7 ms·

Signed up to agree. Canned 6 Ubuntu machines (servers) and replaced with OpenBSD 5.3 recently. So much goodness ships with openbsd it's unreal. Bar Theo's shar

by csmuk 13y ago

Signed up to agree. Canned 6 Ubuntu machines (servers) and replaced with OpenBSD 5.3 recently. So much goodness ships with openbsd it's unreal. Bar Theo's sharp tongue (which is usually spot on), you get pf, opensmtpd (so much cleaner than postfix), nginx in base, miles better manual pages than Linux, no horrid gnu info, small and simple base system, absolutely no surprises, no bloated crap like dbus/upstart, tmux in base and what I can only describe as a warm fuzzy "why the hell isn't everything like this" feeling. Also, it's just about the only thing I've found that can work adequately entirely offline without having to use google to fix obscure problems and decypher documentation. I've got a bootable USB stick that contains the base packages, entire FAQ (main documentation source outside manpages), all normal binary packages I use, WiFi firmware and its less than 2Gb. Thanks as well.

pit 13y ago
Agreed, the base install gives you a system that feels both minimal and complete at the same time. Plus, every release includes a song: http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#54 http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#54
deleted 13y ago
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deleted 13y ago
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ape4 13y ago
Yeah, what is the point of gnu info?
- philsnow 13y ago
  hypertext man pages ? what is it that people don't like about them ?
  - ape4 13y ago
    Isn't there some way to get hypertext into man pages? Eg extend nroff. Then you don't have to have a parallel system.
    - 4ad 13y ago
      nroff isn't the problem, the pager is. I view manual pages in acme and they become very hypertexty. It's not perfect, as they weren't written with that in mind, but it's damn good.
    - clarry 13y ago
      You can use w3mman (it installs with the w3m package on OBSD) and you'll be able to follow manual xrefs. Html output with links can also be generated, see the afterbook man page linked above for an example.
- mhurron 13y ago
  NIH
- teddyh 13y ago
  From https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/GNU-Manuals.html https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/GNU-Manuals.htm... The preferred document format for the GNU system is the Texinfo formatting language. Every GNU package should (ideally) have documentation in Texinfo both for reference and for learners. Texinfo makes it possible to produce a good quality formatted book, using TeX, and to generate an Info file. It is also possible to generate HTML output from Texinfo source. [...] Make sure your manual is clear to a reader who knows nothing about the topic and reads it straight through. This means covering basic topics at the beginning, and advanced topics only later. This also means defining every specialized term when it is first used. Programmers tend to carry over the structure of the program as the structure for its documentation. But this structure is not necessarily good for explaining how to use the program; it may be irrelevant and confusing for a user. Instead, the right way to structure documentation is according to the concepts and questions that a user will have in mind when reading it. This principle applies at every level, from the lowest (ordering sentences in a paragraph) to the highest (ordering of chapter topics within the manual). Sometimes this structure of ideas matches the structure of the implementation of the software being documented—but often they are different. An important part of learning to write good documentation is to learn to notice when you have unthinkingly structured the documentation like the implementation, stop yourself, and look for better alternatives. For example, each program in the GNU system probably ought to be documented in one manual; but this does not mean each program should have its own manual. That would be following the structure of the implementation, rather than the structure that helps the user understand. Instead, each manual should cover a coherent topic. For example, instead of a manual for diff and a manual for diff3, we have one manual for “comparison of files” which covers both of those programs, as well as cmp. By documenting these programs together, we can make the whole subject clearer. The manual which discusses a program should certainly document all of the program’s command-line options and all of its commands. It should give examples of their use. But don’t organize the manual as a list of features. Instead, organize it logically, by subtopics. Address the questions that a user will ask when thinking about the job that the program does. Don’t just tell the reader what each feature can do—say what jobs it is good for, and show how to use it for those jobs. Explain what is recommended usage, and what kinds of usage users should avoid. In general, a GNU manual should serve both as tutorial and reference. It should be set up for convenient access to each topic through Info, and for reading straight through (appendixes aside). A GNU manual should give a good introduction to a beginner reading through from the start, and should also provide all the