4 ms·

> What has been your experience with OpenBSD? Really forces me to think about what I want versus need out of a computer. > pros & cons + Comes with everythin

> What has been your experience with OpenBSD? Really forces me to think about what I want versus need out of a computer. > pros & cons + Comes with everything for a home lab: packet filter, DHCP server, FTP, and web server. + Bundled with C compiler and perl in base. - Limited drawing tablet support. > What laptop Any model with a successful installation blog post will do. > OpenBSD over Trisquel With two cheaper machines for the price of one, one could run both operating systems. Then you can learn kernel compile, static IP, SSH, and practice sysadmin tasks (backups, cron, OS internals) from both perspectives.

mrweasel 2y ago
> Really forces me to think about what I want versus need out of a computer. That is pretty spot on. I really enjoy using OpenBSD, the base OS is well documented and consistent, to a degree where Linux is just left behind to an embarrassing degree. Then there are things you just can't do, unless you feel like porting a bunch of stuff. I like having VSCode available, but I'm not in a position to start porting it to OpenBSD. I'm also currently toying around with some C# and again, I'm not porting dotnet to OpenBSD. Then again do I NEED these thing? I can use Vim just fine and Go is a nice language which for my use case can stand in for C#. Do I need Docker... I suppose not, it's just nice to have. You're making some interesting tradeoffs with OpenBSD. You get a better Unix, a more consistent Unix experience and really good build in tools, but if they can't support your workflow it really doesn't work.
- andai 2y ago
  Isn't VSCode an electron app? Does do those not work on BSD?
  - mrweasel 2y ago
    There's still a bit of porting to be done, it's not all JavaScript (and sometimes the Javascript need a bit of love as well). You can see the patches for FreeBSD: https://cgit.freebsd.org/ports/commit/?id=25eaa50554b9630168d6578dd6c5b6a1bd0278d4 https://cgit.freebsd.org/ports/commit/?id=25eaa50554b9630168...
  - kkfx 2y ago
    Audit Electron alone is a nightmare no one want to face, it's in term of safety a simple no-go. A monster.
    - mrweasel 2y ago
      Ports aren't audited, but no it wouldn't make it into base, but ease of auditing is probably not the reason why that won't happen.
    - andai 2y ago
      Did they audit Firefox?
      - kkfx 2y ago
        Seems it's a very stripped version I suppose, but do not know, and yes it would be no less a nightmare, but a single nightmare is still easier than many.
- neonsunset 2y ago
  You might be able to make it work with https://github.com/muhammadsammy/free-vscode-csharp https://github.com/muhammadsammy/free-vscode-csharp .NET itself also supports FreeBSD and is distributed here https://www.freshports.org/lang/dotnet https://www.freshports.org/lang/dotnet I assume this is compatible with OpenBSD? If not, please let me know.
  - mrweasel 2y ago
    OpenBSD and FreeBSD aren't compatible with each other. Having FreeBSD would certainly make porting simpler, as the two are more alike that say Linux and OpenBSD, or Windows and OpenBSD. If you browse through the dotnet runtime code, you'll see that all the supported operating systems have code added to specifically support them. It's not much different than Java, the compiler targets an intermediate platform (JVM for Javva, CIL for C#/F#,VB.Net. The runtime needs to be ported and there's operating system specific code in the source for the runtime for all the supported operating system.

mrweasel 2y ago

> Really forces me to think about what I want versus need out of a computer. That is pretty spot on. I really enjoy using OpenBSD, the base OS is well documented and consistent, to a degree where Linux is just left behind to an embarrassing degree. Then there are things you just can't do, unless you feel like porting a bunch of stuff. I like having VSCode available, but I'm not in a position to start porting it to OpenBSD. I'm also currently toying around with some C# and again, I'm not porting dotnet to OpenBSD. Then again do I NEED these thing? I can use Vim just fine and Go is a nice language which for my use case can stand in for C#. Do I need Docker... I suppose not, it's just nice to have. You're making some interesting tradeoffs with OpenBSD. You get a better Unix, a more consistent Unix experience and really good build in tools, but if they can't support your workflow it really doesn't work.

andai 2y ago
Isn't VSCode an electron app? Does do those not work on BSD?
- mrweasel 2y ago
  There's still a bit of porting to be done, it's not all JavaScript (and sometimes the Javascript need a bit of love as well). You can see the patches for FreeBSD: https://cgit.freebsd.org/ports/commit/?id=25eaa50554b9630168d6578dd6c5b6a1bd0278d4 https://cgit.freebsd.org/ports/commit/?id=25eaa50554b9630168...
- kkfx 2y ago
  Audit Electron alone is a nightmare no one want to face, it's in term of safety a simple no-go. A monster.
  - mrweasel 2y ago
    Ports aren't audited, but no it wouldn't make it into base, but ease of auditing is probably not the reason why that won't happen.
  - andai 2y ago
    Did they audit Firefox?
    - kkfx 2y ago
      Seems it's a very stripped version I suppose, but do not know, and yes it would be no less a nightmare, but a single nightmare is still easier than many.
neonsunset 2y ago
You might be able to make it work with https://github.com/muhammadsammy/free-vscode-csharp https://github.com/muhammadsammy/free-vscode-csharp .NET itself also supports FreeBSD and is distributed here https://www.freshports.org/lang/dotnet https://www.freshports.org/lang/dotnet I assume this is compatible with OpenBSD? If not, please let me know.
- mrweasel 2y ago
  OpenBSD and FreeBSD aren't compatible with each other. Having FreeBSD would certainly make porting simpler, as the two are more alike that say Linux and OpenBSD, or Windows and OpenBSD. If you browse through the dotnet runtime code, you'll see that all the supported operating systems have code added to specifically support them. It's not much different than Java, the compiler targets an intermediate platform (JVM for Javva, CIL for C#/F#,VB.Net. The runtime needs to be ported and there's operating system specific code in the source for the runtime for all the supported operating system.