5 ms·

BIAS: I drank the OpenBSD kool-aid a dozen years ago and have no regrets. I run OpenBSD everywhere and I try to help out as time and health allow, including on

by jcr 16y ago

BIAS: I drank the OpenBSD kool-aid a dozen years ago and have no regrets. I run OpenBSD everywhere and I try to help out as time and health allow, including on undeadly, but I'm not a commiter, major contributor or anyone special. OpenBSD is a bit like Jazz music. When someone asked Louis Armstrong, "What is jazz?" his reply was, "If ya gots to ask, ya'll never know." Though it will most definitely seem elitist, there's some subtle wisdom there; You need to experience it for yourself to learn the what's and why's. Similar is true for all of the BSD's. If you're just looking for a fast bullet point list and "executive overview" (a.k.a. "buzzword bingo decision support"), you'll never find a reason to run any of the BSD's, and worse, you'll never learn on your own why zealots like me exist. The thing you're missing is the experience of learning it for yourself. You might come to a different conclusion than me, and that's fine, but you would still benefit from the experience.

arespredator 16y ago
Thanks, I guess I'll just have to try it:)
apl 16y ago
Well, I'm sure that from your perspective the subtleties can't possibly be boiled down without missing the essence of OpenBSD. But there's got to be a way of summarizing its appeal. We are talking about an operating system, and not Kafka short stories or Haydn string quartets, after all. Otherwise I'll have to go with elitism as the most likely explanation. A common sentiment among jazz enthusiasts, by the way.
- vacri 16y ago
  Remember that with jazz, if you make a mistake, just play it again a couple of times and then it looks like you meant it :)
- ghshephard 16y ago
  I'm a huge fan of OpenBSD, having tried freebsd and most of the major Linux distress before settling on it. If I had to identify the why, i'd have to agree with the jazz reference. I seriously started comparing the various distros around 2003, and OpenBSD just gave a more consistent, well documented and clean experience. It is a very conservative distro, and has a pristine configuration and network stack. It's reliable, and trustworthy. On the downside, it's not particularly performant, nor is it well supported by enterprise Applications - you won't be running oracle 10g on OpenBSD. Its upgrades are rolled out like clockwork, and are always evolutionary improvements on the previous version.
  - bitwize 16y ago
    Not to mention documented out the wazoo. I run a NetBSD box and got into kernel hacking just from reading man pages. I suspect OpenBSD's documentation is even more comprehensive.
- jcr 16y ago
  Asking for a "summary of its appeal" is essentially asking for a whole lot of subjective hand waiving. Worse yet, when one appreciates many aspects and each is appealing in some way, short listing favorites is like naming your favorite child -- it's not nice and not fair. Since I've known and met a number of the OpenBSD developers, I won't put the work of one over the work of another. I appreciate all of their efforts. The very best advice I can give you is try it yourself, and keep at it for a while. It will take some time, but you'll get the chance to form your own opinions through experience. You may or may not have the required time, effort or curiosity to get into any of the BSD's, and that's perfectly fine if you're perfectly content with what you're running. On the other hand, you might wonder why HN is running on a BSD (FreeBSD). Maybe PG and RTM know something?
  - apl 16y ago
    > On the other hand, you might wonder why HN is running > on a BSD (FreeBSD). Maybe PG and RTM know something? I suspect they know BSD quite well, which doesn't say much about BSD's aptness for anything. PG and RTM are also using table-based layouts -- you reckon they know something? You also don't want me to name 1000 gurus that prefer Linux, do you? Appeal to some arbitrarily selected authority doesn't tell us much. Moreover, they're using FreeBSD. I kind of understand why someone would prefer BSD over Linux -- we're talking about OpenBSD, though, and specifically about OpenBSD whose adherents rarely articulate why their chosen system is superior. That's all I wanted to know. ghshephard, thanks for the reply.
    - dwc 16y ago
      For myself, some of the main reasons I like OpenBSD: * Secure and functional out of the box. The base install comes with many common services ready to go, and I don't have to worry if I turn them on. * Simple, understandable. With a little learning, I understand how my systems will behave. I love it that the man pages are present, current and thorough. Are there downsides? Yes, of course there are. Hardware support is often lagging, and some OS features are still missing that have been in other OSs for years. OpenBSD is a smallish project, and a few dozen part-time devs can only do so much. So do I recommend that everyone use OpenBSD for everything? No. But I think it's worth learning and adding to your list of options. There are roles where OpenBSD is simply the best choice available, and roles where it's either poor or plain unworkable. To discount it for anything because it isn't best for everything is a limiting viewpoint. Lastly, anecdotal... of the people I know who are really actually familiar with many OSs (Windows, Mac, various Linux, various BSD), all of them like and use OpenBSD to some extent. These are people who know their options and will choose what they need to get the job done well.
danieldk 16y ago
I used OpenBSD for some years, and NetBSD for many years. And really, 'kool-aid' is all there's to it. You get miserable hardware support, basic features that other operating systems have for ages (unified buffer cache, journaling filesystems, anyone?) are missing, a packaging system that was nice in 2000, no decent virtualization support, and the security features are fairly arcane (no mandatory access control). Unfortunately, this is all concealed by a veil of elitism (see parent). Expect many replies on how mandatory access control does not improve real security, virtualization is a flawed idea, and soft updates are superior to journaling[1]. All in all, it's more religion than science. [1] NetBSD removed soft updates because it was, well, unmaintainable: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.netbsd.announce/399 http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.netbsd.announce/399 https://lwn.net/Articles/339337/ https://lwn.net/Articles/339337/
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- tedunangst 16y ago
  The packaging system has been improved remarkably, wholly rewritten in fact, since 2000.
gcb 16y ago
My reason: they treat doc problems the same as code bugs. Also, have used it on desktops for clients. But only POS ones.

