7 ms·

OpenBSD 7.9

418 points by bradley_taunt 5mo ago

kvuj 5mo ago
A song released with it too! So much care for OpenBSD.
- DASD 5mo ago
  Nice! Had to lookup when one was last released, 7.3. https://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html https://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html
mghackerlady 5mo ago
Sweet, I was just wondering when 7.9 would release. And with a song! We haven't gotten one of those in a while iirc
- ilvez 5mo ago
  I always check their releases to get the song, like in other thread.. last song was 7.3
alex1138 5mo ago
BSDs are interesting projects. As I understand it there's a broad difference of them all doing things reasonably well but a) Free is general-purpose, b) Net is especially portable/many architecture and Open is security focused
- novafunc 5mo ago
  OpenBSD's primary purpose is to create artwork (https://www.openbsd.org/artwork.html https://www.openbsd.org/artwork.html), releasing an OS is a side project.
  - anthk 5mo ago
    That's 9front where CSP, GeFS and the like are futuristic artwork, kinda like modern DaVinci. We are not ready yet.
    - mghackerlady 5mo ago
      9fronts site will always be one of my favorite place on the net. I don't like plan9 (architecturally it is amazing, I just am to bigoted to stay sane on its userland) but the humor is so my style of humor
  - doodlebugging 5mo ago
    Based on the CD covers I used v2.3 and v2.4. That's been a while. I might still have the CD sets somewhere out in storage with other legacy stuff.
- mghackerlady 5mo ago
  FreeBSD is mainly server focused. There's been work on the desktop recently, but it isn't what FreeBSD devs are paid to focus on. To be fair to the people paying them, it's a damn good server OS. Also, check out DragonflyBSD. It has a really nice filesystem and Dillon does good work
  - FuriouslyAdrift 5mo ago
    DragonflyBSD is a beautifully well done OS.
    - ylabidi 5mo ago
      Especially their SMP model. Shame they didn't pick traction.
  - thesuitonym 5mo ago
    FreeBSD is focused on making a good, general purpose operating system. It just happens to be very good at being a server. It's also very good at being a desktop.
    - Gud 5mo ago
      Subpar wifi performance compared to Linux(perhaps better now?) subpar bluetooth, etc, etc, hardly makes it a good desktop OS. Passable yes, if you love it, but let's be realistic. I love FreeBSD btw.
- canpan 5mo ago
  I always wanted to get into bsd, especially openbsd. I like the idea of a more cohesive os. But I don't really know what to use it for to get started. My desktop runs linux with steam for games. My AI server needs rocm drivers so ubuntu-server. My vps runs debian, maybe that one, but there is no DO image for BSD. Open for ideas..
  - nelsonic 5mo ago
    OpenBSD for the layer where you need the highest security. We use it for hosting our Postgres clusters. You could easily use it for your VPS. There is a learning curve. But if you’re already comfortable with Linux you’ll pick it up in a few hours.
  - mghackerlady 5mo ago
    FreeBSD would work well for your purposes, it has a really good hypervisor and linux abi compatibility
    - Gud 5mo ago
      I doubt it. I am a diehard FreeBSD fan and I used it on my laptop for 20+ years, and dualbooted it for windows only for gaming. I tried my best to get gaming going, even running Arch in a jail, but it's not great for gaming purposes. I was even virtualizing OpenBSD to use PCI passthrough for better wifi... Today I am using Arch Linux instead of my dual boot setup. Is it perfect? Nope, but at least I can play Age of Empires 2. I still use FreeBSD on my servers, obviously. FreeBSD is great, but on the desktop, and especially on the laptop, there are some warts.
- Guestmodinfo 5mo ago
  I have used OpenBSD as a desktop for 7 years. Though my usage and the machine were minimal. But I thoroughly liked it. I want to go back to it. One good thing is that if your hardware has some problems or about to have problems then installing OpenBSD will make your computer kernel panic. So I use it as a diagnosing tool for my hardware
  - accrual 5mo ago
    > So I use it as a diagnosing tool for my hardware Same, it's particularly good for troubleshooting older hardware too since most bog standard x86 parts are well supported. If I have a random ISA/PCI/AGP/PCIe card that OpenBSD can't see or properly initialize, it's probably an issue with the card.
- rfmoz 5mo ago
  The main differences between OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD and DragonFly BSD https://unixdigest.com/articles/the-main-differences-between-openbsd-freebsd-netbsd-and-dragonflybsd.html https://unixdigest.com/articles/the-main-differences-between...
systems 5mo ago
the canadian OS :)
- Guestmodinfo 5mo ago
  Yes free from American restrictions. Because America law prohibits from giving out cryptography to outside countries so according to OpenBSD we outsiders have no luck in getting a cryptographically secure operating system except for OpenBSD
  - mghackerlady 5mo ago
    That isn't a thing anymore iirc
    - thfuran 5mo ago
      I think that pretty much ended in the 90s.
      - mghackerlady 5mo ago
        early 2000s so close enough. I know this because for a while, WEP was intentionally crippled in the US for a while because of the archaic encryption laws Sidenote, does anyone remember a "click here to become an international arms dealer" esque site as a protest of our encryption laws or did I make that up. I swear I heard that somewhere
    - boomboomsubban 5mo ago
      If I remember, it's still illegal to export to "rogue states," Iran and North Korea being the major two, and terrorist organizations. But I don't think anybody has been charged for it and there's reason to suspect it wouldn't hold up given the pgp ruling.
      - mghackerlady 5mo ago
        We can't really export anything to those "rogue states" anyway. Also, as backwards as NK can act in some contexts, I dislike the classification of them as a rogue state. The kims are pretty good at geopolitics and wouldn't do anything stupid or dangerous without a good enough reason to make its actions no longer "rogue". If anything, the US is closer to a rogue state currently with its rubber stamp congress and willingness to do whatever the orangutan in charge says
