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Somewhat related OpenBSD is the fundament of my self-hosted homelab since it runs DNS, DHCP, a firewall router and a small local web server. Configuration is a

Somewhat related OpenBSD is the fundament of my self-hosted homelab since it runs DNS, DHCP, a firewall router and a small local web server. Configuration is a dream compared to Linux and probably even compared to FreeBSD. You just need to go through the FAQ and copy&paste the relevant examples and modify them as needed. I don't know why it's so complicated on Linux where you need to appease a handful of daemons and find your way through a labyrinth of config files. I run a separate Linux based KVM host though.

noosphr 11mo ago
OpenBSD is a very well kept secret that very few people are aware of. As close to nirvana as I can manage. The fact I miss pretty much all the drama around the latest corporate take over attempts on Linux is just icing on the cake. The toxic slug strategy is an amazing one that more open source projects should use.
- bluGill 11mo ago
  Openbsd split from netbsd back in the day as the original toxic slug, so it is amusing to call it a releif today
  - fud101 11mo ago
    sorry which one was toxic, netbsd or openbsd?
- 201984 11mo ago
  What do you mean by "toxic slug strategy"?
  - noosphr 11mo ago
    I can't find the article where I read it, many years ago now, but it was about strategies that small communities can adopt to keep their culture from being subsumed by the mainstream. One was to pick a set of norms repugnant to the mainstream that everyone currently in the community can tolerate and enforce them rigorously on all new members. This will limit the appeal of the community to people like the ones currently there and will make sure that it never grows too big. Thus your community is as appetising to activists attempting a hostile takeover as a toxic slug is to a bird. As an example from six years ago, when the code of conduct madness had just reached its peak: >I believe OpenBSD's code of conduct can be summed up as "if you are the type of person who needs a code of conduct to teach to you how to human then you are not welcome here".
    - 201984 11mo ago
      Thanks for the explanation!
    - lynx97 11mo ago
      That sounds like a very convincing reason to switch over to OpenBSD. Great system, minimalist, good documentation, and NO ACTIVISTS!!!!!!!!!!!
    - Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 11mo ago
      Funny, I had heard about that concept to explain the rigorous rules in religions.
    - locknitpicker 11mo ago
      > I believe OpenBSD's code of conduct can be summed up as "if you are the type of person who needs a code of conduct to teach to you how to human then you are not welcome here". I think that the goal of any code of conduct is to prevent any semblance of arbitrary and whimsical punishment, which can kill entire communities. Linux unfortunately has to endure with toxic contributors and even maintainers, and history showed that when those maintainers fail to human and consequently the community banishes them, they go on a tirade arguing all kinds of conspiracies. A code of conduct is a form of checks and balances, and code of conduct violation processes serve as processes to collect and present objectively verifiable paper trails of exactly when snd how those maintainers failed to human, and how bad at it they were. Those types can't simply argue their way out of a list of messages they were awful to others, how exactly they violated the code of conduct, and how bad it was. Thus any stunt they pull is immediately rendered moot by the deliverables from the project.
      - jorvi 11mo ago
        > I think that the goal of any code of conduct is to prevent any semblance of arbitrary and whimsical punishment, which can kill entire communities. Quite ironic then that CoCs overwhelmingly lead to arbitrary and whimsical punishment.
        11mo ago
- metalforever 11mo ago
  There are a few nice to haves that would really help me out with making an open bsd transition. I thought of writing them myself because I am getting very fed up with Linux for the above reasons. - IDE support is an issue still - Filesystem challenging when using a laptop that runs out of battery - MATE lacking volume and WiFi controls - This one is just me being picky but a GUI to help me gain a better understanding of the security settings or alternatively more up to date books. - I am not exactly sure on how to correctly use virtualization and I need it to support docker workloads at work
  - skydhash 11mo ago
    Your points are valid but I'd like to present counterpoints: > IDE support is an issue still IMO, languages and platforms that require IDEs, also leads to complex software that is hard to maintain. The only exception is smalltalk. > Filesystem challenging when using a laptop that runs out of battery Easily resolved by using apmd and it `-z` flag. I think there's a couple utility out there that you can script for monitoring battery level. > MATE lacking volume and WiFi controls One of the good strength of OpenBSD is that the cli utilities are quite nice that I've not installed gui replacements (I'm using cwm). I don't mind doing a few `doas ifconfig` every once in a while. > but a GUI to help me gain a better understanding of the security settings I'm with you on that one. But the man pages are truly extensive. And the OS code is fairly readable. > how to correctly use virtualization Current vm solution is very bare. For docker, you'll need a linux VM, but the installation process maybe troublesome. It only supports serial interaction, which can be disabled by default in some distros.
