The most compact, minimalist general purpose OS out there by far. Tiny memory footprint and loaded with network services built-in.
Linux has become so bloated its users can't in good conscience make fun of Microsoft anymore, they are worse.
Debian refuses to install with less than 512MB RAM, the text only installer will choke with less than that, it's pathetic. That's a console-only install, no GUI.
>Linux has become so bloated its users can't in good conscience make fun of Microsoft anymore, they are worse.
Please show me where Linux comes pre installed with ads, ai and other 3rd party adware and uses a start menu written in react that makes your CPU fans spin up when you press it a couple time
There is a enormous difference between bloat for the sake of feature or profit maximizing. If you think gnome and systemd are bloat then simply don't use them.
Which systems are limited to 512MB RAM today? Seems more like a case for a museeum. As such, use them with OSes from that epoch. Or upgrade, even if it seems wasteful.
I'm surprised seeing improvements in Suspend/Hibernate support.
I've used OpenBSD on laptops before and it was _fine_. I thought they primarily target servers. This feels like laptop specific improvements. Perhaps to the benefits only to those developing OpenBSD.
I'm impressed that they still maintain PA-RISC support even though HP discontinued that architecture in 2008.
They maintain all these architectures in such a small, consolidated codebase with such minimal (if any) bloat.
Their built-in httpd is far and away the best experience I ever had setting up a static file server for my local network, and I can't think of many times where I would ever need anything I couldn't do with the built-in FastCGI support.
I'm also pleasantly surprised by how well Chicago95 (a Windows 95-style UI based on xfce) works on OpenBSD, even though the author never intended to run it on anything but xubuntu. I wouldn't recommend trying that unless you're willing to roll up your sleeves, but the payoff definitely justifies the elbow grease if you like that look and feel better than xenodm, XFCE, or GNOME.
SEV and CC in general looks interesting seeing the slides. I hadn't heard of it yet.
Someone more knowledgeable than me will say if these encrypted VMs are also protected from bugged modules within the SoC or on the bus besides being protected from the hypervisor.
It also seems that they are adding inter-core features but I don't know whether they are related to removing locks within the kernel, embedded applications, or if they are moving to micro-kernel internally.
When I was in the college in the early 2000s, I had a friend who ran OpenBSD. He always sang its praises, mostly because it was the most secure operating system.
I tried a bunch of Linux Distributions and FreeBSD before mostly settling on MacOS, but never actually got around to running it.
Glad to see OpenBSD is still being actively developed.
I'm a long-time Linux user, but have always been drawn to OpenBSD, in large part due to the team's philosophy on software. I wish I had the willpower to switch to it as my main OS, but unfortunately, my workflow is too dependent on popular software and cutting-edge hardware, which historically don't work too well on OpenBSD. I don't blame the team for it—in fact I applaud their unwavering commitment to their values. It's what makes the system great, after all.
Regardless, I'm grateful that everyone can still benefit from the great set of tools that were started, and most still maintained, in the OpenBSD project. OpenSSH, PF, tmux, etc. They're a beacon of light in the software world.
What truly suprises me about BSDs is their simplicity and low footprint, OpenBSD being gold standard.
I've been playing with `byve` the last two weeks (I highly recommend vermaden's blog for anyone interested in BSDs and obviously the handbooks of each project) and I'm seriously thinking not doing a dual boot Linux install again. On my old x230 (which is running FreeBSD) I will be installing OpenBSD just to become more familiar with it.
I still don't get why just after installing Debian `top` shows me around 200 proceses. BSDs? Under 20. Other thing that pisses me off is for example how polluted (at least on Ubuntu) mountpoints are. Package management is also fragmented on Linux, while on BSDs is either a flavour of `pkg` or ports.
Perhaps I should still try more minimalistic Linux distributions, just don't know which are good candidates
Don't get me wrong, I love Linux and still recommend it heavily to non-tech people around me but when you taste a BSD is hard to go back.
The BSDs seem to have their own fragmentation as well. All targeting their own niches and somewhat overlapping work. For example or ZFS or virtualization technologies that aren’t cross-pollinated easily.
Like, it’d be cool to have zfs on openbsd, etc. But you can’t easily mix and match.
At least on the linux side you can usually fit something into a different distro if you wanted without an insane level of effort.
What is the status on FS journaling/softupdates? I used to like openBSD but it kind of disappeared of my life once they removed support for softupdates a couple of years ago. I am not so fond of those fsck and lost data we used to have on an occasional basis after an unexpected hard shutdown due to a power cut in the 90's.