clbrmbr 5mo ago
Anyone here using OpenBSD? If so, for what purpose? I’ve always wanted to use NetBSD for an application for an embedded system / IoT device but never had the pleasure (yet!).
- 6r17 5mo ago
  open-bsd will always feel like a safe pick for anything in regard to vault or key holding ; it's not appropriate to run anything CPU intensive - but it's a very appropriate system for anything that just need to boot up and hold some data ; eventually expose a network interface.
- nelsonic 5mo ago
  We use OpenBSD for our VPSes on Hetzner, bare metal (for security focussed clients) and older (but still good) hardware in our Home Lab. OpenBSD is excellent on older (no longer supported by Cupertino) Apple hardware. We have an Intel Mac Mini Cluster with near-perfect uptime. If you need to run any kind of server (Web, Mail, DNS, NFS, Database) where you need stability & security, look no further. Some learning curve, but totally worth it.
  - mxuribe 5mo ago
    Have you tried such Openbsd installations vs FreeBSD? I forget the differences between OpenBSD and FreeBSD, so forgive the naivety. (I think NetBSD is more for embedded stuff, and Ghost and Dragonfly are more for conventional desktop use-cases if i recall correctly.) I'm asking because i have not touched any BSD for over 2 decades...and I'm getting the itch to try some out...and was wondering if for server-type use cases (like you noted) whether OpenBSD is preferred over FreeBSD or the reverse, and why? Thanks in advance for any feedback you might provide!
    - nelsonic 5mo ago
      FreeBSD has the same roots as OpenBSD but the former has a “compatibility” focus whereas the latter has the security focus. Having a background in security, the choice was obvious for me. But each person/org should decide based on their needs. Haven’t had any issues running it on all major hardware (Dell, HP, Lenovo, Apple, etc) the UI isn’t as pretty as macOS on Desktop, but it runs Firefox & Chrome, etc. so you can do everything you need. If you have an older Lenovo or Mac lying around collecting dust, dive in!
nelsonic 5mo ago
With all the security issues constantly being uncovered in other Operating Systems - which will only accelerate with Ai - it’s time everyone considers OpenBSD. Their decades-long security-focus is second to none. We have fully converted from Ubuntu/Debian to OpenBSD. No looking back.
- ykurtov 5mo ago
  What? How long did it take?
  - nelsonic 5mo ago
    How long did what take? Learning the essentials of OpenBSD, budget 4-6hours. Switching over servers from Ubuntu, an hour for the first one then 10mins each after that. You can copy config with your favourite tools; most have ports for OpenBSD already. If you want to learn more in-depth, read: Michael W. Lucas Absolute OpenBSD, 2nd Edition: Unix for the Practical Paranoid. Highly recommend it as teaches many fundamentals most software engineers skip.
    - reidrac 5mo ago
      How many upgrades have you done so far? And how many kernel fixes? Long time ago I maintained a couple of obsd servers, and the cost in time of upgrades and the (occasional) security fixes was substantial. I still maintain a couple of servers, but if it wasn't because Debian makes it easier by automating most of it, I don't think I could do it. Yet I miss my time with obsd. I'm very interested in your experience. Edit: it was 3.6-STABLE. Things have changed since then.
      - miah_ 5mo ago
        syspatch and sysupgrade have made things substantially easier these days.
      - noAnswer 5mo ago
        They have binary updates by now. No more need to download the source from CVS and compile fixes. You can update from one OS version to the next with manly only one command.
tiffanyh 5mo ago
> Replaced the cas spinlock in kernel mutexes with a "parking" lock. Anyone know what a "parking lock" is (and how it works)? I couldn't find anything on the man pages about it. https://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-5.5/lock.9 https://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-5.5/lock.9 https://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-5.9/mutex.9 https://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-5.9/mutex.9
- sanxiyn 5mo ago
  "Parking" lock is a reference to this: https://webkit.org/blog/6161/locking-in-webkit/ https://webkit.org/blog/6161/locking-in-webkit/
  - tiffanyh 5mo ago
    Thanks! Wow, this is from 10-years ago.
- packetlost 5mo ago
  It's a lock/mutex implementation that puts the blocked thread to sleep, usually via cooperative yielding to the scheduler instead of continuing to perform CAS operations on the lock continuously. Spinlocks have great performance when they're not heavily contended and the locks are held for short periods of time, but if either of those things are true the blocked thread can easily consume an entire CPU core while it's blocked.
ska80 5mo ago
I wish OpenBSD supported Bluetooth. Unfortunately, its absence is a deal breaker for me. I did use OpenBSD on the desktop it was great.
- nelsonic 5mo ago
  Interesting! Curious which Bluetooth device(s) you can’t live without.
  - bigyabai 5mo ago
    Naming a few peripherals on my desk that see regular usage on Linux: - Kensington Expert Trackball (I lost the 2.4ghz dongle) - JBL wireless earbuds/Audio Technica M40xs - Nintendo Switch controller
    - nelsonic 5mo ago
      Ah, losing the 2.4ghz USB dongle ... Sucks. Feel you. :-( Wireless Earbuds/Headphones are a legit use case. (Still use bluetooth with iPhone every day, sadly, still addicted to the convenience of AirPods ...) But I've got decent wired headphones for my OpenBSD setup. bonus: never have to charge them. ;-) Even more curious now: what do you use the Nintendo Switch controller for on your computer? Have you got it hooked up to play games on your PC? Or do you use it for robotics or other I/O?
      - bigyabai 5mo ago
        Switch controller gets used for flight simming, just as a simple analog input that I can take to the couch (or bed). I've also got a wired pair of my wireless Audio Technica headphones, but I'm not confident that my DAC (or Bitwig for that matter) would work as well on OpenBSD as it does on Linux. For desktop use, I don't think I'll ever end up on OpenBSD. It might power my gateway router one day, but the cost/benefit analysis falls through on hardware like a laptop or gaming PC.
