7 ms·

I've occasionally used {Net|Free|Open}BSD over the past few years (in fact, I think my Jornada in the back of the closet still runs NetBSD). I kept sticking to

by weland 11y ago

I've occasionally used {Net|Free|Open}BSD over the past few years (in fact, I think my Jornada in the back of the closet still runs NetBSD). I kept sticking to Linux partly because I was using it at $work, partly because it was simple enough and I'm kindda lazy. But yeah: > I find BSD to be far simpler than linux distributions out there. The way OpenBSD handles WiFi configuration is a good example of this. Want to connect to a wifi network? ifconfig <interface> <ESSID> <passphrase>. If you need some other fancy flags for those 0.1% of hotspots in the world, you can do those, too (also through ifconfig) but it's that simple. In contrast, after everyone agreed that wpa_supplicant is probably what happened after Stalin's ethereal spirit had mad sex with Hitler's ethereal spirit and their ethereal baby was incarnated, what did we do to alleviate things in Linux land? Why, we wrote NetworkManager, of course! Conservatively, 90% of today's deployments of NetworkManager exist because no one can figure out how to set up wireless without it, and we put up with its crap because wicd is waiting for us at the other end. Better yet, this is all nicely documented in the manpage. If you search for "wireless" in ifconfig's manpage, you find out all you need to know. Just for fun, compare that to man networkmanager. > On FreeBSD 10.1, chromium crashing easily, settings doesn't work. Firefox just clogs up and stops working. No skype (CURRENT will be in a better position to since epoll support has been added). No Dropbox (as of now, we don't have inotify, and kqueue may not be able to handle it, don't quote me on that). I haven't had crashing things on OpenBSD, but yeah, a bunch of things don't work. Fortunately, they're things I don't use. If I ever need them -- OH THE HORROR AND THE BLASPHEMY -- I have a Windows laptop, which for all intents and purposes is by now about as closed and as hard to wrestle with as Fedora, but at least it doesn't hopelessly break every six months. There are Linux-only things that I sometimes need because at some point between 2003 and 2013, "portable" ended up meaning "we can probably work if you have bash in a non-standard location but that's about it" (eh, Yocto?) for which a cheap VPS is more than enough. When it breaks, I don't have to spend days trying to find out exactly what part of PolicyKit broke or where my devices are mounted this week -- I just wipe everything and reinstall.

