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Been running 6.5 snapshots in my travel laptop for some weeks and everything just works. The laptop is a ThinkPad X200 which is a bit slow for my needs, but upg
by pimeys 8y ago
Been running 6.5 snapshots in my travel laptop for some weeks and everything just works. The laptop is a ThinkPad X200 which is a bit slow for my needs, but upgrading it to ThinkPad X230 later this week should help.
I really enjoy how simple the system is after all these years with Linux. I will always continue using Linux in my main computers, but for surfing, some hobby programming and as a travel OS OpenBSD definitely won me over.
And I guess it runs quite nicely in the X250 and T450 tier already, maybe even newer ThinkPads. And when I say runs, I mean runs much nicer than many Linux distributions with their default installation.
- mikece 8y ago>I really enjoy how simple the system is after all these years with Linux. I still shake my head when I think back to the 90s and how Linux managed to overtake the BSDs. Good to see they are still very much alive and moving forward.
- asveikau 8y agoThe weird thing, though, is that 90s Linux felt a little more like the BSDs than Linux usually does today. I mean, the BSDs were always a bit more coherent, but the default install of a typical Linux distro felt a lot less "heavy" in the past. You can switch from Linux to one of the *BSDs and feel like you are bringing back the glory days. Maybe this is a complaint about Ubuntu, or gnome, or systemd.
- CameronNemo 8y agoYou may like a distro such as Void or Alpine.
- smhenderson 8y agoI tend to agree. I started with Slackware when I first used Linux and it is heavily inspired by BSD. It remains so today so I've switched back to using it for day to day work and on a few servers I manage. All other servers are using OpenBSD so it looks like I've got some upgrades to get to!
- ColanR 8y agoI just switched from ubuntu to OpenBSD, realized that it's not optimized for desktop usage, and have been happy with Void for a while now.
- asveikau 8y agoI would disagree. In my experience OpenBSD is pretty good on a desktop or laptop. I've had fewer driver issues with it than FreeBSD for example (mostly wifi and graphics). But "optimized for desktop usage" is a very vague term with different meanings for everybody. My tastes are geared towards a light X workstation that doesn't add any extra whistles unless you ask for them. In the Linux world the closest I've seen to this is Arch. I also used debian for a long time (starting with netinst and no GUI, and adding things only as I need them).
- ColanR 8y agoSorry I was vague. I don't know the reasons for the difference, but on my X230 OpenBSD seemed to have higher latencies in starting programs, and ran big programs like chromium slower than ubuntu and void did. Driver support is great, I agree. And the network management is far simpler. It just felt slow.
- nine_k 8y ago> about Ubuntu, or gnome, or systemd Looks like it. I'm running Void Linux without all these, and it feels simple and lightweight. Also fast. (OTOH when I have to work with BSD userland utilities that are part of macOS, I often miss the GNU extensions, e.g. to `date` or to `awk`.)
- blandflakes 8y agoIf you're using some kind of window manager or desktop environment, do you mind me asking which one?
- nine_k 8y agoXfce, with its WM.
- rnd0 8y ago>Maybe this is a complaint about Ubuntu, or gnome, or systemd. In the 90's Linux was pretty well aimed at the techy crowd. you were expected to know or learn administration (including the location of and editing of etc files) and not be afraid of './configure && make && make install' Then the focus changed and while your Gentoos and Arches never went away, a larger portion of the focus was on either being user friendly and/or providing an enterprise desktop experience. This is something the BSDs (with the exception of TrueOS) never did -and certainly not OpenBSD. It's worth pointing out (and folks in this thread already have) that if you want the hacker's experience, it's still out there. It just has almost nothing to do with mainstream Linux (which is a shame).
- yellowapple 8y agoNot coincidentally, the oldest extant distro (Slackware) is also the one most often praised for being the most "BSD-like".
- btilly 8y agoYeah, a good lawsuit at the wrong time will do that to you. For those who don't know what I am talking about, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc._v._Berkeley_Software_Design,_Inc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc..... For what this has to do with Linux adoption, read http://www.softpanorama.org/People/Torvalds/Finland_period/att_lawsuit_as_a_launcher_for_linux.shtml http://www.softpanorama.org/People/Torvalds/Finland_period/a... about how the uncertainty around all of the BSD distributions lead to people jumping onto the Linux bandwagon. This got Linux ahead and it never looked back.
- zokula 8y agoThe lawsuit myth needs to die! Remember when SCO was trying to sue everybody over Linux? Why didn't the *BSDs become more popular then? Linux being more popular then the BSDs had nothing to do with anything Legal outside of Linux being GPL.
