8 ms·

I used to love OpenBSD but I've had to abandon it: - no sendfile implementation to accelerate web servers - ancient userland pthread implementation - worst S

I used to love OpenBSD but I've had to abandon it: - no sendfile implementation to accelerate web servers - ancient userland pthread implementation - worst SMP implementation of any mainstream OS - no unified buffer cache - no working TRIM support - no 802.11n support - video card drivers aging, ~3 years behind mainstream - no adobe flash support / hackarounds The only thing I really miss is PF.

hackermom 15y ago
OpenBSD was never meant to be a desktop BSD. You should take a look at FreeBSD instead.
- ImCEOBitch 15y ago
  I was just throwing out some desktop-specific things at the end and have no interest in running any BSD as a desktop anymore. They all suffer from the good enough but not mainstream enough problem, i.e. official Nvidia drivers that are not officially supported.
  - SageRaven 15y ago
    The Radeon stuff is improving rapidly. You can't buy a diesel truck for the power and then complain that it won't take gasoline. ;-) To hell w/ NVidia. If they won't play ball, I'll spend my money on an arguably slightly lesser performing product that is more open. Though, currently the linux emulation layer in CURRENT has a change that broke the linux Flash binary. I've been flash-free for about 2 weeks now. I can't decide if that's a curse or liberation. Otherwise, I personally think FreeBSD is a mighty fine desktop OS. ZFS is really nice.
  - sliverstorm 15y ago
    I never really saw BSD as a desktop operating system, regardless what OSX achieved with Darwin. It made for an amazing mailserver last I tried it though. I used 3.4 on an ancient P4 with maybe 256MB of RAM an 8GB hard drive. Turns out that was way more computer than it needs, and it was so stable I began to think of it the same way I think of my router.
  - Wilya 15y ago
    Nvidia actually provides drivers for FreeBSD, which have worked well for me so far. Nothing on the ATI side, though. And I don't think the users of other BSDs have much need for 3D acceleration..
    - tobiasu 15y ago
      Eh? I run OpenBSD as a "desktop" and I use 3D acceleration to play 3D games and all that stuff. Even playing videos these days requires DRI support in the kernel. With a bit of careful hardware selection, 3D acceleration works out of the box on OpenBSD.
  - dfc 15y ago
    You said it best the first time when you said you missed pf.
- tedunangst 15y ago
  Openbsd was never meant to not be a desktop OS.
- derleth 15y ago
  > OpenBSD was never meant to be a desktop BSD. Where would people find this out? Has anyone listed the BSDs and said which task each was meant for? Are there any good BSD-to-BSD comparisons being done now?
  - tedunangst 15y ago
    Lots of people have listed the BSDs and said which task each was meant for. Lots of people have also been completely wrong. There's a whole internet of misinformation out there if you're really interested.
    - hackermom 15y ago
      Yes, of course, but there is a general aim and focus among the developers of the three main flavors, that is prevalent in the capacities of said flavors: NetBSD - portability. OpenBSD - security. FreeBSD - performance and usability. With that said, no, that definitely does not mean that each flavor can't stand out in the other two fields. Heck, I used OpenBSD as my desktop OS for 2 years on and off, so I know very well how capable it is "off field", and looking at the most popular flavor in BSD-powered server parks we see FreeBSD instead of OpenBSD contrary to what logic might try to dictate.
dmm 15y ago
> - ancient userland pthread implementation There is support for kernel threads in the form of a flag on rfork(2). The golang port uses this. The pthreads library is still the shitty userland one though. OpenBSD is great because the man pages aren't absolute shit like Linux and networking is so much better. Linux wifi drivers are absolute crap in comparison. Configure WPA on OpenBSD: ifconfig <interface> nwid <ssid> wpa wpakey <wpakey> up; dhclient <interface> The equivalent on linux is left as an exercise... It's still a pretty usable desktop though. The new ACPI support is amazing and a completely new implementation, rather than being built on the reference implementation everyone else used. > no 802.11n support That's going to require some work on the 80211 layer.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- jolan 15y ago
  > That's going to require some work on the 80211 layer. The 80211 guy retired so there's little chance of that happening.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- adestefan 15y ago
  > Configure WPA on OpenBSD: ifconfig <interface> nwid <ssid> wpa wpakey <wpakey> up; dhclient <interface> The equivalent on linux is left as an exercise... wpa_passphrase <ssid> <wpakey> > /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf wpa_supplicant -i<interface> -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -B dhclient <inteface> Everything is easy when you know how to do it.
  - dmm 15y ago
    On OpenBSD, all of your interface configuration is done with ifconfig and it's all documented with 'man ifconfig'. On a linux system 'man ifconfig' doesn't even mention iwconfig or wpa_supplicant. I think that makes it a little easier to learn how to do it.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
alrs 15y ago
If you're missing pf you might check out Debian/KFreeBSD. http://wiki.debian.org/Debian_GNU/kFreeBSD http://wiki.debian.org/Debian_GNU/kFreeBSD
- getsat 15y ago
  Plain FreeBSD has also had pf since 2003. OSX also comes with it.
  - stock_toaster 15y ago
    FreeBSD's version of pf is a tad old though (before new-format as I recall). """FreeBSD 8.X and prior is using the same version of PF as OpenBSD 4.1. FreeBSD 9.X and later is using the same version of PF as OpenBSD 4.5.""" [1] [1]: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/firewalls-pf.html http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/firewalls-pf.html
tobiasu 15y ago
> - ancient userland pthread implementation Indeed, being worked on with rthreads. > - worst SMP implementation of any mainstream OS There's slow progress to push back the kernel biglock. > - no unified buffer cache Very few people have a justifyable need for a synchronous cache between read()/write() and mmap(). > - no working TRIM support Is available in -current, not sure about this release. > - video card drivers aging, ~3 years behind mainstream OpenBSD is doing quite well compared to the other BSDs. Intel and Amd graphic options are supported, depending on chipset, OpenGL works out of the box. KMS is being worked on from what I hear. Nvidia and Adobe, well... they are a cancer and in a perfect world, would go bankrupt for their behaviour.
- tedunangst 15y ago
  There is no current TRIM support I'm aware of, but it could possibly ship in 5.1. Or 6.1. Who knows.

