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Its all very well to blow smoke up OpenBSD's backside today, but what the author carefully skirts around is that it hasn't been this way for that long. syspatc

Its all very well to blow smoke up OpenBSD's backside today, but what the author carefully skirts around is that it hasn't been this way for that long. syspatch did not appear until 6.1. Before that system updates were admin hell. sysupgrade did not appear until 6.6. Before that, the "look at me and my hit-enter 20 minute upgrade" was very much not the case. Network performance was generally rubbish unti the developers started making an effort sometime in the late 6.x releases. Various userland bits were also rubbish until the developers started making an effort in the 7.x releases. For example, but not limited to, OpenBGPD (the OpenBSD native version, not the ported version which only has limited applications), which is something you wouldn't really want to use seriously in its earlier implementations for 101 reasons. It is also still not perfect. For example there are various fibre NICs that FreeBSD supports out of the box but OpenBSD does not. And you still can't get SFP transciever data except in a VERY narrow combination of NIC + SFP cases. I will grant you 7.5/7.6 have been great releases. I'm just saying, lets not pretend OpenBSD has always been like this, because it has not. Finally, the author says of OS X "Terminals that crash when I create a new tab". As a long-term OS X user, I have never, ever seen this.

jmclnx 2y ago
>lets not pretend OpenBSD has always been like this, because it has not. Odd statement, you realize OpenBSD has a much much smaller team than Linux. So changes take time and I think they went after the "big hitters" first. The same could be said about Linux between 1995 and 2000. By 1995 the Linux developers outnumbered the BSD developers almost 10 to 1. Plus I remember the early days. Linux took a lot of things from the BSDs because they were easily ported over. Eventually many these items were replaced by GNU counterparts. But nothing developed on Linux these days can be easily ported anywhere. So the BSDs have a hard time keeping up. Considering the team size, I say they are working miracles.
- traceroute66 2y ago
  > Odd statement Its not an odd statement if you can be bothered to read it in context, i.e. this discussion. :) We are talking, here, about somebody who has posted a blog post clearly written through the tint of rose-tinted spectacles, trying to convince the world that OpenBSD is the best thing since sliced bread. AND YET Many of the things the author chooses to promote, "Installing OpenBSD can be as easy as just hitting Enter", "I upgraded to 7.6 yesterday, the whole process took less than 20 minutes, was fully automated" etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. are all things that would not have been possible for the author to evangelise about anywhere more than 5 years ago (sysupgrade @ OpenBSD 6.6), and in many respects less than that (lots of other stuff that came much later). Hence my statement ... lets not pretend OpenBSD has always been like this, because it has not. Because, let's be honest, most other mainstream OS's have had, for example, sysupgrade-type capability much-much-much longer than 5 years. The OpenBSD devs could, if they wanted to, have done sysupgrade/syspatch a long-long time ago. But for a long-long time it was nothing but an opinionated decision that they did not. I have recollections of people asking it on the misc mailing list and being shot down by the core-devs.
  - jmclnx 2y ago
    >are all things that would not have been possible for the author to evangelise about anywhere more than 5 years ago So you are complaining OpenBSD is better now then 5 years ago ? This is how software should progess, each release something improves. OpenBSD releases more then 2 release ago are not supported. >would not have been possible for the author to evangelise about anywhere more than 5 years ago (sysupgrade @ OpenBSD 6.6) I upgraded from 6.5 to 6.6, it was easy. The only difference beween then and now was I had to manually remove some files. Some people has to update config. But it was still easy, you just had to follow detailed instructions. https://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade66.html https://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade66.html >Hence my statement ... lets not pretend OpenBSD has always been like this, because it has not. So :) Software is suppose to improve as it is updated, OpenBSD has been improving in spite of the size of their team. >For the past 2 years I've used OpenBSD as my primary OS for work, play, everything. It just works Above quote from the article, he has been on OpenBSD fully for 2 years, so from his prespective it is easy. Yes, many years ago OpenBSD was harder, but now upgrades and installing is close to trivial. So since it is "today" his article is fine by me. Except non-amd64/i386 is much harder, the above is only for amd64 and i386

jmclnx 2y ago

>lets not pretend OpenBSD has always been like this, because it has not. Odd statement, you realize OpenBSD has a much much smaller team than Linux. So changes take time and I think they went after the "big hitters" first. The same could be said about Linux between 1995 and 2000. By 1995 the Linux developers outnumbered the BSD developers almost 10 to 1. Plus I remember the early days. Linux took a lot of things from the BSDs because they were easily ported over. Eventually many these items were replaced by GNU counterparts. But nothing developed on Linux these days can be easily ported anywhere. So the BSDs have a hard time keeping up. Considering the team size, I say they are working miracles.

traceroute66 2y ago
> Odd statement Its not an odd statement if you can be bothered to read it in context, i.e. this discussion. :) We are talking, here, about somebody who has posted a blog post clearly written through the tint of rose-tinted spectacles, trying to convince the world that OpenBSD is the best thing since sliced bread. AND YET Many of the things the author chooses to promote, "Installing OpenBSD can be as easy as just hitting Enter", "I upgraded to 7.6 yesterday, the whole process took less than 20 minutes, was fully automated" etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. are all things that would not have been possible for the author to evangelise about anywhere more than 5 years ago (sysupgrade @ OpenBSD 6.6), and in many respects less than that (lots of other stuff that came much later). Hence my statement ... lets not pretend OpenBSD has always been like this, because it has not. Because, let's be honest, most other mainstream OS's have had, for example, sysupgrade-type capability much-much-much longer than 5 years. The OpenBSD devs could, if they wanted to, have done sysupgrade/syspatch a long-long time ago. But for a long-long time it was nothing but an opinionated decision that they did not. I have recollections of people asking it on the misc mailing list and being shot down by the core-devs.
- jmclnx 2y ago
  >are all things that would not have been possible for the author to evangelise about anywhere more than 5 years ago So you are complaining OpenBSD is better now then 5 years ago ? This is how software should progess, each release something improves. OpenBSD releases more then 2 release ago are not supported. >would not have been possible for the author to evangelise about anywhere more than 5 years ago (sysupgrade @ OpenBSD 6.6) I upgraded from 6.5 to 6.6, it was easy. The only difference beween then and now was I had to manually remove some files. Some people has to update config. But it was still easy, you just had to follow detailed instructions. https://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade66.html https://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade66.html >Hence my statement ... lets not pretend OpenBSD has always been like this, because it has not. So :) Software is suppose to improve as it is updated, OpenBSD has been improving in spite of the size of their team. >For the past 2 years I've used OpenBSD as my primary OS for work, play, everything. It just works Above quote from the article, he has been on OpenBSD fully for 2 years, so from his prespective it is easy. Yes, many years ago OpenBSD was harder, but now upgrades and installing is close to trivial. So since it is "today" his article is fine by me. Except non-amd64/i386 is much harder, the above is only for amd64 and i386