- btilly 8y agoOn what basis are you saying that it is a myth? During the BSD lawsuit, free software was not widely understood, the company doing the suing (AT&T) was one of the biggest in the world, and the one being sued (BSDI) was a nobody by comparison. It was clear that AT&T had grounds for a real case. Everyone I know that was there says that there was real fear of the outcome. And I've known a lot who were there. By contrast when the SCO lawsuit happened, open source was far better understood, it was a small company (SCO) doing the suing, and the companies being sued were the biggest in the world (starting with IBM). This threat was far less credible, and if it failed, everyone assumed that they would get lost in the shuffle. It didn't hurt for the latter case that groklaw stepped up and there were endless well-informed people who said that the case was groundless. And no, I don't just mean nerds who read slashdot. But also most of the tech media, various interested lawyers, and so on.
- sdfsdfsdfsdf3 8y agoOdd that you put this on a the travel laptop and not the desktop, I imagine most OS polygot its the inverse for things like battery life, touchpad drivers, webcam driver. Am curious why not make the switch on desktop? Same semantics? Same dotfiles? Do you use the same window manager across both linux and openbsd? Also what's the "much nicer" you refer to.. Please sell me
- pimeys 8y agoOh, I need Docker a lot. And our target platforms are Linux and OSX, so I just want to have some kind of standard OS on Desktop. Also stuff like Signal, Spotify etc. I still haven't been able to get running on OpenBSD, maybe some day... Nicer in a way that setting up the wifi, suspend et. al. just works. And is very easy.
- sdfsdfsdfsdf3 8y agoAh okay, Docker would be a sticking point for me too. Thanks for sharing
- fulafel 8y agoAll the OS X users seem to be content running Docker in a Linux VM. It's more secure that way too, fitting with OpenBSD mentality :) Doesn't help with the desktop OS part though.
- MuffinFlavored 8y ago> but for surfing, some hobby programming and as a travel OS OpenBSD definitely won me over. Mac OS X has won me (and many others) over when it comes to these topics. I'm curious why BSD would be your choice. It sounds painful?
- pimeys 8y agoI like simplicity. I use i3, Firefox with enough privacy extensions, Emacs and terminal. And I love to be able to have a great keyboard, where sadly the ThinkPads are the only choice nowadays. Using Mac OS X or Windows will give me a headache. I just don't like their user interface. And I've used both of them a lot; I had my G4 iMac with 10.0.0 back in the days, and kind of liked 10.3.0 until Linux won me over again.
- pimeys 8y ago(P.S. why every OS thread in HN always turns into discussion about Apple?)
- snazz 8y agoPeople are very change-resistant when it comes to OS and text editor choice and don’t understand how the other side lives without $feature_of_choice.
- MuffinFlavored 8y agoI'm just amazed that you are calling an interface you need to set up yourself / configure / tweak a bunch of things to get working is "simple" in your eyes compared to Mac OS X, which is simple to lots of people (which would explain why they sell so many MacBooks, in my eyes?)
- pimeys 8y agoI'm just a different crowd! I live in UNIX and for me editing a few text files is much simpler than having a bloated OS. And why I said the thing about Apple originally is that it seems to be almost a meme that every single thread about Linux or *BSD gets a discussion about Apple products. It's so weird :)
- makz 8y agoI’m curious about what you consider a “travel OS” and how is that different from regular OS.
- pimeys 8y agoTravel OS, so I basically browse the Internet, watch some videos, listen to some music and do some hobby projects. Also it's nice to have a not so expensive laptop for travels, so it's not such a big deal if it gets stolen. And of course the travel machine uses full disk encryption. Size is important here: I prefer 12" for travels and 14" for work, when I want to view multiple files at the same time. OpenBSD has hard time using even 4 gigabytes of RAM with Firefox having multiple tabs open. My Arch installations easily take over 8 gigabytes, if I'm not compiling anything. If I need a backup machine for work, I kind of want a Linux with all the Docker, Spotify, Signal etc. easily available.
- ivanbakel 8y agoThat sounds like a hefty OS. My Arch install is currently using 4Gb, and this is a full desktop.
- fmajid 8y agoI love the simplicity of OpenBSD as well, but not all Linuxes are bloated, Alpine for instance is quite reasonable. The main benefits of Linux are ZFS and Docker, as well as wider hardware support.
- fapjacks 7y agoYou have listed ZFS as a benefit of Linux in contrast to BSD, but BSD has better support of ZFS than Linux, so I'm curious why you listed ZFS in this way?