    - metalforever 11mo ago
      Hello, thank you for taking the time to respond. “ IMO, languages and platforms that require IDEs, also leads to complex software that is hard to maintain. ” The truth is that I (and probably other users) don’t always have the luxury of choice and a large portion of commercial codebases have a very large number of files. Sometimes, it is multiple codebases at once with a very large number of files . “ Easily resolved by using apmd and it `-z` flag. I think there's a couple utility out there that you can script for monitoring battery level.” Yeah but I don’t want to accidentally lose data if I shut the lid and accidentally forget to plug the thing in for a few days . “ One of the good strength of OpenBSD is that the cli utilities are quite nice” I don’t want to enter and exit a cli tool in order to increase and decrease the volume . Ideally it’s a control in the top right or a keyboard mapping . What if something loud begins playing in a browser tab and I have to change the volume quickly?
- sharts 11mo ago
  It’s also behind the times
  - seg_lol 11mo ago
    By behind the times you mean hot garbage for larpers. OpenBSD is cosplay for old men.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  - MisterTea 11mo ago
    In terms of?
- mvdwoord 11mo ago
  Shoutout to OpenBSD.amsterdam for providing a wonderful hosted OpenBSD VPS. It is indeed pretty close to nirvana.
jimmaswell 11mo ago
My impression is that the BSD's are laser-focused on providing efficient environments for networking backbone software to exist in, so special attention is paid to making it easy to orchestrate everything with rc.conf and keeping anything not required for these goals out of the default installation; while Linux (and its distributions) being far more general-purpose naturally will take more configuration.
- colechristensen 11mo ago
  Linux packaging tools are bad and the people who make Linux packages generally don't do a very good job at it limited by tools and motivation. So much linux software doesn't come with sane defaults out of the box, doesn't have an easy path to common desired configurations, and doesn't have reasonable documentation. PARTICULARLY for "open" software that has a paid hosted option. I say this after decades of a career where a very large proportion of the frustration and "stupid work" I've had to do involved getting a piece of software to do something obvious. Working with the BSDs is just delightful in how wanting to do something turns into something working with ease.
  - indigo945 11mo ago
    > PARTICULARLY for "open" software that has a paid hosted > option. That one is not a Linux problem, though - if any such software ran on BSD, the vendor would be likely to stifle it in the same way. And otherwise, I don't know what software you're thinking of that is easier to deploy on BSD than on Linux. To be blunt, the only reason this is a problem on Linux and not BSD is that no relevant software runs on BSD at all.
    - jimmaswell 11mo ago
      > no relevant software runs on BSD at all. I don't understand how you arrived at that conclusion. That comment probably passed through several BSD boxes on its way to me - BGP servers, DNS servers, absolutely critical things that *BSD shines at. Even this website itself apparently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16076041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16076041
metadat 11mo ago
Have you dealt with hardware failure or instability yet? It can be pretty annoying to pin down and isolate, unless you keep an order of magnitude of hoarded hardware around. Time and attention are always in short supply.
implements 11mo ago
Speaking of Linux, OpenBSD’s hypervisor (vmm) supports it so I managed to get docker and containers running on my server via Alpine Linux. Opens the door on all the latest ‘modern server stuff’ running happily on an OBSD box.
lelanthran 11mo ago
> I don't know why it's so complicated on Linux where you need to appease a handful of daemons and find your way through a labyrinth of config files. Not too mention that some newer servers you might want to run are containerised and have few, if any, instructions for how to set them up without containers.
MisterTea 11mo ago
OpenBSD used to run my network but Plan 9, specifically 9front is even easier. Everything is configured using NDB which is a flat text file containing entries for each system on the network. On my CPU server I run DHCP, DNS and TFTPd, which are three lines in /cfg/$sysname/cpurc. That's it. No init system and no /etc. Just start the programs which all look at the same central database for config info. When I setup PXE booting it took literally 5 minutes of adding the tftpd line, adding an extra bootf= tuple in the machines ndb entry, a plan9.ini in /cfg/pxe and I had a machine pxe booting 9front over the network when turned on.

