3 ms·

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

by 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.
  - there 16y ago
    Hardware support is often lagging, and some OS features are still missing that have been in other OSs for years. those are both really vague. what doesn't work and what is missing that anyone really cares about?
    - dwc 16y ago
      OS Features: Bigmem support has been missing. This seems to be about ready for prime time. Really good SMP, which just gets more irritating as more cores become commonplace. Really good threading, which hampers porting and/or running some ported software on OpenBSD. Hardware support: mostly cards from various vendors who won't release open specs. Like Adaptec, nVidia, et al. For Linux you get vendor blob drivers or quote open source unquote drivers written under NDA in which the actual functionality is obscured. Or various things on laptops don't work, or whatever. These limitations are not much problem for me, but they bother some people. If I build a server I spec it out with compatible hardware. No big deal. For many applications none of the above matters, or matters a lot less than the benefits gained. I like OpenBSD and use it for servers and workstations. OpenBSD has pros and cons, like any OS. For my usage, the pros are a long list and the cons don't matter much. But if I were tasked with building a processing farm with tons of cores and memory to run a massively threaded crunching program then I'd pick something else. But I'd still keep the farm walled off behind OpenBSD.
      - tedunangst 16y ago
        Didn't you get the memo? Threads are lame, evented is the new hotness. ;)
        dwc 16y ago
        The new hotness? I guess actors are old news now.
    - ciupicri 16y ago
      An automated installer comparable with anaconda - the one used by Fedora and RHEL. There seems to be a couple of projects or hacks for this, but nothing in the official (upstream) installer.

by jcr 16y ago

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.
- there 16y ago
  Hardware support is often lagging, and some OS features are still missing that have been in other OSs for years. those are both really vague. what doesn't work and what is missing that anyone really cares about?
  - dwc 16y ago
    OS Features: Bigmem support has been missing. This seems to be about ready for prime time. Really good SMP, which just gets more irritating as more cores become commonplace. Really good threading, which hampers porting and/or running some ported software on OpenBSD. Hardware support: mostly cards from various vendors who won't release open specs. Like Adaptec, nVidia, et al. For Linux you get vendor blob drivers or quote open source unquote drivers written under NDA in which the actual functionality is obscured. Or various things on laptops don't work, or whatever. These limitations are not much problem for me, but they bother some people. If I build a server I spec it out with compatible hardware. No big deal. For many applications none of the above matters, or matters a lot less than the benefits gained. I like OpenBSD and use it for servers and workstations. OpenBSD has pros and cons, like any OS. For my usage, the pros are a long list and the cons don't matter much. But if I were tasked with building a processing farm with tons of cores and memory to run a massively threaded crunching program then I'd pick something else. But I'd still keep the farm walled off behind OpenBSD.
    - tedunangst 16y ago
      Didn't you get the memo? Threads are lame, evented is the new hotness. ;)
      - dwc 16y ago
        The new hotness? I guess actors are old news now.
  - ciupicri 16y ago
    An automated installer comparable with anaconda - the one used by Fedora and RHEL. There seems to be a couple of projects or hacks for this, but nothing in the official (upstream) installer.