I currently run a PC Engines APU2 as my home firewall/router. Been doing so for years and I really like it, yet I am still an OpenBSD newb. When I ran a sysupgrade from 7.5 -> 7.6, I completely ran out of space on /usr and the upgrade utterly failed. Had to reinstall full system at that point. The issue is that my hard drive is very small and the auto format utility only allocates 1.8G to /usr. Right now, I currently have 1.5G out of 1.8G in use. On the OpenBSD mailing lists, a user asked a question that is virtually identical to the situation I am in – they are worried that if they do another sysupgrade, it will fail and they will need to reinstall. A potential solution was proposed here [0] but the process seems somewhat complex for an OpenBSD newb like me. Could anyone point me in the right direction to guides that would detail the process, which the person on the mailing list describes, that basically involves deleting /usr/obj and /usr/src and allocating that ‘saved space’ back to /usr? Thanks.
If you look further down the thread you'll see more suggestions, I think this one would be an easier option than deleting partitions and creating a new partition mounted as /usr, since it's more or less just a change to fstab of what mounts towards which partition.
Easier fix might be if you aren't using /usr/src (or /usr/opt) to move the contents of /usr/share/relink into /usr/src (make sure you move it, not copy, so that /usr/share/relink is empty), and then change the /usr/src mount point in /etc/fstab to /usr/share/relink. Reboot the machine and hopefully it works. If you ran out of space during the installation, you may have to repeat sysupgrade to reinstall the 7.8 sets to get all the object files where they belong.
I run OpenBSD on two old laptops at home, two virtual machines, and one old former SOHO router/firewall appliance. So far I've upgrade all but one laptop, and once again I am impressed how painless the process is these days. And how reliable. One laptop has been running OpenBSD since 6.8-ish, and it's never given me any problems.
35 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 63.1 ms ] threadhttps://www.openbsd.org/images/Terraodontidae.png
https://www.openbsd.org/images/puffy78.gif
https://www.openbsd.org/78.html
Linux has become so bloated its users can't in good conscience make fun of Microsoft anymore, they are worse.
Debian refuses to install with less than 512MB RAM, the text only installer will choke with less than that, it's pathetic. That's a console-only install, no GUI.
Please show me where Linux comes pre installed with ads, ai and other 3rd party adware and uses a start menu written in react that makes your CPU fans spin up when you press it a couple time
There is a enormous difference between bloat for the sake of feature or profit maximizing. If you think gnome and systemd are bloat then simply don't use them.
I've used OpenBSD on laptops before and it was _fine_. I thought they primarily target servers. This feels like laptop specific improvements. Perhaps to the benefits only to those developing OpenBSD.
They maintain all these architectures in such a small, consolidated codebase with such minimal (if any) bloat.
Their built-in httpd is far and away the best experience I ever had setting up a static file server for my local network, and I can't think of many times where I would ever need anything I couldn't do with the built-in FastCGI support.
I'm also pleasantly surprised by how well Chicago95 (a Windows 95-style UI based on xfce) works on OpenBSD, even though the author never intended to run it on anything but xubuntu. I wouldn't recommend trying that unless you're willing to roll up your sleeves, but the payoff definitely justifies the elbow grease if you like that look and feel better than xenodm, XFCE, or GNOME.
I wonder how useful this will be for the modest but still multicore systems used for firewalls.
It also seems that they are adding inter-core features but I don't know whether they are related to removing locks within the kernel, embedded applications, or if they are moving to micro-kernel internally.
I tried a bunch of Linux Distributions and FreeBSD before mostly settling on MacOS, but never actually got around to running it.
Glad to see OpenBSD is still being actively developed.
This should be a nice improvement for my firewalls, some testing on the cards today me thinks.
Regardless, I'm grateful that everyone can still benefit from the great set of tools that were started, and most still maintained, in the OpenBSD project. OpenSSH, PF, tmux, etc. They're a beacon of light in the software world.
I've been playing with `byve` the last two weeks (I highly recommend vermaden's blog for anyone interested in BSDs and obviously the handbooks of each project) and I'm seriously thinking not doing a dual boot Linux install again. On my old x230 (which is running FreeBSD) I will be installing OpenBSD just to become more familiar with it.
I still don't get why just after installing Debian `top` shows me around 200 proceses. BSDs? Under 20. Other thing that pisses me off is for example how polluted (at least on Ubuntu) mountpoints are. Package management is also fragmented on Linux, while on BSDs is either a flavour of `pkg` or ports.
Perhaps I should still try more minimalistic Linux distributions, just don't know which are good candidates
Don't get me wrong, I love Linux and still recommend it heavily to non-tech people around me but when you taste a BSD is hard to go back.
Like, it’d be cool to have zfs on openbsd, etc. But you can’t easily mix and match.
At least on the linux side you can usually fit something into a different distro if you wanted without an insane level of effort.
Are they any new FS supported nowadays?
Is this OpenBSD on Apple silicon?
I still have a preference for OpenBSD.
* https://www.openbsd.org/78.html
https://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade78.html
It is even easier then last time, no manual file removal.
Easy as pie, maybe I should bake a pie during the upgrade :)
[0] https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=175952911527704&w=2
https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=175957920514820&w=2
Thank you to everyone who made this possible!