Share your OpenBSD or OpenBSD derivative experience (for FreeBSD users)

sidetone

sidetone

For FreeBSD users who have used OpenBSD, Fugulta or any OpenBSD derivative, what is your experience with it? I've never used them, though, I thought a discussion on them would provide useful insight. It would have been better if someone who has used it started a thread like this, but it hasn't come.

In another comparison thread, one between FreeBSD and NetBSD (Thread share-your-netbsd-experience-for-freebsd-users.89800), there was important insight to be learned. For instance: that FreeBSD lacks VideoCore drivers needed for graphics acceleration which are common on microboards (ie Raspberry), and that NetBSD lacked power management. It was easy to make otherwise assumptions about those features before knowing that. Maybe we could learn something, including something unexpected, from an OpenBSD related discussion as well.

Fugulta is included in this, because otherwise, it might not get attention, because of the few users there may be. While there may not be other current derivatives (there was actually Bitrig in the past), for technicality, it's open for that possibility if there are ones to discuss, or maybe past derivatives.

This is somewhat a comparative thread of features, and not about which is better as a whole in your opinion, for FreeBSD users. It's also not for the purpose of bashing any operating system in this thread topic. To me, it's about learning about differences in features, and what's good that comes from it.

Keep in mind: Thread why-is-freebsd-not-more-like.66591. For techincal help and other discussion about OpenBSD or its derivatives, use daemonforums.org, unitedbsd.com or OpenBSD related mailing lists, instead of here. Keep the discussion positive, and not be about what FreeBSD should be. Also, keep it to everything else within those guidelines of that rule thread.
 
sidetone said:
For FreeBSD users who have used OpenBSD, Fugulta or any OpenBSD derivative, what is your experience with it? I've never used them, though, I thought a discussion on them would provide useful insight. It would have been better if someone who has used it started a thread like this, but it hasn't come.
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I have happily used OpenBSD since 5.0 (2011) and I have used FreeBSD off and on since 5.x. I'm currently dual booting OpenBSD 7.4 on a Slackware machine. For XFCE sound and video just works on OpenBSD. I like that OpenBSD is stable and secure (paranoid by default-haha). There's a tonne of documentation in house in the man pages. I like the book Absolute OpenBSD 2ND ED by Michael Lucas. As you mentioned I default to daemonforums.org for technical help. I have not tried any OpenBSD spin-offs.
 
I love the mission of the project as well as the general attitude of the developers. The "You don't like it? Get lost!" attitude, I love that. Finally a project where the developers tell you what you're getting. One of the things I really like about OpenBSD is that its base system includes nearly everything you can possibly need to create a headless networking device. However as security conscious as they are, it truly baffles me they include X in their base system. They must be incredibly proud of their Xenocara, but really if I want graphics I'll use Windows. Careful though, when you run sysupgrade it installs all the sets even if you didn't install them to begin with. There is a way around that and it is in their FAQ but it just seems kind of silly.
 
I've ran FreeBSD on my main machines for about a month straight. i just found out about OpenBSD about 5 days ago and have been on it ever since. Everything works out of the box except webcam and wifi. for wifi i'm using a dongle that was supported in FreeBSD. i hop between Os's so i don't know which to pick. currently using OpenBSD as main but when i need to use zoom i use my Debian laptop. i kinda miss FreeBSD in some way, the documentation on OpenBSD is awesome. also i just kinda learned fdisk on OpenBSD and disklabel for working with disc/usb. i go between a windows and mac computer so i have to have a USB stick working at all times. i'm reading up on gpart might install FreeBSD on a vm
 
sidetone said:
For FreeBSD users who have used OpenBSD, Fugulta or any OpenBSD derivative, what is your experience with it?
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I think OpenBSD is more a coherent system, FreeBSD more chaotic. I like both styles.

I used OpenBSD as main desktop, returned to FreeBSD because I needed ZFS.

ZFS is an example of my first sentence: ZFS is not unix (style), but FreeBSD is more tolerant towards
heterogeneous components.

