[nalck]

This is quite the handy resource! Great idea and well done. OpenBSD is really quite friendly, just need to be comfortable with reading man pages and Unix basics.

A tip for first-timers: perform the installation with an Ethernet internet connection. On my laptop, wireless firmware was installed and configured automagically on first boot. After that it's all gravy.

[jlgaddis]

> A tip for first-timers: perform the installation with an Ethernet internet connection.

Yes, it's much easier that way.

Then, once the firmware for your wireless card is installed, configure your wired and wireless interfaces as a failover trunk (if you switch back and forth between them very often). This way, your IP address doesn't change when you {dis}connect your Ethernet cable. Obviously, everyone has different needs but this works out great for me (I plug in when at my desk and use wireless the rest of the time).

[zmyrgel]

Only use failover trunk if your wireless network and wired connections share same subnet. Otherwise it work that well. Like once you connect the ethernet cable you lose network connectivity as trunk won't renew your address.

Seems the currently recommended method is to just run dhclient on both wireless and wired interfaces and let the routing table to decide which to use.

[jlgaddis]

I haven't encountered that issue as I only use that laptop at home (same subnet) but that's a very good point, thanks.

[dijit]

I agree. It certainly feels more friendly than I was expecting. And the fact that they patched in modern features to old utilities (wpa in ifconfig instead of wpa_supplicant) makes things super clean and easy to understand. FreeBSD is less easy to use, and Linux, by comparison is a mess.

That said. Finding pre-built binary packages can be hit or miss. And ports requires X11 to be installed.

But when all is said and done. It's the community that's most important. And OpenBSD has one of the kindest and active IRC channels on freenode. Far from the "in your face"/elitist reputation others have stated before.

[justinsaccount]

> And the fact that they patched in modern features to old utilities (wpa in ifconfig instead of wpa_supplicant) makes things super clean and easy to understand

Sure.. though from what I can see, openbsd didn't support wpa enterprise until 2013, and at that point it was supported using wpa_supplicant.

http://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=2013012814221...

[snksnk]

Agreed, OpenBSD is rock solid; it just works, with well thought out defaults and excellent drivers for devices that are supported. I only wish they would port hammer faster..

[na85]

If only the performance was adequate. It was so laggy and power-hungry on my i7 thinkpad that I was forced to go back to Linux.

[morganvachon]

That's the only thing stopping me from running OpenBSD 24/7/365 on my workstation. It's getting marginally better with each release, but even on a system that screams under any other OS, OpenBSD just lags and lags, even with tweaks.

I've found a great use case for it though; older, slower hardware (think P4 and older) actually benefits from running OpenBSD versus most modern Linux distros. For example, I have an ancient PIII laptop that refuses to run anything other than OpenBSD, Slackware, and Haiku OS. Out of those, OpenBSD is the fastest and least buggy. Granted, it's just a toy/hobby device, but I found it intriguing nonetheless.

[zmyrgel]

Could you be more specific on what problems you have? Usually OpenBSD has been running quite smoothly. Only issues I've experienced have been on video use. Like I haven't been able to get smooth playback of HD material. And firefox seems to be bit choppy but that is probably my "gazillion tabs" I keep open.

[morganvachon]

Those are some of the issues I've experienced, even with SD video and only a few tabs open in Firefox.

There's also a general choppiness to X itself. All of this with accelerated Intel graphics, so it's not necessarily driver related. I just figure that given the project's focus on security and clean code, desktop OS performance takes a necessary back seat.

Even with all of that, I give every new release a thorough test run on my old workstation and laptop, just to see if things have improved in that area. And they have been steadily improving!

[na85]

Multiple-second system freezes when opening programs or changing workspaces, etc.

It's just laggy and runs hotter than Linux. I get a solid hour and a half more battery life on Linux too.

[zmyrgel]

When did you try it? They fixed ACPI power management issue in 5.8. So if you tried it before that it might explain the battery life issue. I haven't seen any multiple-second system freezes ever. Did you report those issues in bug tracker or mailing lists?

[geggam]

using minecraft as an example...

http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/fujitsu-lifebook-s7...

The above ~5yr old laptop will give 60fps running minecraft with no hiccups / glitches. Installed an SSD and frankly its a perfect workstation for anything I would use and I see no lag.

[floatboth]

It shouldn't be power-hungry... A lot of OpenBSD developers use OpenBSD on their ThinkPads. It should work fine. Maybe you haven't configured power management.

In FreeBSD, it's powerd. In OpenBSD... apmd?

[na85]

You're telling me what it shouldn't be or should be, but I am telling you what it is.

You are free to search marc.info for the fruitless threads of me trying to solve multi-second system freezes when opening emacs or changing workspaces if you like.

The fact that the devs dogfood their stuff is irrelevant: it doesn't perform even remotely as well as Linux on the same (modern) hardware.

[zmyrgel]

In OpenBSD you can let the kernel do the power management with "sysctl hw.perfpolicy=auto".

Also there was fix in ACPI in 5.8 to fix power use in newer processors. If I remember it correctly the processor didn't use the deep sleep states so they consumed more power.

[Timethy]

Where do you experience this lag? Graphics? Disk? Io?

Openbsd has always felt turbo fast to me. Easily the tightest Unix experience, in my experience.