anon3_ 11y ago
What are some things on OpenBSD that don't work for you? What sort of hardware are you running? What about Adobe Flash on OpenBSD?
- weland 11y ago
  > What are some things on OpenBSD that don't work for you? The sort of things that you mentioned -- Skype, Dropbox. I also can't use OpenBSD for PCB layout (Eagle doesn't run on it; don't know about Kicad, but I have very little experience with it), but I don't really mind, because I have access to a licensed installation of Altium at work. > What sort of hardware are you running? Nothing special. It's a fairly high horsepower i7 box with 16 GB of RAM. The only component that didn't play nice with OpenBSD was the nVidia graphics card. I just bought a reasonable ATI card and it works fine. > What about Adobe Flash on OpenBSD? I haven't used the browser plugin ever since youtube-dl came out, not even on systems where it's well-(ish)-supported. But if you need it in the browser, I think you're pretty much out of luck.
bad_user 11y ago
While I don't disagree that wpa_supplicant has been spawned from hell, I find it strange that the existence and popularity of NetworkManager is given as a clue for why {Net|Free|Open}BSD is better. You know, connecting to a WPA protected Wifi network is not the only problem users have. For example, another one would be connecting to a VPN, a task that NetworkManager greatly simplifies, assuming that such integration is available of course (e.g. if you think connecting to a Wifi network is problematic, try connecting to a L2TP over IPSec VPN). There's also the issue that the simplicity exposed in your example is a little misleading. Will the system persist that command and re-execute it on boot? Will it remember my previously used Wifi networks and connect automatically should I want that? How can I view the available Wifi networks in range? Being able to connect to a Wifi network using a simple ifconfig command is great, but the notion that your 80% of use-cases is the same as everybody else's 80% is misguided at best. > If I ever need them -- OH THE HORROR AND THE BLASPHEMY -- I have a Windows laptop, which for all intents and purposes is by now about as closed and as hard to wrestle with as Fedora And therein lies my problem with your entire comment. It's not that I disagree with your usage patterns, but I disagree with your assertions in light of these usage patterns. So you're saying that xBSD is simpler / better, yet you can't use it on your laptop, as it lacks things you need. Well, no shit.
- weland 11y ago
  > For example, another one would be connecting to a VPN, a task that NetworkManager greatly simplifies, assuming that such integration is available of course (e.g. if you think connecting to a Wifi network is problematic, try connecting to a L2TP over IPSec VPN). That's because there is equally no uniform and simple way to connect to use those, either. The problem is that the "simplification" that NetworkManager provides is illusory. Yes, it provides an interface that is easier to access, and all the complexity is moved in the back, where it's handled by NetworkManager. Unfortunately, the mechanisms through which it does that are fiercely complicated, too. I've had NetworkManager break on me countless times (I worked for a company that developed networking equipment for a while, so I've interacted with NM a lot), for a lot of silly things -- making me end up with slightly incorrect configurations or reapplying settings at weird times for no apparent reasons. The end result is anything but simplified: not only do I have to deal with the inherent complexity of a quirky VPN connection -- now I also have to understand how NetworkManager reasons about it and figure out where it's wrong. I also think it's misguided to have a single tool handle things so disparate like VPN and WiFi. It's not like you're ever going to be able to expose those through a unified interface -- NetworkManager's own D-Bus-based API being a prime example of that. > There's also the issue that the simplicity exposed in your example is a little misleading. Will the system persist that command and re-execute it on boot? Will it remember my previously used Wifi networks and connect automatically should I want that? How can I view the available Wifi networks in range? Being able to connect to a Wifi network using a simple ifconfig command is great, but the notion that your 80% of use-cases is the same as everybody else's 80% is misguided at best. You scan for networks with ifconfig <interface> scan. The system will not persist commands (arguably, a good decision) but persisting those settings is pretty easy -- you just add the same parameters you pass to ifconfig in /etc/hostname.<interface name>. (The same parameters as in argv[1:n]). The only thing it won't do out of the box is automatically connect to previously used wifi networks. I suspect none of the OpenBSD developers want that. I only needed a feature like that once, a few months ago when I moved to a new apartment and had no Internet connection of my own (cable company is shit) so I had to snoop from the free wireless of nearby cafes. The fact that the interface to ifconfig is so simple and uniform meant that the whole thing was a ten-line shell script to scan for, and connect to previously known networks, and a shell alias to save the current network to the list of known networks. There's an even easier way, using virtual networks, but I didn't know about it at the time. > So you're saying that xBSD is simpler / better, yet you can't use it on your laptop, as it lacks things you need. Well, no shit. I have a Windows laptop, which I also had when I ran Linux. My day-to-day laptop runs OpenBSD.