details that hackers want. The Bison manual (https://www.gnu.org/software/bison/manual/html_node/Concepts.html https://www.gnu.org/software/bison/manual/html_node/Concepts...) is a good example of this—please take a look at it to see what we mean. That is not as hard as it first sounds. Arrange each chapter as a logical breakdown of its topic, but order the sections, and write their text, so that reading the chapter straight through makes sense. Do likewise when structuring the book into chapters, and when structuring a section into paragraphs. The watchword is, at each point, address the most fundamental and important issue raised by the preceding text. If necessary, add extra chapters at the beginning of the manual which are purely tutorial and cover the basics of the subject. These provide the framework for a beginner to understand the rest of the manual. The Bison manual (https://www.gnu.org/software/bison/manual/html_node/Concepts.html https://www.gnu.org/software/bison/manual/html_node/Concepts...) provides a good example of how to do this. To serve as a reference, a manual should have an Index that lists all the functions, variables, options, and important concepts that are part of the program. One combined Index should do for a short manual, but sometimes for a complex package it is better to use multiple indices. The Texinfo manual includes advice on preparing good index entries, see Making Index Entries(https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/html_node/Index-Entries.html https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/html_nod...) in GNU Texinfo, and see Defining the Entries of an Index(https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/html_node/Indexing-Commands.html https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/html_nod...) in GNU Texinfo. Don’t use Unix man pages as a model for how to write GNU documentation; most of them are terse, badly structured, and give inadequate explanation of the underlying concepts. (There are, of course, some exceptions.) Also, Unix man pages use a particular format which is different from what we use in GNU manuals. [...]
- noselasd 13y ago
  install pinfo , and you'll be able to read all the wonderful documentation instead of fighting with the GNU info frontend.
pfortuny 13y ago
The doc is really unbeatable, I know nothing like it anywhere.
- dman 13y ago
  Are they much different than the freebsd docs?
  - itwontdie 13y ago
    From my experience FreeBSD documentation is often outdated and no longer applicable. In my opinion incorrect documentation is worse than having no information as it often causes more problems and frustration.
    - GalacticDomin8r 13y ago
      > From my experience FreeBSD documentation is often outdated and no longer applicable You were using an open source project and as such feedback is critical. Can you list the bug report you filed on the problems? > In my opinion incorrect documentation is worse than having no information as it often causes more problems and frustration. That is your opinion of course. IMO experience, having outdated docs is much better than having none at all.
DennisP 13y ago
Do you know how it does with high concurrent loads these days?
- csmuk 13y ago
  I've not done a direct comparison but it feels solid under load. IO bound processes seem to balance IO fairly i.e. no bad neighbour problem where one process will starve another and a fork bomb won't take out the system even though I managed to hit a loadavg of 80! It still was very responsive. Secondarily, I have a VM on BigV which seems to suffer less pauses and oddness than Ubuntu 12.04LTS did. Works nicely on UltraSparc machines (U30 and U60 tested) as well which is a bonus. I still find them superior to Intel even if they are power hungry and rather old now. Context switch time seems pretty low on Sparcs. Not sure if it uses hardware contexts or not though - haven't looked at the code.
- stock_toaster 13y ago
  I think PF in openbsd is still single core[1]. FreeBSD 10.x apparently has an SMP version of PF[2]. My feeling is still that if high performance is desired, FreeBSD is still preferred. For "normal" workloads though, I think OpenBSD would be a fine choice. I do like how "clean" an OpenBSD system feels. [1]: http://openbsd.7691.n7.nabble.com/Performance-limits-with-OpenBSD-ToE-offloading-Intel-ET2-cards-td228314.html http://openbsd.7691.n7.nabble.com/Performance-limits-with-Op... [2]: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-pf/2012-June/006643.html http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-pf/2012-June/0066...
microcolonel 13y ago
D-Bus is just a low-level socket protocol(which is, by the way, really quite light); there is nothing "bloated" about it.
- justincormack 13y ago
  Well, its going into the kernel as kdbus, which you could argue is bloated. Linux is much bigger than the BSDs, although it is modular and you can remove it, but the big distros use much of it so you can't if you use them...
  - microcolonel 13y ago
    A lot of things in linux are faster than in the various bsd kernels, some of this owing to having a few optional codepaths rather than just one. Also, kdbus basically means there is in fact /less/ code made necessary by using the dbus protocol, since you don't need the daemon anymore, it also means lower latency.