        5mo ago
Decabytes 5mo ago
How do the various BSDs run on framework laptops?
- mghackerlady 5mo ago
  There's been a bunch of progress on FreeBSD, and OpenBSD isn't that much worse
- sjmulder 5mo ago
  I dual boot OpenBSD on it, and it's been doing fine. The out of the box experience is pretty bare although the default window manager cwm is surprisingly nice once you get to know it. Note that apmd, the power management daemon used to manage CPU speed and low-battery suspend, is not enabled by default. The high-DPI screen required some adjustments in Xresources (I haven't dared try a multi-monitor, mixed DPI setup). NetBSD seemed okay to but I've only used it a little bit. It actually set up X pretty well for the screen using some built in script with heuristics to determine font size from the screen metrics.
- groundzeros2015 5mo ago
  Power management, webcam, trackpad, accessories, etc tend not to be a good fit for niche BSD and Linux. Stick to desktop or server.
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  - cenamus 5mo ago
    Trackpad? I've had OpenBSD on ~6 laptops, old and new, but the trackpad always worked fine
    - groundzeros2015 5mo ago
      Do you disagree with my comment? Or just about trackpad?
  - gizzlon 5mo ago
nubg 5mo ago
ang benchmarks against state of the art?
- binkHN 5mo ago
  It depends. You can expect a 5 to 15% performance hit depending on the task. In OpenBSD, security comes first and performance comes second.
kriro 5mo ago
I used it a bit, had it installed for a while on a G4 PowerBook (must have been early-ish 2000s). I like the no-nonsense attitude towards blobs, security focus. Overall the experience was very good. The bit of code I read was also written nicely. I'll always endorse it and should really install it somewhere again in the near future. This is also the 60th release. Congrats team.
unethical_ban 5mo ago
Neat that they're working on Intel's p/e/l core support. I was just comparing Linux and windows support history the other day.
sgt 5mo ago
Direct link to the song so you can play in the browser: https://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/songs/song79.ogg https://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/songs/song79.ogg
brynet 5mo ago
OpenBSD 7.9 release artwork by Lyra Henderson https://www.openbsd.org/images/PinkPuffy.png https://www.openbsd.org/images/PinkPuffy.png https://www.openbsd.org/images/puffy79.gif https://www.openbsd.org/images/puffy79.gif Release song is "Diamond in the Rough" - Composed & produced by Bob Kitella. https://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#79 https://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#79 Apparel (t-shirts, so far): https://openbsdstore.com/ https://openbsdstore.com/
- nidayewo 5mo ago
  Interesting to see OpenBSD continuing to gain hardware support. I've been running it on a small home server for DNS/DHCP and the stability is remarkable. The man years of auditing really show.
  - JCattheATM 5mo ago
    Pretty much any OS would be just as stable if it's just serving DNS/DHCP.
    - snvzz 5mo ago
      As someone who has run DNS and DHCP servers... unfortunately, no. Shit happens, and choices still do matter. Even if it feels it should be simple, Linux has a way. My experience has been that Openbsd is rock solid, so are its implementations of the relevant server daemons.
      - JCattheATM 5mo ago
        > Even if it feels it should be simple, Linux has a way. As someone who has run DNS and DHCP servers for over 30 years and continues to do so, this just feels like confirmation bias based on your personal anecdotes. If there's an issue, it's likely due to messy over-complicated distros. Alpine is no less solid than OpenBSD.
      - klooney 5mo ago
        Nah, whenever I'm involved in a cloud cost audit, I routinely find boring unfashionable Ubuntu and RHEL servers someone forgot about with 5 year uptimes.
binkHN 5mo ago
While I daily Linux on my workstation, OpenBSD is my favorite OS, by far, and I use it wherever it makes sense for me.
sunshine-o 5mo ago
I would really love to adopt OpenBSD but the one thing I can't deal with is the absence of journalized filesystem. Just the idea not to be able to recover after a power cut and work is hard to accept to be honest. I have been recently considering running it on a minimal Alpine ZFS host but I am not sure how much I can optimize the display experience since I do not think OpenBSD support QXL/SPICE. I would be curious if someone found a way...
- skydhash 5mo ago
  fsck is good. I have to hard reset my laptop a few times and I didn’t have corruption. Maybe a server has a different risk profile, but journalized systems are not file backup, which is what you should focus on.
- noident 5mo ago
  Once you have workloads that can't tolerate a power cut + running fsck for a potentially long time, a battery backup becomes an excellent investment. I bought a UPS on eBay for cheap and my home server hasn't gone down since.
brynet 5mo ago
Announcement mail: https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-announce&m=177919671915512&w=2 https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-announce&m=177919671915512&w=2
Dyympps 5mo ago
i use it and its secure
efxhoy 5mo ago
> Enabled IPv6 autoconf (SLAAC) by default. Sweet! I’m just about to replace pfsense with openbsd on my router. Smoothly setting up ipv6 is a bit of a headscratcher atm, mainly because i’ve never had to understand it before.
- binkHN 5mo ago
  I recently updated an older OpenBSD router and firewall and the amount of native IPv6 support right out of the box makes this an unbelievable breeze.
  - efxhoy 5mo ago
    Nice. Would you mind explaining your current config?
Tepix 5mo ago
I wonder why they didn‘t spend 20 minutes to make that web page work better with smartphones.
- thesuitonym 5mo ago
  Works fine on my phone. Maybe it's you.
  - Tepix 5mo ago
    On my phone there is text to the right of the image, forcing horizontal scrolling
    - thesuitonym 5mo ago
      Oh god, the horror!
    - hulitu 4mo ago
