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amatecha
Happy to see this! I run OpenBSD/arm64 on a Pi 4 and am posting this from OpenBSD on an old ThinkPad. Great OS all around, and it's always nice to see the current version running on both old stuff (this laptop from 2012) and cutting-edge stuff simultaneously :)
spockz
What are the benefits of running (open)BSD on a workstation? Especially a laptop?
Edit: this could of course also be used for running a server on a M1 mini!
messe
Honestly, the biggest advantage OpenBSD has always had for me was its internal consistency and excellent documentation. If you’re a heavy command line user, you can usually figure out either what command you need to run or what you need to look up in the man pages. It’s also great for C development, as it has far better docs for libc than glibc does.
If you have supported hardware (and that’s a bit if and caveat; smaller than it used to be, but still quite large), then everything just works. Even little things like the built-in screen brightness buttons, just work regardless of if you’re in x11 or a terminal (same with volume buttons), because it’s designed as a complete system rather than a distribution of otherwise unrelated open source projects.
paulmd
Ya, same for FreeBSD. You can literally operate a system with nothing but the handbook in most cases - the documentation is much more systematic and developed than Linux. What you get isn't just a "how to use a GUI" tutorial or manpages, it's a comprehensive look at how you do routine sysadmin tasks. The kind of thing that Linux pushes off to web tutorials or stackoverflow.
Compare:
https://help.ubuntu.com/lts/ubuntu-help/index.html
https://docs.freebsd.org/doc/13.0-RELEASE/usr/local/share/do...
It of course helps that nothing ever changes in BSD-land. After 50 years of development, they are largely feature-complete and are not going to be doing massive changes just for the sake of massive changes. As such they get much lower levels of "documentation rot", things rust a lot slower when nothing ever changes and as such it's a lot easier (and more productive) to build comprehensive documentation.
But the amount of churn in linux is insane, Ubuntu has used three completely different init systems in the 15 years since I started using Linux seriously. For java development, I routinely see and use StackOverflow answers from like 2009 that are completely valid still, and yet answers from that era are completely useless for Linux, which has invalidated that acquired-knowledge twice since then. You can pretty much sysadmin FreeBSD out of the handbook, and if you need to search then an answer from 2009 is usually still valid.
It's absolutely a cathedral-vs-bazaar situation. Cathedral is presented as a negative in that metaphor, but the cathedral ensures enough stability that you can start Having Nice Things instead of just constantly scrambling to rewrite everything every time a vendor thinks they've built a better mousetrap.
zozbot234
> ...it's a comprehensive look at how you do routine sysadmin tasks. The kind of thing that Linux pushes off to web tutorials or stackoverflow.
A lot of useful material with near-official status is kept under the Linux Documentation Project, https://tldp.org/ They have a git repository at https://github.com/tLDP/LDP
There are some cases of real churn in Linux but they're rare. The new init systems and such come with plenty of useful features that simplify many administration tasks: the reason for people being so unsatisfied with them is that they bring lots of what's effectively cowboy-coded hacks and prototype-quality code in order to enable these features. But rewriting all of this stuff from the ground up with a clean, Unix-like design (or rather, Plan9-, Limbo- or Amoeba-like, given that Linux now supports the needed foundational features for these) while preserving its feature set would involve more rather than less churn.
tux2bsd
> It of course helps that nothing ever changes in BSD-land.
ZFS would like a word. FreeBSD, for all intents and purposes, pioneered the adoption of ZFS for the everyday enthusiast.
I'm yet to dive in, I've only dabbled.
stjohnswarts
How does it compare to some of the better run wikis like the Arch wiki? I think I'll take a look around, never thought about checking there freebsd for info on general command line stuff.
brundolf
Sounds like it might address a lot of the misgivings I have with using Linux as a workstation; maybe I'll play with it some time
messe
It’s not a perfect OS, but it’s definitely pleasant to use.
These days I’m on macOS, mainly because of the hardware but also a few pieces of software that I have hard time replacing (Scrivener and Mathematica).
cyberpunk
It's great, if you don't need something like zoom, or to interact with those weird 'usb button' projectors or whatever.
Or video accelerated YouTube.. Or Microsoft office..
Really, I love OpenBSD, but I only really use it for (internet) networking these days, FreeBSD looks after my storage, and it's all proxmox with ubuntu 20.04 vms running k8s for apps.
