3 ms·

Are you using a pinebook pro? I used Manjaro for a while there because I couldn't get OpenBSD working. Eventually I switched to my thinkpad (and frankly I'm usi

by bitzun 3y ago

Are you using a pinebook pro? I used Manjaro for a while there because I couldn't get OpenBSD working. Eventually I switched to my thinkpad (and frankly I'm using my AMD gaming computer running popOS lately despite the trust issues running games) Any particular difficulties running either BSD for daily driver purposes?

rahen 3y ago
I use several machines, all running on BSD or derivatives, albeit coincidentally. My main laptop is now an M1 MacBook Air, primarily used as a terminal + mail client + web browser. My former ThinkPad runs on NetBSD, starting from version 8, then 9, then 10-BETA, and currently on 10-RC1. It's a powerful laptop serving as a server and hypervisor with qemu-NVMM for amd64 VMs. The performance slightly lags behind qemu-KVM, and networking is not as convenient, but it gets the job done. Finally, I use a NanoPi NEO3 with the Rockchip chip as a NAS. It was previously running on OpenBSD and will soon be updated to NetBSD with a cgd (block encrypted) USB drive. As for your question, it's not harder to run than, say, Slackware, as it doesn't change much with time. This is the system you choose when you're very conservative with Unix systems and expect something simple, understandable, and predictable in the long run. As for 'why', it's a matter of personal preference. NetBSD is about preserving the Unix heritage; you could still install it on a MicroVAX II, read filesystems from V7, or run SunOS 2 binaries if you wanted. It still feels much like using 4.3BSD on modern hardware. A good share of NetBSD developers purposefully use old and/or underpowered machines for both development and testing, which keeps the system clean, fast and minimal. OpenBSD is a fine choice too, but it's relatively slow and lacking in software. For instance, vmd is pretty far behind bhyve and NVMM when you want to run anything more than Alpine VMs. This may have improved recently, though, I haven't checked.
- sillywalk 3y ago
  > OpenBSD is a fine choice too, but it's relatively slow and lacking in software. I don't know about performance, but what software is it lacking? It's got like 11k+ ports. https://openports.pl/ https://openports.pl/

by bitzun 3y ago

rahen 3y ago

I use several machines, all running on BSD or derivatives, albeit coincidentally. My main laptop is now an M1 MacBook Air, primarily used as a terminal + mail client + web browser. My former ThinkPad runs on NetBSD, starting from version 8, then 9, then 10-BETA, and currently on 10-RC1. It's a powerful laptop serving as a server and hypervisor with qemu-NVMM for amd64 VMs. The performance slightly lags behind qemu-KVM, and networking is not as convenient, but it gets the job done. Finally, I use a NanoPi NEO3 with the Rockchip chip as a NAS. It was previously running on OpenBSD and will soon be updated to NetBSD with a cgd (block encrypted) USB drive. As for your question, it's not harder to run than, say, Slackware, as it doesn't change much with time. This is the system you choose when you're very conservative with Unix systems and expect something simple, understandable, and predictable in the long run. As for 'why', it's a matter of personal preference. NetBSD is about preserving the Unix heritage; you could still install it on a MicroVAX II, read filesystems from V7, or run SunOS 2 binaries if you wanted. It still feels much like using 4.3BSD on modern hardware. A good share of NetBSD developers purposefully use old and/or underpowered machines for both development and testing, which keeps the system clean, fast and minimal. OpenBSD is a fine choice too, but it's relatively slow and lacking in software. For instance, vmd is pretty far behind bhyve and NVMM when you want to run anything more than Alpine VMs. This may have improved recently, though, I haven't checked.

sillywalk 3y ago
> OpenBSD is a fine choice too, but it's relatively slow and lacking in software. I don't know about performance, but what software is it lacking? It's got like 11k+ ports. https://openports.pl/ https://openports.pl/