icebraining 11y ago
$ vim /etc/network/interfaces auto wlan0 iface wlan0 inet dhcp wpa-ssid <myssid> wpa-psk <passphrase hash> You can also have multiple virtual interfaces configured in the same file as above, and then just do "ifup wlan0=virtualif" to switch. Much ado about nothing.
- joosters 11y ago
  Absolutely. It's also more secure this way, since you aren't putting the passphrase in a readable-by-any-user command line argument.
  - hhw 11y ago
    FYI, it's trivial to hide processes from other users on BSD with a sysctl variable.
    - icebraining 11y ago
      I think that's just in FreeBSD, not in others like OpenBSD. Linux has copied that feature a few years ago, called it "hidepid".
Hello71 11y ago
actually, wpa_supplicant isn't that hard to configure as long as you only use the GUI. just scan for APs, double-click on the network, and type in the PSK. no documentation-reading required.
- weland 11y ago
  But I don't want to (just) use it through a GUI, I want to be able to script it. What am I, a connection-making machine :)?
- aaronem 11y ago
  > wpa_supplicant isn't that hard to configure as long as you only use the GUI Oh, my mistake! I thought I was using a Unix.
- yellowapple 11y ago
  I use wpa_supplicant directly on my desktop (running Slackware64 14.1) and have no problem doing so via the command-line and conf file editing alone, though in my case it required adding a snippet to /etc/rc.d/rc.local to get it to connect to my wireless network on boot.
agumonkey 11y ago
Seriously, we need Prolog infused user interfaces and components. Logic assistant to compose subsystem. Most user facing things are crippled (good thing sometimes) views on it, fuzzy matching, completions etc etc
peatmoss 11y ago
This has long been my experience with BSD (back before jumping to OSX for some years, and now back to OpenBSD). There is a willingness to update core pieces of functionality where needed to reduce inessential redundancy. Another example: console / keyboard config. In OpenBSD, I set this up through wscons. If set here, my keyboard settings get propagated in a robust, non duplicative way to X11. Contrast this with Linux, where you need to set up your keyboard config in at least two places to have, say, Dvorak in X11 and the console. It's a minor thing, and one that Linux distros "solve" during installation by setting up the relevant configs. But it's more elegant in OpenBSD. Maybe that's because OpenBSD writes documentation that answers questions like, "How do a change my keyboard layout?" In OpenBSD, it's a simple answer. If the situation were the same as Linux, the answer would be longer. Maybe seeing that inessential redundancy in print is what spurs the project to action.
- the_why_of_y 11y ago
  This is indeed annoying; fortunately David Herrmann is working on a new user-space terminal emulator for Linux called KMSCON which uses the same keyboard input code as XOrg (libxkbcommon) so there is hope for improvement. https://dvdhrm.wordpress.com/2012/12/10/kmscon-introduction/ https://dvdhrm.wordpress.com/2012/12/10/kmscon-introduction/
  - JdeBP 11y ago
    "is", "new", and "KMSCON" are all erroneous there. (-:
    - the_why_of_y 11y ago
      Ok, looking at the recent activity (or the lack thereof) in the github repo lets me be somewhat less enthused... but what's your objection to "KMSCON"?
      - JdeBP 11y ago
        And "your" and "objection" are erroneous, there. (-: Hint: ce7b9f50c3fadbad22feeb28e4429ad9bee02bcc
curlypaul924 11y ago
> The way OpenBSD handles WiFi configuration is a good example of this. Want to connect to a wifi network? ifconfig <interface> <ESSID> <passphrase>. If you need some other fancy flags for those 0.1% of hotspots in the world, you can do those, too (also through ifconfig) but it's that simple. Hmm, I'm surprised OpenBSD supports this, since it will cause the passphrase to get stored in your shell history in plaintext.
- yellowapple 11y ago
  I generally run it from a script that then prompts for the passphrase. I'm working on a little tool of my own to work as kind of a minimalist OpenBSD-specific network manager that'll store a list of encrypted passphrases and let me connect to a network without having to enter the passphrase and SSID each time.