I have the impression that OpenBSD is slower, the price of "security". I still use it for my mobile nettop.

Professor_Fate said:
I love the mission of the project as well as the general attitude of the developers.
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There are nice developers, but I do not like the attitude of some developers.
 
hruodr said:
There are nice developers, but I do not like the attitude of some developers.
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I like that OpenBSD is provided as is. This is what we've created, so use it or not. I've found that the OpenBSD developers and community members are very helpful *if* you're willing to dig through the ample documentation and do some of your own trouble shooting. They don't suffer fools.
 
I've been using OpenBSD on routers, gateways, jumphosts and various other networking appliances and different architectures (down to tiny OrangePi zero as NUT-servers to make 'dumb' UPSs available via network) for almost 10 years now (roughly the same timeframe as FreeBSD). IIRC 5.3 or 5.4 were the first versions I actually used and didn't just play around with...

My main selling point for OpenBSD are routing domains, PF and OpenBGPd and their nice interoperability and integration in/with other services. It's just that little bit more complete and coherent than on FreeBSD. Also there are some additions (and easier syntax, especially queues or NAT) in OpenBSD PF that make it better suited for most of my needs; and to stay sane I just use OpenBSD on all those 'networking' systems. I also use PF on FreeBSD, but not in that extent and mostly for jail networking.
Thankfully OpenBGPd in a recent version (8.x) is now also available via ports on FreeBSD (thanks again to the maintainer Kurt Jaeger for commiting that!), so I don't have to run full-blown OpenBSD VMs for simple route reflectors any more, but can use lightweight FreeBSD jails for that.


Professor_Fate said:
Careful though, when you run sysupgrade it installs all the sets even if you didn't install them to begin with. There is a way around that and it is in their FAQ but it just seems kind of silly.
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you can simply use sysupgrade -n and then delete all x-related sets from /home/_sysupgrade/ via rm x* and do the reboot manually. I usually use sysupgrade -n anyways, so I can pre-load the sets and then reboot at the scheduled time (the mirrors can be slow some times...)
I proposed an enhancement to the sysupgrade script a few years ago, that would check if X11 is installed before downloading sets, but this was dismissed because of some valid objections; mainly because not installing parts of X11 has implications on e.g. building from source and some debugging.
But TBH - compared to the way you had to do upgrades before sysupgrade (building the whole system from sources and merging everything), this small manual step is completely fine with me. The sysupgrade -n approach even makes it possible to put a custom kernel in place (e.g. pre-compiled on a beefier system) before rebooting and running the upgrade.

hitest said:
I've found that the OpenBSD developers and community members are very helpful *if* you're willing to dig through the ample documentation and do some of your own trouble shooting.
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*THIS*
I've always received very quick, professional and helpful responses from OpenBSD developers on the few bug reports or questions I posted on the mailing lists. But TBH this also was my experience with FreeBSD developers - although PRs for ports can sometimes take quite a while... (I still wouldn't blame any maintainer for that - I know how it is if life happens and gets in the way of other things)


Regarding documentation/manpages, FreeBSD is IMHO still the golden standard. OpenBSD and also illumos (examples in practically all manpages!!) are close contenders, but in several parts a bit scarce or even lacking documentation (e.g. only some mailing list entries and/or conference presentations). When it comes to The Handbook, there's nothing out there comparable to FreeBSD.
 
My experience of practical use of OpenBSD is a few days, so it will not be of much use.
But perhaps the information provided may be useful for some users of older PCs.
-----
Previous story.
I have a portable computer Toshiba Satellite A200-1GS with an graphics card nVidia GeForce Go 7300 on which I use FreeBSD.
But life is changeable.
Initially, the legacy driver nvidia-driver-304 stopped working with the new xorg-server. Thanks nVidia!..
And I started using xf86-video-nv. Which worked without any tweaks on my part. I was getting a native screen resolution of 1280x800.
But after the update (2022.10.10):
pkg: 1.18.3 -> 1.18.4
...
xorg-server: 1.20.14,1 -> 21.1.4_1,1
...
xf86-video-nv: 2.1.21_4 -> 2.1.21_5