hackermom 15y ago

OpenBSD was never meant to be a desktop BSD. You should take a look at FreeBSD instead.

ImCEOBitch 15y ago
I was just throwing out some desktop-specific things at the end and have no interest in running any BSD as a desktop anymore. They all suffer from the good enough but not mainstream enough problem, i.e. official Nvidia drivers that are not officially supported.
- SageRaven 15y ago
  The Radeon stuff is improving rapidly. You can't buy a diesel truck for the power and then complain that it won't take gasoline. ;-) To hell w/ NVidia. If they won't play ball, I'll spend my money on an arguably slightly lesser performing product that is more open. Though, currently the linux emulation layer in CURRENT has a change that broke the linux Flash binary. I've been flash-free for about 2 weeks now. I can't decide if that's a curse or liberation. Otherwise, I personally think FreeBSD is a mighty fine desktop OS. ZFS is really nice.
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  I never really saw BSD as a desktop operating system, regardless what OSX achieved with Darwin. It made for an amazing mailserver last I tried it though. I used 3.4 on an ancient P4 with maybe 256MB of RAM an 8GB hard drive. Turns out that was way more computer than it needs, and it was so stable I began to think of it the same way I think of my router.
- Wilya 15y ago
  Nvidia actually provides drivers for FreeBSD, which have worked well for me so far. Nothing on the ATI side, though. And I don't think the users of other BSDs have much need for 3D acceleration..
  - tobiasu 15y ago
    Eh? I run OpenBSD as a "desktop" and I use 3D acceleration to play 3D games and all that stuff. Even playing videos these days requires DRI support in the kernel. With a bit of careful hardware selection, 3D acceleration works out of the box on OpenBSD.
- dfc 15y ago
  You said it best the first time when you said you missed pf.
tedunangst 15y ago
Openbsd was never meant to not be a desktop OS.
derleth 15y ago
> OpenBSD was never meant to be a desktop BSD. Where would people find this out? Has anyone listed the BSDs and said which task each was meant for? Are there any good BSD-to-BSD comparisons being done now?
- tedunangst 15y ago
  Lots of people have listed the BSDs and said which task each was meant for. Lots of people have also been completely wrong. There's a whole internet of misinformation out there if you're really interested.
  - hackermom 15y ago
    Yes, of course, but there is a general aim and focus among the developers of the three main flavors, that is prevalent in the capacities of said flavors: NetBSD - portability. OpenBSD - security. FreeBSD - performance and usability. With that said, no, that definitely does not mean that each flavor can't stand out in the other two fields. Heck, I used OpenBSD as my desktop OS for 2 years on and off, so I know very well how capable it is "off field", and looking at the most popular flavor in BSD-powered server parks we see FreeBSD instead of OpenBSD contrary to what logic might try to dictate.