Someday I'll switch back, but working as a freelancer with a lot of different customers bsds are just too painful to run bare metal (def works with ssh/mosh/tmux though!)
brynet
Zoom actually works fine under chromium on OpenBSD, with full microphone/webcam support. It just requires some configuration to enable a few things which are disabled by default for security reasons.
https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq13.html#enablerec
https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq13.html#webcam
https://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/ports/www/chromium...
morganvachon
> Or video accelerated YouTube
You can get GPU accelerated YouTube videos in OpenBSD, provided you have a supported GPU in the first place. You have to use Firefox and enable gfx.webrender.all and layers.acceleration.force-enabled in about:config. I've been able to get up to 2Kp60 smooth as butter on Intel HD 530 graphics in OpenBSD 7.0. 4Kp60 plays and drops a few frames, but my monitor is 2K so I have no need for 4K playback anyway.
wolverine876
Most people do most things in a web browser these days. Can't Microsoft Office be used as a hosted app in a browser, at least the bulk of common functionality?
hsbauauvhabzb
Only if you want something more useless and buggy than the thick client.
ori_b
Simple, consistent, well documented, easy to debug, and easy to administer. Comfortable.
messe
I think “comfortable” sums it up better than anything else. When I run OpenBSD, I know what’s running on my system (up until the firmware at least), but more importantly I understand it. Even the kernel is easy to dive into.
ILMostro7
How does that compare to something like Gentoo? Just trying to get the sense of the use-case and perception.
LAC-Tech
What are the benefits of running (open)BSD on a workstation? Especially a laptop?
I've got the same questions about macOS to be honest
socialdemocrat
Large selection of well designed and user friendly applications. Stuff just works because software and hardware is well integrated
Not to mention consistency. On all other competing platforms consistency across applications tends to be rather bad.
aerique
Yes, but what about macOS?
ILMostro7
Commercial/Proprietary software support, mainly. Certain companies or institutions may require Windows or MacOS only. I prefer MacOS ecosystem (*nix-like) to Windows.
bogeholm
I develop data engineering/science applications at $BIGCORP daily on a Mac, targeting Linux instances on AWS. What I like:
- It’s UNIX, and has been since Snow Leopard, that makes some development tasks easier. YMMV
- I like the UI (personal preference)
- MS Office stuff is native
- I’ve heard the fan on my M1 box twice in a year
- Can run x86 Docker images via emulation, usually seamlessly
Docker is running in a Linux VM of course on a Mac, so there’s a slight performance hit.
Even all the SIP stuff doesn’t get in the way, in my experience.
Ar-Curunir
this is a troll, right? MacOS is much better for most users than Windows or Linux, and I say this as someone who used desktop Linux for 10+yrs before throwing the towel in.
ILMostro7
That's a subjective and misleadingly useless response.
makeitdouble
I’d see it as stability, in the “won’t need upgrades” outside of security ones.
A bunch of us have a trail of old macs that are weird to use because of the whole system is stuck on the last supported OS, which happens to be the most bloated for that hardware, and doesn’t receive updates anymore. Moving to another simpler system altogether makes it a better proposition. As a matter of choice, BSD is more familiar than linux in many ways.
M1 laptops are not in that position yet, but in 2 years I’d totally imagine getting rid of macos on sub machines.
atmosx
Benefits? If you are not developing _for_ the platform or don’t have specific use cases (e.g. package creation) literally none. It will be an uphill battle where you will spent man-hours trying to find workarounds to things elsewhere are trivial. Or have another system laying around which IMO beats the purpose.
If you are an OS & BSD aficionado, you like to spent time working with OpenBSD because <reasons> ok, but otherwise I would advise against it.
kytazo
I'm sure you get less surveillance and more freedom as of free software freedom I mean I love the hardware but I really detest the apple logo
eatonphil
That's really neat, so you install Asahi Linux first and then after that it's easier/possible to install OpenBSD.
generalizations
I don't understand the details, but it looks like you use the uefi-only option in the installer to install the UEFI 'firmware', which then lets you boot the openbsd installer.
brynet
Yes, there's an "UEFI environment only" option that only installs m1n1+u-boot (not Linux), OpenBSD/arm64 uses the EFI implementation provided by u-boot.
Mark Kettenis' from the OpenBSD project is responsible for upstreaming Apple M1 support for u-boot, and has been collaborating with the Asahi Linux team.
carlosrg
At this point it seems M1 Macs have better Linux/other unixes support than Intel Macs with a T2 chip. At least from my experience and what I’m seeing with Asahi Linux.
kaladin-jasnah
Well... the GPU works in Intel Macs, I think. Which is pretty big.
morganvachon
The forthcoming GPU and sound support are all I'm waiting for to move my daily OpenBSD workstation to my M1 mini. I tested Asahi Linux on it earlier this morning and it was mind-bogglingly fast. My fastest AMD64 based system is a Ryzen 5 3600 with a NVMe main storage drive, and Linux on the M1 makes it feel like a 10 year old i3 with a spinning drive in comparison. Everything is just instant, file transfers are faster than they are on macOS on the same machine, and even without GPU acceleration, KDE Plasma is quick and fluid. I ran out of time to try OpenBSD today but I'll jump on that this week and see if the performance carries over to it.
tcmart14
Hope to see a write up on it somewhere! I bought my M1 air specifically to run a powerful arm computer with Linux/BSD once it is decent enough! I am in my last semester and don't want to tamper with my machine until that is over, so once I graduate in a month, I have plans to look into doing this. If OpenBSD is in a usable state, that'll be what gets loaded on sometime in may.
wolverine876
OpenBSD is known for its high quality standards, quality software is resource-intensive to develop, and they are a relatively small team.