I got my first one:
...(EE) Segmentation fault at address 0x0
...(EE) Fatal server error:
...(EE) Caught signal 11 (Segmentation fault). Server aborting

Some of my failed attempts to help resolve the problem are covered in the FreeBSD Bugzilla thread - x11-drivers/xf86-video-nv: Segmentation Fault post update from 1.20.14,1 to 2..
Sorry for the mess.
I just wanted to help solve the problem.
-----
Closer to the point.
I have another HDD that I was thinking of trying to install NetBSD on to try the nouveau driver.
I was waiting for the release of NetBSD 10 and decided to install... OpenBSD 7.4 with X.
And I was pleasantly surprised. The NV driver works without additional settings as before on FreeBSD.

Information from Xorg.0.log OpenBSD X.Org X Server 1.21.1.8 + NV driver
(Loading /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/nv_drv.so
Module nv: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
compiled for 1.21.1.8, module version = 2.1.22).

And I get 1280x800.

Please do not take this information as an advertisement for OpenBSD, that is not the purpose of my post.
I love FreeBSD and use this great OS not only on this laptop which also runs it but now unfortunately only with the vesa driver.
I am grateful to the FreeBSD developers and community for developing this system. And I am aware of priorities - what is more appropriate to spend time on. My problem is my problem, it is not worth attention.

My post in this thread was inspired by threads with similar problems with the xf86-video-nv driver and a thread on The no future of X.org, FreeBSD becomes headless? where switching to Xenocara OpenBSD is mentioned as a possible solution to the problem.

In my case it works. And maybe this information will be useful.
 
The userland is years behind FreeBSD. No "-v" (verbose) option in most tools. No "-C" option in install(1). No nothing.

For a security-hardened distro I'd rather go to HardenedBSD (based on FreeBSD) that has even more security features and a better userland.
 
grahamperrin said:
  • 30 comments
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Do you have an experience with OpenBSD or any possible derivative? So you could share it, no matter how little or long ago you may have used it?

HardenedBSD wouldn't count as an OpenBSD derivative, but if you want to compare OpenBSD to that.
 
I've found it to be a bit iffy.

Sometimes it would freeze hard on stuff - USB drives/suspend & resume. Ports are kinda sparse. On the other hand, sometimes it has hardware support well before FreeBSD does and a surprising amount of stuff works out of the box.

I also like that de Raadt rules the project with an iron fist. Would be a good place to move if things here ever go off the rails.
 
OpenBSD is somewhat slower than FreeBSD, but I've not used it enough, or on servers, so I can't speak about that with real knowledge. They do seem to very good at working on laptops, almost everything just works. Depending upon what you're trying to do with it, much of the easily available documentation is sufficient. Michael Lucas does have book on it, though dated by now, but still (typical of a Lucas book) VERY good. https://mwl.io/nonfiction/os#ao2e

I would say try it on a VM and try to form an opinion. I think it's probably a bit easier to use as a desktop than FreeBSD. There was a poster on here who I haven't seen in years, Oko, who was impressed by the fact that at, if I remember correctly, an OpenBSD developer meeting, they were all running OpenBSD on their laptops, whereas at a FreeBSD meeting, everyone he saw was running Macs. It's not hard to multiboot on say, a multiboot laptap with legacy BIOS, though I never did multi boot with it on a UEFI machine. If you want a friendly forum that doesn't hold you to as high a standard as the mailing lists, you can look at https://daemonforums.org. It's for all BSDs, but more or less by happenstance, it's become primarily an OpenBSD forum.
 
hruodr said:
I spoke about some developers, you speak about all.

Or are you speaking only about the non fool ones?

Or about the fool ones that suffer themselves?
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Perhaps I was not clear. I mean that the OpenBSD community is generally very supportive *if* you do some of your own trouble shooting and follow suggestions. I find that to be also true of the FreeBSD community.
 
I'm giving OpenBSD a go as my daily driver desktop (outside of work) for a while, it's been a few weeks.

