extent of the operating system’s features. Which means I want something like fedora/ubuntu/arch.
Now if I had a back end system, that I didn’t care that much about performance or having the newest of new tools available. Sure open bsd all day, every day. Sadly, I don’t have such a need.