As a practical / project management matter, how do they manage to support a diversity of hardware? What proportion of their resources is spent just keeping up with hardware?
LeoPanthera
Whatever happened to NetBSD being the version that ran on everything? I discovered the other day that it took them years to even run properly on the Raspberry Pi.
Are they short of money or developers, or is the famed portability of it just not as true as it used to be?
1500100900
The Raspberry Pis are hostile towards non-Linux systems.
freedomben
Yeah they're even borderline hostile to non raspbian systems. When a new Pi comes out it usually only works for raspbian for quite some time until others put in the work of getting the right stuff together for other distros.
I love raspberry pi but they are definitely not as "open" and drop-in compatible as most people think.
That seems to be a problem with most ARM devices, so may not be specific or the fault of the Pi people.
stjohnswarts
I mean do they have the manpower to keep up with 12 different distros? Don't they opensource everything they do so other distro users can figure it out?
hhh
Non-debian would be better, no? Never had an issue with Ubuntu.
heinternets
How so?
Sirened
A lot of the hardware on the board has vendor support in Linux and only Linux. Vendors will write drivers and upstream them to Linux and then just call it a day. You can't get the manuals for those components except under NDA, which makes open source development for non-Linux operating systems a huge pain in the ass.
burnte
They were designed to run Linux to be cheap so other OSes need drivers.
barelyusable
What's the battery life like?
jasoneckert
Do you mean to ask what the battery management functionality is like (i.e. does the battery drain noticeably faster using OpenBSD)?
If so, I don't know what it's like on the MacBook or MacBook Pro, but on my Mac Mini, I can reliably say that the battery life is dismal ;-)
lolpython
> but on my Mac Mini, the battery life is dismal.
Possible typo? The Mac Mini does not have a battery.
foodstances
That's why the battery life is so dismal.
SSLy
That mac /is/ going to run off the power stored in the PSU capacitors for a few (hundred?) ms after you unplug it.
geerlingguy
Not sure on OpenBSD, but Asahi said they could get 6-8 hours without any real energy efficiency features enabled.
mattl
Is Red Shirt Jeff going to install it anytime soon?
barelyusable
That sounds like significantly lower number of hours than a MacOS..?
tcmart14
Key part is without any energy saving features. Once those are implemented it will improve. I am pretty sure MacOS has a number of energy saving features implemented.
qualudeheart
Is openbsd support for puri.sm laptops any good? I don’t want to buy a macbook.
jamal-kumar
The best tested so far happens to be the huawei matebook X and certain lenovo laptops
This guy does a lot of testing https://jcs.org/
I'd be really interested to hear if any arm64 or other RISC architecture laptops are useable! M1 is a step in that direction, it would be really surprising to me if it worked well beyond basic support yet however. Asahi linux took like over a year to get to that point but it sounds from reading that link that they're pretty gung ho on getting it working for 7.1 which is amazing to hear. It sounds like other hardware support in those laptops is the big thing.
Fun miscellaneous stuff: SMP on intel architecture is disabled on openbsd for security reasons, so looking at alternatives to make things go fast with guarantees for that is big right now.
brynet
Hyperthreading (SMT) is disabled by default, SMP works just fine.
messe
To add to that, if you need the (max ~30%) performance boost (less on OpenBSD as a some parts of the kernel are still poorly performant in SMP scenarios, it's improving but still noticeable), it's possible to enable hyperthreading temporarily via
doas sysctl hw.smt=1
hw.smt=1
jamal-kumar
Correct thanks
kop316
You could probably ask their support, they are very good at responding.
That being said, they use coreboot and hardware with open/well known drivers. I actually bought a Librem 14 and installed Windows on it for my spouse, and surprisingly, everything on it worked out of the box.
jjtheblunt
Naive question: why bother with OpenBSD over the highly hardware-optimized BSD-derivation macOS?
heavyset_go
The *BSD parts of macOS are really old.
messe
Plus *BSD isn't a single OS. The main ones are OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD and DragonflyBSD. All with their own divergent philosophies and incompatibilities.
Yanker
I was quite literally trying to install OpenBSD on my M1 air yesterday. How about that?
Melatonic
New marketing release from Apple claims the M1 Air is the fastest portable Netflix content distribution server /s
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Damn, that’s awesome. If I wasn’t using my M1 air as a daily driver at the moment, I’d already be attempting an install.
I guess I’ll keep an eye out for a second hand M1 mini, or wait for a refurbished mini to show up on the Apple online store (in Ireland). Would love to add another RISC system to my home fleet of machines running OpenBSD (and a couple of FreeBSD).