noosphr 11mo ago

OpenBSD is a very well kept secret that very few people are aware of. As close to nirvana as I can manage. The fact I miss pretty much all the drama around the latest corporate take over attempts on Linux is just icing on the cake. The toxic slug strategy is an amazing one that more open source projects should use.

bluGill 11mo ago
Openbsd split from netbsd back in the day as the original toxic slug, so it is amusing to call it a releif today
- fud101 11mo ago
  sorry which one was toxic, netbsd or openbsd?
201984 11mo ago
What do you mean by "toxic slug strategy"?
- noosphr 11mo ago
  I can't find the article where I read it, many years ago now, but it was about strategies that small communities can adopt to keep their culture from being subsumed by the mainstream. One was to pick a set of norms repugnant to the mainstream that everyone currently in the community can tolerate and enforce them rigorously on all new members. This will limit the appeal of the community to people like the ones currently there and will make sure that it never grows too big. Thus your community is as appetising to activists attempting a hostile takeover as a toxic slug is to a bird. As an example from six years ago, when the code of conduct madness had just reached its peak: >I believe OpenBSD's code of conduct can be summed up as "if you are the type of person who needs a code of conduct to teach to you how to human then you are not welcome here".
  - 201984 11mo ago
    Thanks for the explanation!
  - lynx97 11mo ago
    That sounds like a very convincing reason to switch over to OpenBSD. Great system, minimalist, good documentation, and NO ACTIVISTS!!!!!!!!!!!
  - Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 11mo ago
    Funny, I had heard about that concept to explain the rigorous rules in religions.
  - locknitpicker 11mo ago
    > I believe OpenBSD's code of conduct can be summed up as "if you are the type of person who needs a code of conduct to teach to you how to human then you are not welcome here". I think that the goal of any code of conduct is to prevent any semblance of arbitrary and whimsical punishment, which can kill entire communities. Linux unfortunately has to endure with toxic contributors and even maintainers, and history showed that when those maintainers fail to human and consequently the community banishes them, they go on a tirade arguing all kinds of conspiracies. A code of conduct is a form of checks and balances, and code of conduct violation processes serve as processes to collect and present objectively verifiable paper trails of exactly when snd how those maintainers failed to human, and how bad at it they were. Those types can't simply argue their way out of a list of messages they were awful to others, how exactly they violated the code of conduct, and how bad it was. Thus any stunt they pull is immediately rendered moot by the deliverables from the project.
    - jorvi 11mo ago
      > I think that the goal of any code of conduct is to prevent any semblance of arbitrary and whimsical punishment, which can kill entire communities. Quite ironic then that CoCs overwhelmingly lead to arbitrary and whimsical punishment.
      - 11mo ago
metalforever 11mo ago
There are a few nice to haves that would really help me out with making an open bsd transition. I thought of writing them myself because I am getting very fed up with Linux for the above reasons. - IDE support is an issue still - Filesystem challenging when using a laptop that runs out of battery - MATE lacking volume and WiFi controls - This one is just me being picky but a GUI to help me gain a better understanding of the security settings or alternatively more up to date books. - I am not exactly sure on how to correctly use virtualization and I need it to support docker workloads at work
- skydhash 11mo ago
  Your points are valid but I'd like to present counterpoints: > IDE support is an issue still IMO, languages and platforms that require IDEs, also leads to complex software that is hard to maintain. The only exception is smalltalk. > Filesystem challenging when using a laptop that runs out of battery Easily resolved by using apmd and it `-z` flag. I think there's a couple utility out there that you can script for monitoring battery level. > MATE lacking volume and WiFi controls One of the good strength of OpenBSD is that the cli utilities are quite nice that I've not installed gui replacements (I'm using cwm). I don't mind doing a few `doas ifconfig` every once in a while. > but a GUI to help me gain a better understanding of the security settings I'm with you on that one. But the man pages are truly extensive. And the OS code is fairly readable. > how to correctly use virtualization Current vm solution is very bare. For docker, you'll need a linux VM, but the installation process maybe troublesome. It only supports serial interaction, which can be disabled by default in some distros.
  - metalforever 11mo ago
    Hello, thank you for taking the time to respond. “ IMO, languages and platforms that require IDEs, also leads to complex software that is hard to maintain. ” The truth is that I (and probably other users) don’t always have the luxury of choice and a large portion of commercial codebases have a very large number of files. Sometimes, it is multiple codebases at once with a very large number of files . “ Easily resolved by using apmd and it `-z` flag. I think there's a couple utility out there that you can script for monitoring battery level.” Yeah but I don’t want to accidentally lose data if I shut the lid and accidentally forget to plug the thing in for a few days . “ One of the good strength of OpenBSD is that the cli utilities are quite nice” I don’t want to enter and exit a cli tool in order to increase and decrease the volume . Ideally it’s a control in the top right or a keyboard mapping . What if something loud begins playing in a browser tab and I have to change the volume quickly?
sharts 11mo ago
It’s also behind the times
- seg_lol 11mo ago
  By behind the times you mean hot garbage for larpers. OpenBSD is cosplay for old men.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- MisterTea 11mo ago
  In terms of?
mvdwoord 11mo ago
Shoutout to OpenBSD.amsterdam for providing a wonderful hosted OpenBSD VPS. It is indeed pretty close to nirvana.