I'd say initial installation, configuration and getting firmware and a desktop up and running is a fair bit easier than FreeBSD and some Linux distros. Supporting BIOS boot on the installation disc and not using hybrid ISOs has kept a few of my machines from going into the e-waste. Provided your hardware is supported, it seems like the firmware and drivers are more stable than FreeBSD, for example, iwn on FreeBSD tends to drop-out on one of my machines, but is stable on OpenBSD, and interfaces are a lot easier to configure. Changing my wifi adapter requires just a copy and paste (or a rename) of a hostname file.

The lack of a "shiny' virtualisation package is a real shame and a ball-ache. VMD works reasonably well and the FAQs and man pages are very good, combine that with Arch Linux and their famously good wiki and I've managed to get a Linux virtual machine running on it, but only over serial console, and I'm struggling getting it networked to the host. It's in progress though and people are helpful, but it's still a bit of a grind (although I'm enjoying it and there's no rush for me). I've also got an OpenIndiana machine and that is the exact opposite, Virtualbox is its resident hypervisor and works great, but the host doesn't have what OpenBSD has.

Can't say much about the community of either operating systems, people are individuals, and some people are in both (or many other) groups. Win some, lose some.

It is missing some packages that I could really use, but I'm happy enough with it to work around and use something else in its stead.

I think the big difference is for me is that I'm more confident than OpenBSD will start up and still work after installing a load of packages or making config changes. The manual maintenance of /etc/rc.conf and /boot/loader.conf to get display drivers loaded and working in FreeBSD is irritating. I have installed OpenBSD on a laptop using Intel graphics, transferred the disk to a desktop using Radeon graphics, and then transferred it again to another laptop using Radeon graphics, and had to do no config file changes. Brilliant.

I'm not dogmatic though, sometimes I forget what OS I'm running, they all use XFCE with the same theme.
 
taiwan740 said:
I'm giving OpenBSD a go as my daily driver desktop (outside of work) for a while, it's been a few weeks.
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Nice! I installed Fluxbox this AM and switched from using XFCE to Fluxbox on OpenBSD 7.4. Blazing fast! I've had a similar experience with OpenBSD, that is, sound and video just works using OpenBSD 7.4. My OpenBSD box is a Dell Optiplex 9020, i7 CPU @3.20 GHz, 32 GB RAM, and a one TB SSD.
 
TIL that OpenBSD dropped support for loadable kernel modules like 10 years ago. So I have to recompile kernel removing stuff like NTFS and read the whole options(4) manpage to see what may be missing.
 
Just a couple of added comments. As I think I've said, despite the OpenBSD's FAQ saying it's difficult, multibooting OpenBSD isn't that hard. (Spamming my own pages again, sigh) https://srobb.net/openbsdmultiboot.html

I recently put it on a Thinkpad as I've read many things about how well it works with them. It is so so on my Thinkpad T495. On the first attempt, sound didn't work, I never figured out why, but on a few installs since then, it's not given me a problem, so it's probably something I did or didn't do. Wireless doesn't work during installation (that is expected, and their FAQ has a workaround--I just used a USB to ethernet during install, and afterwards it automatically ran fw_upgrade which fixed that.)
On my first install attempt, I let it autoconfigure the OpenBSD partition, which was about 40G and it only used about 5G. On a second attempt, I manually created the partitions and it was fine.


All that being said, otherwise, it works fine. I think I first came across this page in on of vermaden's articles, but it's worth checking out for anyone wanting OpenBSD as desktop.
.

I will mention though, that in contrast, FreeBSD on the same laptop had no trouble, including during installation with wireless, and sound worked out of the box. Also its auto ZFS configuration used all the space alloted. So, for me, on this Thinkpad T495, FreeBSD works better than OpenBSD. I also was able to get FreeBSD to switch between laptop speakers and HDMI if hooked up to the TV, but I haven't spent any effort seeing how to do that with OpenBSD. I'm sure it's doable.

I guess the most imporant take from this post is that if you multiboot with OpenBSD, watch out for the size its auto partitioning creates, or you may find yourself out of space.
 
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