      Google and Apple are working, since 20 years, to implement scrollbars in their mobile OSs. I heard they will release soon. /s
accrual 5mo ago
Congrats on another successful release, OpenBSD team! Happy user since the 4.x days.
fmajid 5mo ago
They've made major progress on the WiFi front in this release, finally getting experimental WiFi 6 support.
upofadown 5mo ago
The big news for some of us is that Exim has been dropped from ports. Here is a good article about transitioning from Exim to OpenSMTPD: https://nxdomain.no/~peter/time_for_opensmtpd.html https://nxdomain.no/~peter/time_for_opensmtpd.html I tried using OpenSMTPD a long time ago, shortly after it came out, but things were not stable enough. I guess it is time to give it another go...
- binkHN 5mo ago
  I really like OpenSMTPD; no nonsense and configuration feels rather modern compared to the legacy stuff that's out there.
- daneel_w 5mo ago
  I'm happy with it. Been running OpenSMTPd for many years at this point, on both OpenBSD and Linux, and I have no complaints.
  - SoftTalker 5mo ago
    I've also started using OpenSMTPD on linux machines when I need a simple MTA (which is to say, in almost all cases).
- somat 5mo ago
  Surprised exim was dropped from ports. It is not like it was ever in base. I guess the maintainer did not want to anymore.
  - JdeBP 5mo ago
    We don't have to guess. There are several mailing list discussions: https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-ports&m=177625153728067 https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-ports&m=177625153728067
- paulnpace 5mo ago
  OpenSMTPD was substantially rewritten in 6.4 (2018). It is the best SMTP server for the majority of use cases. Unfortunately, the portable version has been weakly supported, so it's usually only OpenBSD users than learn how great it is.
blackhaz 5mo ago
Sorry for the off-topic, but I wish our FreeBSD camp could roll back a little from this faux-corporate glass ball without soul and a font from the early 90s spaceship toy box, to Beastie and a stylish serif. What I was trying to say - I'm in envy. OpenBSD artwork is absolutely amazing!
somat 5mo ago
Release Engineering. Noun. See Also OpenBSD OpenBSD does a lot of things well, definitely punches above their weight. One underrated feature is their approach to releasing. No "When it's done" here. Like clockwork twice a year, they slow down, clean the shop, get their experiments in order and cook a release, a stable point in time. More projects could learn a thing or two from this.
- binkHN 5mo ago
  Agreed. I also like that code doesn't get committed without a quality man page.
NoSalt 5mo ago
Hey ... I had no idea OpenBSD had an official song. I think all distros (Unix and Linux) need an official song.
- binkHN 5mo ago
  Agree. It's obvious some people are still having fun making operating systems!
  - NoSalt 5mo ago
    I suppose that, ultimately, they all fall under the Free Software Song https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Song https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Song
rsync 5mo ago
Do we know if openbsd is one of the blessed 50 glasswing partners?
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
jmclnx 5mo ago
Time for an upgrade :)
- jmclnx 5mo ago
  Cannot edit, again the easiest upgrade of an OS, I did kitchen chores during the upgrade. The network was a bit slow, but got my work done during the upgrade :)
somat 5mo ago
"Introduced a mechanism to manage CPU cores with different speeds in the scheduler. The sysctl(8) variable "hw.blockcpu" takes a sequence of 4 letters: S (for SMT), P (regular performance CPU), E (efficient CPU, generally 80% to 50% as fast), and L (lethargic CPU) which are even slower. Set this to select CPUs to kick out of the scheduler (SL by default). Currently works on amd64 and arm64." I have to admit I am not entirely convinced about the merit of having slow cores on the cpu at all(big/little architecture). You don't want your tasks to be scheduled on them. And even for background tasks shouldn't it be better to have them complete faster for less power? To say nothing about what if they have different features. what happens when a process that wants to use cpu feature X(avx512?) gets scheduled on a cpu without X? Openbsd took the quick and dirty shotgun approach here in disabling the slow cores. But is there even a good heuristic for scheduling jobs on them? The only thing I can think of is some sort complicated mechanism of putting manual tags in the executable or thread. A "this process is suitable for slow cores" sort of thing. I was reading about this on on the lists, apparently a naive scheduler puts a process wherever and some new big/little systems have very slow little cores. This really hit recompiling code hard.
- creatonez 5mo ago
  > And even for background tasks shouldn't it be better to have them complete faster for less power Race to idle is only clearly beneficial for tasks that have a clear start and end. If a background task is sustained, responds to unpredictable events, or does small amounts of work and wakes frequently, the CPU's boost logic won't solve your energy usage problem. > To say nothing about what if they have different features. what happens when a process that wants to use cpu feature X(avx512?) gets scheduled on a cpu without X This idea has been proposed in the past, but isn't actually used on x86-64 or ARM. E-cores have the same instruction set as P-cores, so there's no risk of running into an invalid CPU instruction. Truly heterogeneous instruction sets may come back in the future, though. So be on your toes.
hmsp 5mo ago
I use openbsd as my server via openbsd.amsterdam - so much easier to maintain than a linux server for my personal sites.
kadirbg 5mo ago
[flagged]
tylerius 5mo ago
Congratulations for another amazing release! This one even comes with a song :) I'm using it as a daily driver since Debian adopted systemd and it works great. I use it wherever possible: home router, laptops, obsda.ms vm, workstation, thin clients, etc. With every release OpenBSD becomes better. Fully recommended to take advantage of old hardware too, like a fanless thin client bought for cheap from surplus. I really love the no-nonsense approach I can't find elsewhere.