by weland 11y ago

anon3_ 11y ago

What are some things on OpenBSD that don't work for you? What sort of hardware are you running? What about Adobe Flash on OpenBSD?

weland 11y ago
> What are some things on OpenBSD that don't work for you? The sort of things that you mentioned -- Skype, Dropbox. I also can't use OpenBSD for PCB layout (Eagle doesn't run on it; don't know about Kicad, but I have very little experience with it), but I don't really mind, because I have access to a licensed installation of Altium at work. > What sort of hardware are you running? Nothing special. It's a fairly high horsepower i7 box with 16 GB of RAM. The only component that didn't play nice with OpenBSD was the nVidia graphics card. I just bought a reasonable ATI card and it works fine. > What about Adobe Flash on OpenBSD? I haven't used the browser plugin ever since youtube-dl came out, not even on systems where it's well-(ish)-supported. But if you need it in the browser, I think you're pretty much out of luck.

bad_user 11y ago

While I don't disagree that wpa_supplicant has been spawned from hell, I find it strange that the existence and popularity of NetworkManager is given as a clue for why {Net|Free|Open}BSD is better. You know, connecting to a WPA protected Wifi network is not the only problem users have. For example, another one would be connecting to a VPN, a task that NetworkManager greatly simplifies, assuming that such integration is available of course (e.g. if you think connecting to a Wifi network is problematic, try connecting to a L2TP over IPSec VPN). There's also the issue that the simplicity exposed in your example is a little misleading. Will the system persist that command and re-execute it on boot? Will it remember my previously used Wifi networks and connect automatically should I want that? How can I view the available Wifi networks in range? Being able to connect to a Wifi network using a simple ifconfig command is great, but the notion that your 80% of use-cases is the same as everybody else's 80% is misguided at best. > If I ever need them -- OH THE HORROR AND THE BLASPHEMY -- I have a Windows laptop, which for all intents and purposes is by now about as closed and as hard to wrestle with as Fedora And therein lies my problem with your entire comment. It's not that I disagree with your usage patterns, but I disagree with your assertions in light of these usage patterns. So you're saying that xBSD is simpler / better, yet you can't use it on your laptop, as it lacks things you need. Well, no shit.

weland 11y ago
> For example, another one would be connecting to a VPN, a task that NetworkManager greatly simplifies, assuming that such integration is available of course (e.g. if you think connecting to a Wifi network is problematic, try connecting to a L2TP over IPSec VPN). That's because there is equally no uniform and simple way to connect to use those, either. The problem is that the "simplification" that NetworkManager provides is illusory. Yes, it provides an interface that is easier to access, and all the complexity is moved in the back, where it's handled by NetworkManager. Unfortunately, the mechanisms through which it does that are fiercely complicated, too. I've had NetworkManager break on me countless times (I worked for a company that developed networking equipment for a while, so I've interacted with NM a lot), for a lot of silly things -- making me end up with slightly incorrect configurations or reapplying settings at weird times for no apparent reasons. The end result is anything but simplified: not only do I have to deal with the inherent complexity of a quirky VPN connection -- now I also have to understand how NetworkManager reasons about it and figure out where it's wrong. I also think it's misguided to have a single tool handle things so disparate like VPN and WiFi. It's not like you're ever going to be able to expose those through a unified interface -- NetworkManager's own D-Bus-based API being a prime example of that. > There's also the issue that the simplicity exposed in your example is a little misleading. Will the system persist that command and re-execute it on boot? Will it remember my previously used Wifi networks and connect automatically should I want that? How can I view the available Wifi networks in range? Being able to connect to a Wifi network using a simple ifconfig command is great, but the notion that your 80% of use-cases is the same as everybody else's 80% is misguided at best. You scan for networks with ifconfig <interface> scan. The system will not persist commands (arguably, a good decision) but persisting those settings is pretty easy -- you just add the same parameters you pass to ifconfig in /etc/hostname.<interface name>. (The same parameters as in argv[1:n]). The only thing it won't do out of the box is automatically connect to previously used wifi networks. I suspect none of the OpenBSD developers want that. I only needed a feature like that once, a few months ago when I moved to a new apartment and had no Internet connection of my own (cable company is shit) so I had to snoop from the free wireless of nearby cafes. The fact that the interface to ifconfig is so simple and uniform meant that the whole thing was a ten-line shell script to scan for, and connect to previously known networks, and a shell alias to save the current network to the list of known networks. There's an even easier way, using virtual networks, but I didn't know about it at the time. > So you're saying that xBSD is simpler / better, yet you can't use it on your laptop, as it lacks things you need. Well, no shit. I have a Windows laptop, which I also had when I ran Linux. My day-to-day laptop runs OpenBSD.