by jcr 16y ago

arespredator 16y ago

Thanks, I guess I'll just have to try it:)

apl 16y ago

Well, I'm sure that from your perspective the subtleties can't possibly be boiled down without missing the essence of OpenBSD. But there's got to be a way of summarizing its appeal. We are talking about an operating system, and not Kafka short stories or Haydn string quartets, after all. Otherwise I'll have to go with elitism as the most likely explanation. A common sentiment among jazz enthusiasts, by the way.

vacri 16y ago
Remember that with jazz, if you make a mistake, just play it again a couple of times and then it looks like you meant it :)
ghshephard 16y ago
I'm a huge fan of OpenBSD, having tried freebsd and most of the major Linux distress before settling on it. If I had to identify the why, i'd have to agree with the jazz reference. I seriously started comparing the various distros around 2003, and OpenBSD just gave a more consistent, well documented and clean experience. It is a very conservative distro, and has a pristine configuration and network stack. It's reliable, and trustworthy. On the downside, it's not particularly performant, nor is it well supported by enterprise Applications - you won't be running oracle 10g on OpenBSD. Its upgrades are rolled out like clockwork, and are always evolutionary improvements on the previous version.
- bitwize 16y ago
  Not to mention documented out the wazoo. I run a NetBSD box and got into kernel hacking just from reading man pages. I suspect OpenBSD's documentation is even more comprehensive.
jcr 16y ago
Asking for a "summary of its appeal" is essentially asking for a whole lot of subjective hand waiving. Worse yet, when one appreciates many aspects and each is appealing in some way, short listing favorites is like naming your favorite child -- it's not nice and not fair. Since I've known and met a number of the OpenBSD developers, I won't put the work of one over the work of another. I appreciate all of their efforts. The very best advice I can give you is try it yourself, and keep at it for a while. It will take some time, but you'll get the chance to form your own opinions through experience. You may or may not have the required time, effort or curiosity to get into any of the BSD's, and that's perfectly fine if you're perfectly content with what you're running. On the other hand, you might wonder why HN is running on a BSD (FreeBSD). Maybe PG and RTM know something?
- apl 16y ago
  > On the other hand, you might wonder why HN is running > on a BSD (FreeBSD). Maybe PG and RTM know something? I suspect they know BSD quite well, which doesn't say much about BSD's aptness for anything. PG and RTM are also using table-based layouts -- you reckon they know something? You also don't want me to name 1000 gurus that prefer Linux, do you? Appeal to some arbitrarily selected authority doesn't tell us much. Moreover, they're using FreeBSD. I kind of understand why someone would prefer BSD over Linux -- we're talking about OpenBSD, though, and specifically about OpenBSD whose adherents rarely articulate why their chosen system is superior. That's all I wanted to know. ghshephard, thanks for the reply.
  - dwc 16y ago
    For myself, some of the main reasons I like OpenBSD: * Secure and functional out of the box. The base install comes with many common services ready to go, and I don't have to worry if I turn them on. * Simple, understandable. With a little learning, I understand how my systems will behave. I love it that the man pages are present, current and thorough. Are there downsides? Yes, of course there are. Hardware support is often lagging, and some OS features are still missing that have been in other OSs for years. OpenBSD is a smallish project, and a few dozen part-time devs can only do so much. So do I recommend that everyone use OpenBSD for everything? No. But I think it's worth learning and adding to your list of options. There are roles where OpenBSD is simply the best choice available, and roles where it's either poor or plain unworkable. To discount it for anything because it isn't best for everything is a limiting viewpoint. Lastly, anecdotal... of the people I know who are really actually familiar with many OSs (Windows, Mac, various Linux, various BSD), all of them like and use OpenBSD to some extent. These are people who know their options and will choose what they need to get the job done well.

danieldk 16y ago

I used OpenBSD for some years, and NetBSD for many years. And really, 'kool-aid' is all there's to it. You get miserable hardware support, basic features that other operating systems have for ages (unified buffer cache, journaling filesystems, anyone?) are missing, a packaging system that was nice in 2000, no decent virtualization support, and the security features are fairly arcane (no mandatory access control). Unfortunately, this is all concealed by a veil of elitism (see parent). Expect many replies on how mandatory access control does not improve real security, virtualization is a flawed idea, and soft updates are superior to journaling[1]. All in all, it's more religion than science. [1] NetBSD removed soft updates because it was, well, unmaintainable: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.netbsd.announce/399 http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.netbsd.announce/399 https://lwn.net/Articles/339337/ https://lwn.net/Articles/339337/

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
tedunangst 16y ago
The packaging system has been improved remarkably, wholly rewritten in fact, since 2000.

gcb 16y ago

My reason: they treat doc problems the same as code bugs. Also, have used it on desktops for clients. But only POS ones.