OpenBSD 7.9

418 points by bradley_taunt 5mo ago

kvuj 5mo ago

A song released with it too! So much care for OpenBSD.

DASD 5mo ago
Nice! Had to lookup when one was last released, 7.3. https://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html https://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html

mghackerlady 5mo ago

Sweet, I was just wondering when 7.9 would release. And with a song! We haven't gotten one of those in a while iirc

ilvez 5mo ago
I always check their releases to get the song, like in other thread.. last song was 7.3

alex1138 5mo ago

BSDs are interesting projects. As I understand it there's a broad difference of them all doing things reasonably well but a) Free is general-purpose, b) Net is especially portable/many architecture and Open is security focused

novafunc 5mo ago
OpenBSD's primary purpose is to create artwork (https://www.openbsd.org/artwork.html https://www.openbsd.org/artwork.html), releasing an OS is a side project.
- anthk 5mo ago
  That's 9front where CSP, GeFS and the like are futuristic artwork, kinda like modern DaVinci. We are not ready yet.
  - mghackerlady 5mo ago
    9fronts site will always be one of my favorite place on the net. I don't like plan9 (architecturally it is amazing, I just am to bigoted to stay sane on its userland) but the humor is so my style of humor
- doodlebugging 5mo ago
  Based on the CD covers I used v2.3 and v2.4. That's been a while. I might still have the CD sets somewhere out in storage with other legacy stuff.
mghackerlady 5mo ago
FreeBSD is mainly server focused. There's been work on the desktop recently, but it isn't what FreeBSD devs are paid to focus on. To be fair to the people paying them, it's a damn good server OS. Also, check out DragonflyBSD. It has a really nice filesystem and Dillon does good work
- FuriouslyAdrift 5mo ago
  DragonflyBSD is a beautifully well done OS.
  - ylabidi 5mo ago
    Especially their SMP model. Shame they didn't pick traction.
- thesuitonym 5mo ago
  FreeBSD is focused on making a good, general purpose operating system. It just happens to be very good at being a server. It's also very good at being a desktop.
  - Gud 5mo ago
    Subpar wifi performance compared to Linux(perhaps better now?) subpar bluetooth, etc, etc, hardly makes it a good desktop OS. Passable yes, if you love it, but let's be realistic. I love FreeBSD btw.
canpan 5mo ago
I always wanted to get into bsd, especially openbsd. I like the idea of a more cohesive os. But I don't really know what to use it for to get started. My desktop runs linux with steam for games. My AI server needs rocm drivers so ubuntu-server. My vps runs debian, maybe that one, but there is no DO image for BSD. Open for ideas..
- nelsonic 5mo ago
  OpenBSD for the layer where you need the highest security. We use it for hosting our Postgres clusters. You could easily use it for your VPS. There is a learning curve. But if you’re already comfortable with Linux you’ll pick it up in a few hours.
- mghackerlady 5mo ago
  FreeBSD would work well for your purposes, it has a really good hypervisor and linux abi compatibility
  - Gud 5mo ago
    I doubt it. I am a diehard FreeBSD fan and I used it on my laptop for 20+ years, and dualbooted it for windows only for gaming. I tried my best to get gaming going, even running Arch in a jail, but it's not great for gaming purposes. I was even virtualizing OpenBSD to use PCI passthrough for better wifi... Today I am using Arch Linux instead of my dual boot setup. Is it perfect? Nope, but at least I can play Age of Empires 2. I still use FreeBSD on my servers, obviously. FreeBSD is great, but on the desktop, and especially on the laptop, there are some warts.
Guestmodinfo 5mo ago
I have used OpenBSD as a desktop for 7 years. Though my usage and the machine were minimal. But I thoroughly liked it. I want to go back to it. One good thing is that if your hardware has some problems or about to have problems then installing OpenBSD will make your computer kernel panic. So I use it as a diagnosing tool for my hardware
- accrual 5mo ago
  > So I use it as a diagnosing tool for my hardware Same, it's particularly good for troubleshooting older hardware too since most bog standard x86 parts are well supported. If I have a random ISA/PCI/AGP/PCIe card that OpenBSD can't see or properly initialize, it's probably an issue with the card.
rfmoz 5mo ago
The main differences between OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD and DragonFly BSD https://unixdigest.com/articles/the-main-differences-between-openbsd-freebsd-netbsd-and-dragonflybsd.html https://unixdigest.com/articles/the-main-differences-between...

systems 5mo ago

the canadian OS :)

Guestmodinfo 5mo ago
Yes free from American restrictions. Because America law prohibits from giving out cryptography to outside countries so according to OpenBSD we outsiders have no luck in getting a cryptographically secure operating system except for OpenBSD
- mghackerlady 5mo ago
  That isn't a thing anymore iirc
  - thfuran 5mo ago
    I think that pretty much ended in the 90s.
    - mghackerlady 5mo ago
      early 2000s so close enough. I know this because for a while, WEP was intentionally crippled in the US for a while because of the archaic encryption laws Sidenote, does anyone remember a "click here to become an international arms dealer" esque site as a protest of our encryption laws or did I make that up. I swear I heard that somewhere
  - boomboomsubban 5mo ago
    If I remember, it's still illegal to export to "rogue states," Iran and North Korea being the major two, and terrorist organizations. But I don't think anybody has been charged for it and there's reason to suspect it wouldn't hold up given the pgp ruling.
    - mghackerlady 5mo ago
      We can't really export anything to those "rogue states" anyway. Also, as backwards as NK can act in some contexts, I dislike the classification of them as a rogue state. The kims are pretty good at geopolitics and wouldn't do anything stupid or dangerous without a good enough reason to make its actions no longer "rogue". If anything, the US is closer to a rogue state currently with its rubber stamp congress and willingness to do whatever the orangutan in charge says

clbrmbr 5mo ago

Anyone here using OpenBSD? If so, for what purpose? I’ve always wanted to use NetBSD for an application for an embedded system / IoT device but never had the pleasure (yet!).