by csmuk 13y ago

pit 13y ago

Agreed, the base install gives you a system that feels both minimal and complete at the same time. Plus, every release includes a song: http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#54 http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#54

deleted 13y ago

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deleted 13y ago

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ape4 13y ago

Yeah, what is the point of gnu info?

philsnow 13y ago
hypertext man pages ? what is it that people don't like about them ?
- ape4 13y ago
  Isn't there some way to get hypertext into man pages? Eg extend nroff. Then you don't have to have a parallel system.
  - 4ad 13y ago
    nroff isn't the problem, the pager is. I view manual pages in acme and they become very hypertexty. It's not perfect, as they weren't written with that in mind, but it's damn good.
  - clarry 13y ago
    You can use w3mman (it installs with the w3m package on OBSD) and you'll be able to follow manual xrefs. Html output with links can also be generated, see the afterbook man page linked above for an example.
mhurron 13y ago
NIH
teddyh 13y ago
From https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/GNU-Manuals.html https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/GNU-Manuals.htm... The preferred document format for the GNU system is the Texinfo formatting language. Every GNU package should (ideally) have documentation in Texinfo both for reference and for learners. Texinfo makes it possible to produce a good quality formatted book, using TeX, and to generate an Info file. It is also possible to generate HTML output from Texinfo source. [...] Make sure your manual is clear to a reader who knows nothing about the topic and reads it straight through. This means covering basic topics at the beginning, and advanced topics only later. This also means defining every specialized term when it is first used. Programmers tend to carry over the structure of the program as the structure for its documentation. But this structure is not necessarily good for explaining how to use the program; it may be irrelevant and confusing for a user. Instead, the right way to structure documentation is according to the concepts and questions that a user will have in mind when reading it. This principle applies at every level, from the lowest (ordering sentences in a paragraph) to the highest (ordering of chapter topics within the manual). Sometimes this structure of ideas matches the structure of the implementation of the software being documented—but often they are different. An important part of learning to write good documentation is to learn to notice when you have unthinkingly structured the documentation like the implementation, stop yourself, and look for better alternatives. For example, each program in the GNU system probably ought to be documented in one manual; but this does not mean each program should have its own manual. That would be following the structure of the implementation, rather than the structure that helps the user understand. Instead, each manual should cover a coherent topic. For example, instead of a manual for diff and a manual for diff3, we have one manual for “comparison of files” which covers both of those programs, as well as cmp. By documenting these programs together, we can make the whole subject clearer. The manual which discusses a program should certainly document all of the program’s command-line options and all of its commands. It should give examples of their use. But don’t organize the manual as a list of features. Instead, organize it logically, by subtopics. Address the questions that a user will ask when thinking about the job that the program does. Don’t just tell the reader what each feature can do—say what jobs it is good for, and show how to use it for those jobs. Explain what is recommended usage, and what kinds of usage users should avoid. In general, a GNU manual should serve both as tutorial and reference. It should be set up for convenient access to each topic through Info, and for reading straight through (appendixes aside). A GNU manual should give a good introduction to a beginner reading through from the start, and should also provide all the details that hackers want. The Bison manual (https://www.gnu.org/software/bison/manual/html_node/Concepts.html https://www.gnu.org/software/bison/manual/html_node/Concepts...) is a good example of this—please take a look at it to see what we mean. That is not as hard as it first sounds. Arrange each chapter as a logical breakdown of its topic, but order the sections, and write their text, so that reading the chapter straight through makes sense. Do likewise when structuring the book into chapters, and when structuring a section into paragraphs. The watchword is, at each point, address the most fundamental and important issue raised by the preceding text. If necessary, add extra chapters at the beginning of the manual which are purely tutorial and cover the basics of the subject. These provide the framework for a beginner to understand the rest of the manual. The Bison manual (https://www.gnu.org/software/bison/manual/html_node/Concepts.html https://www.gnu.org/software/bison/manual/html_node/Concepts...) provides a good example of how to do this. To serve as a reference, a manual should have an Index that lists all the functions, variables, options, and important concepts that are part of the program. One combined Index should do for a short manual, but sometimes for a complex package it is better to use multiple indices. The Texinfo manual includes advice on preparing good index entries, see Making Index Entries(https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/html_node/Index-Entries.html https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/html_nod...) in GNU Texinfo, and see Defining the Entries of an Index(https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/html_node/Indexing-Commands.html https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/html_nod...) in GNU Texinfo. Don’t use Unix man pages as a model for how to write GNU documentation; most of them are terse, badly structured, and give inadequate explanation of the underlying concepts. (There are, of course, some exceptions.) Also, Unix man pages use a particular format which is different from what we use in GNU manuals. [...]
noselasd 13y ago
install pinfo , and you'll be able to read all the wonderful documentation instead of fighting with the GNU info frontend.

