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OpenBSD is a modern, innovative Operating System that has retained classic Unix sensibilities. I also think that, even as a lover of Linux, a Linux monoculture

OpenBSD is a modern, innovative Operating System that has retained classic Unix sensibilities. I also think that, even as a lover of Linux, a Linux monoculture is bad for the world. The simplicity of OpenBSD makes it much easier to learn deeply than Linux. Where Linux has tended to create magical veneers over complexity, OpenBSD has tended to simplify the underlying systems. Also, the OpenBSD project is shouldering the weight of the world and deserves more credit for this. So much of OpenBSD has made it into other parts of the Internet ecosystem.

pjmlp 7y ago
> OpenBSD is a modern, innovative Operating System that has retained classic Unix sensibilities. Like being quite bad for graphics programming and game development.
- peatmoss 7y ago
  I don’t know enough about these domains to know whether there is anything intrinsic to the design of OpenBSD that makes it better or worse in this regard, but I suspect that if you are correct, it’s more a function of mindshare and number of people doing the work. I think some of us feel that portions of the Linux world have made some wrong or at least undesirable turns for some things. It seems the choice is to either go along with those choices or improve other paths. Also, not sure what issues you see, but there appear to be a bunch of the standard open source games in OpenBSD as you’d see in Linux. Obviously not the commercial games that have Linux ports, but that strikes me more as an issue of popularity than technical limitations.
  - fluffything 7y ago
    > intrinsic to the design of OpenBSD Design and implementation are two different things. I can imagine an OS perfect for game programming, but I can't use it, because it's not implemented. I tried OpenBSD for 2 months, and went back to MacOSX. First, package repositories were meh (either pay, or recompile from source, or never update). Second, OpenBSD graphic driver support was just very bad - no drivers for GPGPUs. Third, lack of drivers, applications / services for interfacing with the real world and external devices. I come home, open my laptop, click on select monitor, and I see 3 monitors available in the WiFi network (two TVs, and a desktop monitor). I can just click one, and my display is mirrored in real time to them - I can play a video, and it is mirrored perfectly, and with audio. Same at work, want to show a video in the presentation room? Connect to the beamer per wifi with a single click, display mirrored, great. Phone detects wifi, laptop backs it up to network storage, synchronizes media, updates software, Smart watch synchronized, etc. None of that worked with OpenBSD. I had to find a HDMI cable in the basement to connect the laptop to the TV, monitor, beamer,... I had to use a USB cable to connect the phone to the laptop, which I then couldn't back up or synchronize without a gazillion brittle workarounds, etc. Losing support for all modern devices felt like going back to the stone age. Linux isn't really much better, but while I like OpenBSD design, philosophy, and parts of the implementation. The current implementation doesn't work for me.
    - peatmoss 7y ago
      Yeah, that was my point: of course the more popular platform is going to have broader support. So the question is whether or not it’s possible to improve the less popular thing. My guess is that, with investment in time, there is nothing that prevents straightforward improvements in support in OpenBSD. Why would OpenBSD be worthy of that expenditure of effort? Because it does some other things very well—perhaps better than Linux (Unix simplicity) and macOS (fully open). Not to mention security. It sounds like you want a feature set that isn’t in OpenBSD. Fine, use macOS if those features are must-haves for you. Or, if OpenBSD’s feature set is compelling to you, start hacking! As I said elsewhere, I think it’s an easier path to make OpenBSD into what I want than it is to make macOS / Windows into what I want. As for hardware support, I selected hardware that is well supported by OpenBSD, and it works great. Is there hardware I wish was better supported? You bet. But I’ve felt that way since I started using Linux and BSDs (and OS/2 and BeOS) in the 90s.
      - fluffything 7y ago
        I encourage you to do that. In todays world of "throw-away" electronics, there are a lot of devices that I just want to "just work". By the time these are supported on OpenBSD (if I were to implement it), I'll probably be owning a different device. This is sad, because while I can select the hardware for my laptop, I can't really select the hardware and devices I need to interface with.
- ori_b 7y ago
  That would be quite interesting, since it uses the exact same graphics rendering code Linux uses, both in the kernel via DRM, and in userspace via Mesa and Gallium.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Which is also not known for being the best graphics and game development platform out there. Anyone that actually cares about top graphics or game development tooling is either on Apple or Microsoft platforms.
    - peatmoss 7y ago
      I suspect there are plenty of people in this thread who’d love to see top tier games and development AND run on an open platform. In that sense, OpenBSD and Linux are both closer to supporting high-end games development than Windows and Mac are to being fully open platforms.
    - derefr 7y ago
      Your initial analogy is wrong, then, since—if modern Linux is also bad for those things—then OpenBSD being bad for those things wouldn't thereby make it an example of the OS "retaining classic Unix sensibilities" that modern Linux does not.
      - pjmlp 7y ago
        So other than SGI and NeXT, which although UNIX based had their focus on other kind of development stacks, which UNIX sensibilities are so great examples of graphical applications and game development tooling?
        derefr 7y ago
        I think you misread my statement? I wasn't disagreeing with you. Rather, I was pointing out—in way of explaining why everyone was jumping to argue with you or downvote you—that the most obvious reading of your comments are an incoherent argument, and you should probably clarify what you mean. In your first comment, when you said "Like being quite bad for graphics programming and game development", you were implicitly forming the larger sentence: "[Retaining] classic Unix sensibilities ... like being quite bad for graphics programming and game development." And—since the topic of the thread was "OSes that are better because they avoid going down the road of RedHat-like 'modern' Unix sensibilities"—you were implicitly forming a larger assertion: "[OpenBSD, because it retains] classic Unix sensibilities [unlike RedHat] ... [is] quite bad for graphics programming and game development[, unlike RedHat, which is okay at those.]" And so that's what people tried to argue with you about, which I hope makes people's rebuttals to your first comment make more sense to you. But then, in your second comment, you went ahead and said that modern Linux is equally bad at doing these things. So clearly the expanded form of your assertion isn't what you meant. So... what were you actually trying to argue?
dmix 7y ago
As long as you like your userspace software 3-5yrs out of date.