icebraining 11y ago

$ vim /etc/network/interfaces auto wlan0 iface wlan0 inet dhcp wpa-ssid <myssid> wpa-psk <passphrase hash> You can also have multiple virtual interfaces configured in the same file as above, and then just do "ifup wlan0=virtualif" to switch. Much ado about nothing.

joosters 11y ago
Absolutely. It's also more secure this way, since you aren't putting the passphrase in a readable-by-any-user command line argument.
- hhw 11y ago
  FYI, it's trivial to hide processes from other users on BSD with a sysctl variable.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    I think that's just in FreeBSD, not in others like OpenBSD. Linux has copied that feature a few years ago, called it "hidepid".

Hello71 11y ago

actually, wpa_supplicant isn't that hard to configure as long as you only use the GUI. just scan for APs, double-click on the network, and type in the PSK. no documentation-reading required.

weland 11y ago
But I don't want to (just) use it through a GUI, I want to be able to script it. What am I, a connection-making machine :)?
aaronem 11y ago
> wpa_supplicant isn't that hard to configure as long as you only use the GUI Oh, my mistake! I thought I was using a Unix.
yellowapple 11y ago
I use wpa_supplicant directly on my desktop (running Slackware64 14.1) and have no problem doing so via the command-line and conf file editing alone, though in my case it required adding a snippet to /etc/rc.d/rc.local to get it to connect to my wireless network on boot.

agumonkey 11y ago

Seriously, we need Prolog infused user interfaces and components. Logic assistant to compose subsystem. Most user facing things are crippled (good thing sometimes) views on it, fuzzy matching, completions etc etc

peatmoss 11y ago

This has long been my experience with BSD (back before jumping to OSX for some years, and now back to OpenBSD). There is a willingness to update core pieces of functionality where needed to reduce inessential redundancy. Another example: console / keyboard config. In OpenBSD, I set this up through wscons. If set here, my keyboard settings get propagated in a robust, non duplicative way to X11. Contrast this with Linux, where you need to set up your keyboard config in at least two places to have, say, Dvorak in X11 and the console. It's a minor thing, and one that Linux distros "solve" during installation by setting up the relevant configs. But it's more elegant in OpenBSD. Maybe that's because OpenBSD writes documentation that answers questions like, "How do a change my keyboard layout?" In OpenBSD, it's a simple answer. If the situation were the same as Linux, the answer would be longer. Maybe seeing that inessential redundancy in print is what spurs the project to action.

the_why_of_y 11y ago
This is indeed annoying; fortunately David Herrmann is working on a new user-space terminal emulator for Linux called KMSCON which uses the same keyboard input code as XOrg (libxkbcommon) so there is hope for improvement. https://dvdhrm.wordpress.com/2012/12/10/kmscon-introduction/ https://dvdhrm.wordpress.com/2012/12/10/kmscon-introduction/
- JdeBP 11y ago
  "is", "new", and "KMSCON" are all erroneous there. (-:
  - the_why_of_y 11y ago
    Ok, looking at the recent activity (or the lack thereof) in the github repo lets me be somewhat less enthused... but what's your objection to "KMSCON"?
    - JdeBP 11y ago
      And "your" and "objection" are erroneous, there. (-: Hint: ce7b9f50c3fadbad22feeb28e4429ad9bee02bcc

curlypaul924 11y ago

> The way OpenBSD handles WiFi configuration is a good example of this. Want to connect to a wifi network? ifconfig <interface> <ESSID> <passphrase>. If you need some other fancy flags for those 0.1% of hotspots in the world, you can do those, too (also through ifconfig) but it's that simple. Hmm, I'm surprised OpenBSD supports this, since it will cause the passphrase to get stored in your shell history in plaintext.

yellowapple 11y ago
I generally run it from a script that then prompts for the passphrase. I'm working on a little tool of my own to work as kind of a minimalist OpenBSD-specific network manager that'll store a list of encrypted passphrases and let me connect to a network without having to enter the passphrase and SSID each time.