pfortuny 13y ago

The doc is really unbeatable, I know nothing like it anywhere.

dman 13y ago
Are they much different than the freebsd docs?
- itwontdie 13y ago
  From my experience FreeBSD documentation is often outdated and no longer applicable. In my opinion incorrect documentation is worse than having no information as it often causes more problems and frustration.
  - GalacticDomin8r 13y ago
    > From my experience FreeBSD documentation is often outdated and no longer applicable You were using an open source project and as such feedback is critical. Can you list the bug report you filed on the problems? > In my opinion incorrect documentation is worse than having no information as it often causes more problems and frustration. That is your opinion of course. IMO experience, having outdated docs is much better than having none at all.

DennisP 13y ago

Do you know how it does with high concurrent loads these days?

csmuk 13y ago
I've not done a direct comparison but it feels solid under load. IO bound processes seem to balance IO fairly i.e. no bad neighbour problem where one process will starve another and a fork bomb won't take out the system even though I managed to hit a loadavg of 80! It still was very responsive. Secondarily, I have a VM on BigV which seems to suffer less pauses and oddness than Ubuntu 12.04LTS did. Works nicely on UltraSparc machines (U30 and U60 tested) as well which is a bonus. I still find them superior to Intel even if they are power hungry and rather old now. Context switch time seems pretty low on Sparcs. Not sure if it uses hardware contexts or not though - haven't looked at the code.
stock_toaster 13y ago
I think PF in openbsd is still single core[1]. FreeBSD 10.x apparently has an SMP version of PF[2]. My feeling is still that if high performance is desired, FreeBSD is still preferred. For "normal" workloads though, I think OpenBSD would be a fine choice. I do like how "clean" an OpenBSD system feels. [1]: http://openbsd.7691.n7.nabble.com/Performance-limits-with-OpenBSD-ToE-offloading-Intel-ET2-cards-td228314.html http://openbsd.7691.n7.nabble.com/Performance-limits-with-Op... [2]: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-pf/2012-June/006643.html http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-pf/2012-June/0066...

microcolonel 13y ago

D-Bus is just a low-level socket protocol(which is, by the way, really quite light); there is nothing "bloated" about it.

justincormack 13y ago
Well, its going into the kernel as kdbus, which you could argue is bloated. Linux is much bigger than the BSDs, although it is modular and you can remove it, but the big distros use much of it so you can't if you use them...
- microcolonel 13y ago
  A lot of things in linux are faster than in the various bsd kernels, some of this owing to having a few optional codepaths rather than just one. Also, kdbus basically means there is in fact /less/ code made necessary by using the dbus protocol, since you don't need the daemon anymore, it also means lower latency.