pjmlp 7y ago

> OpenBSD is a modern, innovative Operating System that has retained classic Unix sensibilities. Like being quite bad for graphics programming and game development.

peatmoss 7y ago
I don’t know enough about these domains to know whether there is anything intrinsic to the design of OpenBSD that makes it better or worse in this regard, but I suspect that if you are correct, it’s more a function of mindshare and number of people doing the work. I think some of us feel that portions of the Linux world have made some wrong or at least undesirable turns for some things. It seems the choice is to either go along with those choices or improve other paths. Also, not sure what issues you see, but there appear to be a bunch of the standard open source games in OpenBSD as you’d see in Linux. Obviously not the commercial games that have Linux ports, but that strikes me more as an issue of popularity than technical limitations.
- fluffything 7y ago
  > intrinsic to the design of OpenBSD Design and implementation are two different things. I can imagine an OS perfect for game programming, but I can't use it, because it's not implemented. I tried OpenBSD for 2 months, and went back to MacOSX. First, package repositories were meh (either pay, or recompile from source, or never update). Second, OpenBSD graphic driver support was just very bad - no drivers for GPGPUs. Third, lack of drivers, applications / services for interfacing with the real world and external devices. I come home, open my laptop, click on select monitor, and I see 3 monitors available in the WiFi network (two TVs, and a desktop monitor). I can just click one, and my display is mirrored in real time to them - I can play a video, and it is mirrored perfectly, and with audio. Same at work, want to show a video in the presentation room? Connect to the beamer per wifi with a single click, display mirrored, great. Phone detects wifi, laptop backs it up to network storage, synchronizes media, updates software, Smart watch synchronized, etc. None of that worked with OpenBSD. I had to find a HDMI cable in the basement to connect the laptop to the TV, monitor, beamer,... I had to use a USB cable to connect the phone to the laptop, which I then couldn't back up or synchronize without a gazillion brittle workarounds, etc. Losing support for all modern devices felt like going back to the stone age. Linux isn't really much better, but while I like OpenBSD design, philosophy, and parts of the implementation. The current implementation doesn't work for me.
  - peatmoss 7y ago
    Yeah, that was my point: of course the more popular platform is going to have broader support. So the question is whether or not it’s possible to improve the less popular thing. My guess is that, with investment in time, there is nothing that prevents straightforward improvements in support in OpenBSD. Why would OpenBSD be worthy of that expenditure of effort? Because it does some other things very well—perhaps better than Linux (Unix simplicity) and macOS (fully open). Not to mention security. It sounds like you want a feature set that isn’t in OpenBSD. Fine, use macOS if those features are must-haves for you. Or, if OpenBSD’s feature set is compelling to you, start hacking! As I said elsewhere, I think it’s an easier path to make OpenBSD into what I want than it is to make macOS / Windows into what I want. As for hardware support, I selected hardware that is well supported by OpenBSD, and it works great. Is there hardware I wish was better supported? You bet. But I’ve felt that way since I started using Linux and BSDs (and OS/2 and BeOS) in the 90s.
    - fluffything 7y ago
      I encourage you to do that. In todays world of "throw-away" electronics, there are a lot of devices that I just want to "just work". By the time these are supported on OpenBSD (if I were to implement it), I'll probably be owning a different device. This is sad, because while I can select the hardware for my laptop, I can't really select the hardware and devices I need to interface with.
ori_b 7y ago
That would be quite interesting, since it uses the exact same graphics rendering code Linux uses, both in the kernel via DRM, and in userspace via Mesa and Gallium.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Which is also not known for being the best graphics and game development platform out there. Anyone that actually cares about top graphics or game development tooling is either on Apple or Microsoft platforms.
  - peatmoss 7y ago
    I suspect there are plenty of people in this thread who’d love to see top tier games and development AND run on an open platform. In that sense, OpenBSD and Linux are both closer to supporting high-end games development than Windows and Mac are to being fully open platforms.
  - derefr 7y ago
    Your initial analogy is wrong, then, since—if modern Linux is also bad for those things—then OpenBSD being bad for those things wouldn't thereby make it an example of the OS "retaining classic Unix sensibilities" that modern Linux does not.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      So other than SGI and NeXT, which although UNIX based had their focus on other kind of development stacks, which UNIX sensibilities are so great examples of graphical applications and game development tooling?
      - derefr 7y ago
        I think you misread my statement? I wasn't disagreeing with you. Rather, I was pointing out—in way of explaining why everyone was jumping to argue with you or downvote you—that the most obvious reading of your comments are an incoherent argument, and you should probably clarify what you mean. In your first comment, when you said "Like being quite bad for graphics programming and game development", you were implicitly forming the larger sentence: "[Retaining] classic Unix sensibilities ... like being quite bad for graphics programming and game development." And—since the topic of the thread was "OSes that are better because they avoid going down the road of RedHat-like 'modern' Unix sensibilities"—you were implicitly forming a larger assertion: "[OpenBSD, because it retains] classic Unix sensibilities [unlike RedHat] ... [is] quite bad for graphics programming and game development[, unlike RedHat, which is okay at those.]" And so that's what people tried to argue with you about, which I hope makes people's rebuttals to your first comment make more sense to you. But then, in your second comment, you went ahead and said that modern Linux is equally bad at doing these things. So clearly the expanded form of your assertion isn't what you meant. So... what were you actually trying to argue?

dmix 7y ago

As long as you like your userspace software 3-5yrs out of date.