dmm 15y ago

> - ancient userland pthread implementation There is support for kernel threads in the form of a flag on rfork(2). The golang port uses this. The pthreads library is still the shitty userland one though. OpenBSD is great because the man pages aren't absolute shit like Linux and networking is so much better. Linux wifi drivers are absolute crap in comparison. Configure WPA on OpenBSD: ifconfig <interface> nwid <ssid> wpa wpakey <wpakey> up; dhclient <interface> The equivalent on linux is left as an exercise... It's still a pretty usable desktop though. The new ACPI support is amazing and a completely new implementation, rather than being built on the reference implementation everyone else used. > no 802.11n support That's going to require some work on the 80211 layer.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
jolan 15y ago
> That's going to require some work on the 80211 layer. The 80211 guy retired so there's little chance of that happening.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
adestefan 15y ago
> Configure WPA on OpenBSD: ifconfig <interface> nwid <ssid> wpa wpakey <wpakey> up; dhclient <interface> The equivalent on linux is left as an exercise... wpa_passphrase <ssid> <wpakey> > /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf wpa_supplicant -i<interface> -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -B dhclient <inteface> Everything is easy when you know how to do it.
- dmm 15y ago
  On OpenBSD, all of your interface configuration is done with ifconfig and it's all documented with 'man ifconfig'. On a linux system 'man ifconfig' doesn't even mention iwconfig or wpa_supplicant. I think that makes it a little easier to learn how to do it.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

alrs 15y ago

If you're missing pf you might check out Debian/KFreeBSD. http://wiki.debian.org/Debian_GNU/kFreeBSD http://wiki.debian.org/Debian_GNU/kFreeBSD

getsat 15y ago
Plain FreeBSD has also had pf since 2003. OSX also comes with it.
- stock_toaster 15y ago
  FreeBSD's version of pf is a tad old though (before new-format as I recall). """FreeBSD 8.X and prior is using the same version of PF as OpenBSD 4.1. FreeBSD 9.X and later is using the same version of PF as OpenBSD 4.5.""" [1] [1]: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/firewalls-pf.html http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/firewalls-pf.html

tobiasu 15y ago

> - ancient userland pthread implementation Indeed, being worked on with rthreads. > - worst SMP implementation of any mainstream OS There's slow progress to push back the kernel biglock. > - no unified buffer cache Very few people have a justifyable need for a synchronous cache between read()/write() and mmap(). > - no working TRIM support Is available in -current, not sure about this release. > - video card drivers aging, ~3 years behind mainstream OpenBSD is doing quite well compared to the other BSDs. Intel and Amd graphic options are supported, depending on chipset, OpenGL works out of the box. KMS is being worked on from what I hear. Nvidia and Adobe, well... they are a cancer and in a perfect world, would go bankrupt for their behaviour.

tedunangst 15y ago
There is no current TRIM support I'm aware of, but it could possibly ship in 5.1. Or 6.1. Who knows.