jimmaswell 11mo ago

My impression is that the BSD's are laser-focused on providing efficient environments for networking backbone software to exist in, so special attention is paid to making it easy to orchestrate everything with rc.conf and keeping anything not required for these goals out of the default installation; while Linux (and its distributions) being far more general-purpose naturally will take more configuration.

colechristensen 11mo ago
Linux packaging tools are bad and the people who make Linux packages generally don't do a very good job at it limited by tools and motivation. So much linux software doesn't come with sane defaults out of the box, doesn't have an easy path to common desired configurations, and doesn't have reasonable documentation. PARTICULARLY for "open" software that has a paid hosted option. I say this after decades of a career where a very large proportion of the frustration and "stupid work" I've had to do involved getting a piece of software to do something obvious. Working with the BSDs is just delightful in how wanting to do something turns into something working with ease.
- indigo945 11mo ago
  > PARTICULARLY for "open" software that has a paid hosted > option. That one is not a Linux problem, though - if any such software ran on BSD, the vendor would be likely to stifle it in the same way. And otherwise, I don't know what software you're thinking of that is easier to deploy on BSD than on Linux. To be blunt, the only reason this is a problem on Linux and not BSD is that no relevant software runs on BSD at all.
  - jimmaswell 11mo ago
    > no relevant software runs on BSD at all. I don't understand how you arrived at that conclusion. That comment probably passed through several BSD boxes on its way to me - BGP servers, DNS servers, absolutely critical things that *BSD shines at. Even this website itself apparently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16076041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16076041

metadat 11mo ago

Have you dealt with hardware failure or instability yet? It can be pretty annoying to pin down and isolate, unless you keep an order of magnitude of hoarded hardware around. Time and attention are always in short supply.

implements 11mo ago

Speaking of Linux, OpenBSD’s hypervisor (vmm) supports it so I managed to get docker and containers running on my server via Alpine Linux. Opens the door on all the latest ‘modern server stuff’ running happily on an OBSD box.

lelanthran 11mo ago

> I don't know why it's so complicated on Linux where you need to appease a handful of daemons and find your way through a labyrinth of config files. Not too mention that some newer servers you might want to run are containerised and have few, if any, instructions for how to set them up without containers.

MisterTea 11mo ago

OpenBSD used to run my network but Plan 9, specifically 9front is even easier. Everything is configured using NDB which is a flat text file containing entries for each system on the network. On my CPU server I run DHCP, DNS and TFTPd, which are three lines in /cfg/$sysname/cpurc. That's it. No init system and no /etc. Just start the programs which all look at the same central database for config info. When I setup PXE booting it took literally 5 minutes of adding the tftpd line, adding an extra bootf= tuple in the machines ndb entry, a plan9.ini in /cfg/pxe and I had a machine pxe booting 9front over the network when turned on.