6r17 5mo ago
open-bsd will always feel like a safe pick for anything in regard to vault or key holding ; it's not appropriate to run anything CPU intensive - but it's a very appropriate system for anything that just need to boot up and hold some data ; eventually expose a network interface.
nelsonic 5mo ago
We use OpenBSD for our VPSes on Hetzner, bare metal (for security focussed clients) and older (but still good) hardware in our Home Lab. OpenBSD is excellent on older (no longer supported by Cupertino) Apple hardware. We have an Intel Mac Mini Cluster with near-perfect uptime. If you need to run any kind of server (Web, Mail, DNS, NFS, Database) where you need stability & security, look no further. Some learning curve, but totally worth it.
- mxuribe 5mo ago
  Have you tried such Openbsd installations vs FreeBSD? I forget the differences between OpenBSD and FreeBSD, so forgive the naivety. (I think NetBSD is more for embedded stuff, and Ghost and Dragonfly are more for conventional desktop use-cases if i recall correctly.) I'm asking because i have not touched any BSD for over 2 decades...and I'm getting the itch to try some out...and was wondering if for server-type use cases (like you noted) whether OpenBSD is preferred over FreeBSD or the reverse, and why? Thanks in advance for any feedback you might provide!
  - nelsonic 5mo ago
    FreeBSD has the same roots as OpenBSD but the former has a “compatibility” focus whereas the latter has the security focus. Having a background in security, the choice was obvious for me. But each person/org should decide based on their needs. Haven’t had any issues running it on all major hardware (Dell, HP, Lenovo, Apple, etc) the UI isn’t as pretty as macOS on Desktop, but it runs Firefox & Chrome, etc. so you can do everything you need. If you have an older Lenovo or Mac lying around collecting dust, dive in!

nelsonic 5mo ago

With all the security issues constantly being uncovered in other Operating Systems - which will only accelerate with Ai - it’s time everyone considers OpenBSD. Their decades-long security-focus is second to none. We have fully converted from Ubuntu/Debian to OpenBSD. No looking back.

ykurtov 5mo ago
What? How long did it take?
- nelsonic 5mo ago
  How long did what take? Learning the essentials of OpenBSD, budget 4-6hours. Switching over servers from Ubuntu, an hour for the first one then 10mins each after that. You can copy config with your favourite tools; most have ports for OpenBSD already. If you want to learn more in-depth, read: Michael W. Lucas Absolute OpenBSD, 2nd Edition: Unix for the Practical Paranoid. Highly recommend it as teaches many fundamentals most software engineers skip.
  - reidrac 5mo ago
    How many upgrades have you done so far? And how many kernel fixes? Long time ago I maintained a couple of obsd servers, and the cost in time of upgrades and the (occasional) security fixes was substantial. I still maintain a couple of servers, but if it wasn't because Debian makes it easier by automating most of it, I don't think I could do it. Yet I miss my time with obsd. I'm very interested in your experience. Edit: it was 3.6-STABLE. Things have changed since then.
    - miah_ 5mo ago
      syspatch and sysupgrade have made things substantially easier these days.
    - noAnswer 5mo ago
      They have binary updates by now. No more need to download the source from CVS and compile fixes. You can update from one OS version to the next with manly only one command.

tiffanyh 5mo ago

> Replaced the cas spinlock in kernel mutexes with a "parking" lock. Anyone know what a "parking lock" is (and how it works)? I couldn't find anything on the man pages about it. https://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-5.5/lock.9 https://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-5.5/lock.9 https://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-5.9/mutex.9 https://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-5.9/mutex.9

sanxiyn 5mo ago
"Parking" lock is a reference to this: https://webkit.org/blog/6161/locking-in-webkit/ https://webkit.org/blog/6161/locking-in-webkit/
- tiffanyh 5mo ago
  Thanks! Wow, this is from 10-years ago.
packetlost 5mo ago
It's a lock/mutex implementation that puts the blocked thread to sleep, usually via cooperative yielding to the scheduler instead of continuing to perform CAS operations on the lock continuously. Spinlocks have great performance when they're not heavily contended and the locks are held for short periods of time, but if either of those things are true the blocked thread can easily consume an entire CPU core while it's blocked.

ska80 5mo ago

I wish OpenBSD supported Bluetooth. Unfortunately, its absence is a deal breaker for me. I did use OpenBSD on the desktop it was great.

nelsonic 5mo ago
Interesting! Curious which Bluetooth device(s) you can’t live without.
- bigyabai 5mo ago
  Naming a few peripherals on my desk that see regular usage on Linux: - Kensington Expert Trackball (I lost the 2.4ghz dongle) - JBL wireless earbuds/Audio Technica M40xs - Nintendo Switch controller
  - nelsonic 5mo ago
    Ah, losing the 2.4ghz USB dongle ... Sucks. Feel you. :-( Wireless Earbuds/Headphones are a legit use case. (Still use bluetooth with iPhone every day, sadly, still addicted to the convenience of AirPods ...) But I've got decent wired headphones for my OpenBSD setup. bonus: never have to charge them. ;-) Even more curious now: what do you use the Nintendo Switch controller for on your computer? Have you got it hooked up to play games on your PC? Or do you use it for robotics or other I/O?
    - bigyabai 5mo ago
      Switch controller gets used for flight simming, just as a simple analog input that I can take to the couch (or bed). I've also got a wired pair of my wireless Audio Technica headphones, but I'm not confident that my DAC (or Bitwig for that matter) would work as well on OpenBSD as it does on Linux. For desktop use, I don't think I'll ever end up on OpenBSD. It might power my gateway router one day, but the cost/benefit analysis falls through on hardware like a laptop or gaming PC.
      - 5mo ago

Decabytes 5mo ago

How do the various BSDs run on framework laptops?

mghackerlady 5mo ago
There's been a bunch of progress on FreeBSD, and OpenBSD isn't that much worse
sjmulder 5mo ago
I dual boot OpenBSD on it, and it's been doing fine. The out of the box experience is pretty bare although the default window manager cwm is surprisingly nice once you get to know it. Note that apmd, the power management daemon used to manage CPU speed and low-battery suspend, is not enabled by default. The high-DPI screen required some adjustments in Xresources (I haven't dared try a multi-monitor, mixed DPI setup). NetBSD seemed okay to but I've only used it a little bit. It actually set up X pretty well for the screen using some built in script with heuristics to determine font size from the screen metrics.
groundzeros2015 5mo ago
Power management, webcam, trackpad, accessories, etc tend not to be a good fit for niche BSD and Linux. Stick to desktop or server.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- cenamus 5mo ago
  Trackpad? I've had OpenBSD on ~6 laptops, old and new, but the trackpad always worked fine
  - groundzeros2015 5mo ago
    Do you disagree with my comment? Or just about trackpad?
- gizzlon 5mo ago

nubg 5mo ago

ang benchmarks against state of the art?

binkHN 5mo ago
It depends. You can expect a 5 to 15% performance hit depending on the task. In OpenBSD, security comes first and performance comes second.

kriro 5mo ago

I used it a bit, had it installed for a while on a G4 PowerBook (must have been early-ish 2000s). I like the no-nonsense attitude towards blobs, security focus. Overall the experience was very good. The bit of code I read was also written nicely. I'll always endorse it and should really install it somewhere again in the near future. This is also the 60th release. Congrats team.

unethical_ban 5mo ago

Neat that they're working on Intel's p/e/l core support. I was just comparing Linux and windows support history the other day.

sgt 5mo ago

Direct link to the song so you can play in the browser: https://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/songs/song79.ogg https://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/songs/song79.ogg

brynet 5mo ago

OpenBSD 7.9 release artwork by Lyra Henderson https://www.openbsd.org/images/PinkPuffy.png https://www.openbsd.org/images/PinkPuffy.png https://www.openbsd.org/images/puffy79.gif https://www.openbsd.org/images/puffy79.gif Release song is "Diamond in the Rough" - Composed & produced by Bob Kitella. https://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#79 https://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#79 Apparel (t-shirts, so far): https://openbsdstore.com/ https://openbsdstore.com/

nidayewo 5mo ago
Interesting to see OpenBSD continuing to gain hardware support. I've been running it on a small home server for DNS/DHCP and the stability is remarkable. The man years of auditing really show.
- JCattheATM 5mo ago
  Pretty much any OS would be just as stable if it's just serving DNS/DHCP.
  - snvzz 5mo ago
    As someone who has run DNS and DHCP servers... unfortunately, no. Shit happens, and choices still do matter. Even if it feels it should be simple, Linux has a way. My experience has been that Openbsd is rock solid, so are its implementations of the relevant server daemons.
    - JCattheATM 5mo ago
      > Even if it feels it should be simple, Linux has a way. As someone who has run DNS and DHCP servers for over 30 years and continues to do so, this just feels like confirmation bias based on your personal anecdotes. If there's an issue, it's likely due to messy over-complicated distros. Alpine is no less solid than OpenBSD.
    - klooney 5mo ago
      Nah, whenever I'm involved in a cloud cost audit, I routinely find boring unfashionable Ubuntu and RHEL servers someone forgot about with 5 year uptimes.

binkHN 5mo ago

While I daily Linux on my workstation, OpenBSD is my favorite OS, by far, and I use it wherever it makes sense for me.

sunshine-o 5mo ago

I would really love to adopt OpenBSD but the one thing I can't deal with is the absence of journalized filesystem. Just the idea not to be able to recover after a power cut and work is hard to accept to be honest. I have been recently considering running it on a minimal Alpine ZFS host but I am not sure how much I can optimize the display experience since I do not think OpenBSD support QXL/SPICE. I would be curious if someone found a way...

skydhash 5mo ago
fsck is good. I have to hard reset my laptop a few times and I didn’t have corruption. Maybe a server has a different risk profile, but journalized systems are not file backup, which is what you should focus on.
noident 5mo ago
Once you have workloads that can't tolerate a power cut + running fsck for a potentially long time, a battery backup becomes an excellent investment. I bought a UPS on eBay for cheap and my home server hasn't gone down since.

brynet 5mo ago

Announcement mail: https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-announce&m=177919671915512&w=2 https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-announce&m=177919671915512&w=2

Dyympps 5mo ago

i use it and its secure

efxhoy 5mo ago

> Enabled IPv6 autoconf (SLAAC) by default. Sweet! I’m just about to replace pfsense with openbsd on my router. Smoothly setting up ipv6 is a bit of a headscratcher atm, mainly because i’ve never had to understand it before.

binkHN 5mo ago
I recently updated an older OpenBSD router and firewall and the amount of native IPv6 support right out of the box makes this an unbelievable breeze.
- efxhoy 5mo ago
  Nice. Would you mind explaining your current config?

Tepix 5mo ago

I wonder why they didn‘t spend 20 minutes to make that web page work better with smartphones.

thesuitonym 5mo ago
Works fine on my phone. Maybe it's you.
- Tepix 5mo ago
  On my phone there is text to the right of the image, forcing horizontal scrolling
  - thesuitonym 5mo ago
    Oh god, the horror!
  - hulitu 4mo ago
    Google and Apple are working, since 20 years, to implement scrollbars in their mobile OSs. I heard they will release soon. /s

accrual 5mo ago

Congrats on another successful release, OpenBSD team! Happy user since the 4.x days.

fmajid 5mo ago

They've made major progress on the WiFi front in this release, finally getting experimental WiFi 6 support.

upofadown 5mo ago

The big news for some of us is that Exim has been dropped from ports. Here is a good article about transitioning from Exim to OpenSMTPD: https://nxdomain.no/~peter/time_for_opensmtpd.html https://nxdomain.no/~peter/time_for_opensmtpd.html I tried using OpenSMTPD a long time ago, shortly after it came out, but things were not stable enough. I guess it is time to give it another go...

binkHN 5mo ago
I really like OpenSMTPD; no nonsense and configuration feels rather modern compared to the legacy stuff that's out there.
daneel_w 5mo ago
I'm happy with it. Been running OpenSMTPd for many years at this point, on both OpenBSD and Linux, and I have no complaints.
- SoftTalker 5mo ago
  I've also started using OpenSMTPD on linux machines when I need a simple MTA (which is to say, in almost all cases).
somat 5mo ago
Surprised exim was dropped from ports. It is not like it was ever in base. I guess the maintainer did not want to anymore.
- JdeBP 5mo ago
  We don't have to guess. There are several mailing list discussions: https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-ports&m=177625153728067 https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-ports&m=177625153728067
paulnpace 5mo ago
OpenSMTPD was substantially rewritten in 6.4 (2018). It is the best SMTP server for the majority of use cases. Unfortunately, the portable version has been weakly supported, so it's usually only OpenBSD users than learn how great it is.

blackhaz 5mo ago

Sorry for the off-topic, but I wish our FreeBSD camp could roll back a little from this faux-corporate glass ball without soul and a font from the early 90s spaceship toy box, to Beastie and a stylish serif. What I was trying to say - I'm in envy. OpenBSD artwork is absolutely amazing!

somat 5mo ago

Release Engineering. Noun. See Also OpenBSD OpenBSD does a lot of things well, definitely punches above their weight. One underrated feature is their approach to releasing. No "When it's done" here. Like clockwork twice a year, they slow down, clean the shop, get their experiments in order and cook a release, a stable point in time. More projects could learn a thing or two from this.

binkHN 5mo ago
Agreed. I also like that code doesn't get committed without a quality man page.

NoSalt 5mo ago

Hey ... I had no idea OpenBSD had an official song. I think all distros (Unix and Linux) need an official song.

binkHN 5mo ago
Agree. It's obvious some people are still having fun making operating systems!
- NoSalt 5mo ago
  I suppose that, ultimately, they all fall under the Free Software Song https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Song https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Song

rsync 5mo ago

Do we know if openbsd is one of the blessed 50 glasswing partners?

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

jmclnx 5mo ago

Time for an upgrade :)

jmclnx 5mo ago
Cannot edit, again the easiest upgrade of an OS, I did kitchen chores during the upgrade. The network was a bit slow, but got my work done during the upgrade :)

somat 5mo ago

"Introduced a mechanism to manage CPU cores with different speeds in the scheduler. The sysctl(8) variable "hw.blockcpu" takes a sequence of 4 letters: S (for SMT), P (regular performance CPU), E (efficient CPU, generally 80% to 50% as fast), and L (lethargic CPU) which are even slower. Set this to select CPUs to kick out of the scheduler (SL by default). Currently works on amd64 and arm64." I have to admit I am not entirely convinced about the merit of having slow cores on the cpu at all(big/little architecture). You don't want your tasks to be scheduled on them. And even for background tasks shouldn't it be better to have them complete faster for less power? To say nothing about what if they have different features. what happens when a process that wants to use cpu feature X(avx512?) gets scheduled on a cpu without X? Openbsd took the quick and dirty shotgun approach here in disabling the slow cores. But is there even a good heuristic for scheduling jobs on them? The only thing I can think of is some sort complicated mechanism of putting manual tags in the executable or thread. A "this process is suitable for slow cores" sort of thing. I was reading about this on on the lists, apparently a naive scheduler puts a process wherever and some new big/little systems have very slow little cores. This really hit recompiling code hard.

creatonez 5mo ago
> And even for background tasks shouldn't it be better to have them complete faster for less power Race to idle is only clearly beneficial for tasks that have a clear start and end. If a background task is sustained, responds to unpredictable events, or does small amounts of work and wakes frequently, the CPU's boost logic won't solve your energy usage problem. > To say nothing about what if they have different features. what happens when a process that wants to use cpu feature X(avx512?) gets scheduled on a cpu without X This idea has been proposed in the past, but isn't actually used on x86-64 or ARM. E-cores have the same instruction set as P-cores, so there's no risk of running into an invalid CPU instruction. Truly heterogeneous instruction sets may come back in the future, though. So be on your toes.

hmsp 5mo ago

I use openbsd as my server via openbsd.amsterdam - so much easier to maintain than a linux server for my personal sites.

kadirbg 5mo ago

[flagged]

tylerius 5mo ago

Congratulations for another amazing release! This one even comes with a song :) I'm using it as a daily driver since Debian adopted systemd and it works great. I use it wherever possible: home router, laptops, obsda.ms vm, workstation, thin clients, etc. With every release OpenBSD becomes better. Fully recommended to take advantage of old hardware too, like a fanless thin client bought for cheap from surplus. I really love the no-nonsense approach I can't find elsewhere.