[ImCEOBitch]

I used to love OpenBSD but I've had to abandon it:

- no sendfile implementation to accelerate web servers

- ancient userland pthread implementation

- worst SMP implementation of any mainstream OS

- no unified buffer cache

- no working TRIM support

- no 802.11n support

- video card drivers aging, ~3 years behind mainstream

- no adobe flash support / hackarounds

The only thing I really miss is PF.

[tobiasu]

> - ancient userland pthread implementation

Indeed, being worked on with rthreads.

> - worst SMP implementation of any mainstream OS

There's slow progress to push back the kernel biglock.

> - no unified buffer cache

Very few people have a justifyable need for a synchronous cache between read()/write() and mmap().

> - no working TRIM support

Is available in -current, not sure about this release.

> - video card drivers aging, ~3 years behind mainstream

OpenBSD is doing quite well compared to the other BSDs. Intel and Amd graphic options are supported, depending on chipset, OpenGL works out of the box. KMS is being worked on from what I hear.

Nvidia and Adobe, well... they are a cancer and in a perfect world, would go bankrupt for their behaviour.

[tedunangst]

There is no current TRIM support I'm aware of, but it could possibly ship in 5.1. Or 6.1. Who knows.

[dmm]

> - ancient userland pthread implementation

There is support for kernel threads in the form of a flag on rfork(2). The golang port uses this. The pthreads library is still the shitty userland one though.

OpenBSD is great because the man pages aren't absolute shit like Linux and networking is so much better. Linux wifi drivers are absolute crap in comparison.

Configure WPA on OpenBSD: ifconfig <interface> nwid <ssid> wpa wpakey <wpakey> up; dhclient <interface>

The equivalent on linux is left as an exercise...

It's still a pretty usable desktop though. The new ACPI support is amazing and a completely new implementation, rather than being built on the reference implementation everyone else used.

> no 802.11n support

That's going to require some work on the 80211 layer.

[adestefan]

> Configure WPA on OpenBSD: ifconfig <interface> nwid <ssid> wpa wpakey <wpakey> up; dhclient <interface> The equivalent on linux is left as an exercise...

  wpa_passphrase <ssid> <wpakey> > /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
  wpa_supplicant -i<interface> -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -B
  dhclient <inteface>

Everything is easy when you know how to do it.

[dmm]

On OpenBSD, all of your interface configuration is done with ifconfig and it's all documented with 'man ifconfig'.

On a linux system 'man ifconfig' doesn't even mention iwconfig or wpa_supplicant.

I think that makes it a little easier to learn how to do it.

[levabalkin]

I guess in Linux ifconfig is deprecated in favor of iproute2.

[ghshephard]

Another advantage to OpenBSD - For at least the last 10 years, configuring a network interface has been done through ifconfig.

I'm willing to wager that 10 years from now - configuring an interface will still be done through ifconfig.

[wazoox]

It's a mistake IMO for old hats like myself. After 20 years using ifconfig, it's almost impossible to get used to some new, linux-only tool (even though it may be better).

[adestefan]

It's pretty rare that you actually need to use ifconfig/ip directly in Linux. For every distribution that I know of there's a specific way to setup network interfaces (e.g. /etc/network/interfaces, /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-*, etc.)

[sigzero]

Really? No Linux SA that I know...and I know a lot...is using iproute2 over ifconfig.

[CrLf]

The "ip" command has been the preferred way to configure network interfaces in Linux for a few years now. Most functionality isn't available through "ifconfig" at all.

[jolan]

> That's going to require some work on the 80211 layer.

The 80211 guy retired so there's little chance of that happening.

[KonradKlause]

>OpenBSD is great because the man pages aren't absolute shit like Linux and networking is so much better. Linux wifi drivers are absolute crap in comparison.

For example?

[vegai]

http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=wireless&se...

I like Linux in practice, but one must admit that BSDs' manuals are way better.

[cturner]

The problem with linux is that nobody owns responsibility for making the whole man system good.

Linux kernel stuff is covered by the linux man project. This is run by Kerrisk, who is a good communicator - _The Linux Programming Interface_ reads like Stevens but is richer in practical advice.

But if you go to the man page for something like awk or bash or grep (the common use-case - where you need a quick reference), they're maintained by the team who write the tool, or - often enough - not maintained by the team. There are undocumented flags, often the doc only tends to make sense if you already understand the internals of the tool. GNU tool man pages are generally obtuse.

BSD and plan 9 have much better man systems. Unless a linux distribution comes along and makes a conscious effort to solve GNU/linux doc, the man system available to linux users will always suck - it's structural.

[CrLf]

"But if you go to the man page for something like awk or bash or grep [...]"

And this is where you are doing it wrong. For GNU tools, the man page is just a stub. The official documentation is maintained in the form of "info" pages.

Now, you may consider this obtuse (I sure do), but it doesn't mean there is no documentation.

[vegai]

Linux (the kernel) actually has manpages? Are you sure? I've never seen any.

Case in point: check the output of lsmod. How many of those modules have a corresponding manpage? My guess: zero.

Same question for a BSD system (with lsmod changed to kldstat or whatever): all of them.

[cturner]

On linux try 'man select' (defaults to section 2) or 'man kmem' (section 4). Linux man project.

[alrs]

If you're missing pf you might check out Debian/KFreeBSD. http://wiki.debian.org/Debian_GNU/kFreeBSD

[getsat]

Plain FreeBSD has also had pf since 2003. OSX also comes with it.

[stock_toaster]

FreeBSD's version of pf is a tad old though (before new-format as I recall).

"""FreeBSD 8.X and prior is using the same version of PF as OpenBSD 4.1. FreeBSD 9.X and later is using the same version of PF as OpenBSD 4.5.""" [1]

[1]: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/firewalls-pf.html

[hackermom]

OpenBSD was never meant to be a desktop BSD. You should take a look at FreeBSD instead.

[ImCEOBitch]

I was just throwing out some desktop-specific things at the end and have no interest in running any BSD as a desktop anymore.

They all suffer from the good enough but not mainstream enough problem, i.e. official Nvidia drivers that are not officially supported.

[sliverstorm]

I never really saw BSD as a desktop operating system, regardless what OSX achieved with Darwin.

It made for an amazing mailserver last I tried it though. I used 3.4 on an ancient P4 with maybe 256MB of RAM an 8GB hard drive. Turns out that was way more computer than it needs, and it was so stable I began to think of it the same way I think of my router.

[SageRaven]

The Radeon stuff is improving rapidly. You can't buy a diesel truck for the power and then complain that it won't take gasoline. ;-)

To hell w/ NVidia. If they won't play ball, I'll spend my money on an arguably slightly lesser performing product that is more open.

Though, currently the linux emulation layer in CURRENT has a change that broke the linux Flash binary. I've been flash-free for about 2 weeks now. I can't decide if that's a curse or liberation. Otherwise, I personally think FreeBSD is a mighty fine desktop OS. ZFS is really nice.

[Wilya]

Nvidia actually provides drivers for FreeBSD, which have worked well for me so far. Nothing on the ATI side, though.

And I don't think the users of other BSDs have much need for 3D acceleration..

[tobiasu]

Eh? I run OpenBSD as a "desktop" and I use 3D acceleration to play 3D games and all that stuff. Even playing videos these days requires DRI support in the kernel. With a bit of careful hardware selection, 3D acceleration works out of the box on OpenBSD.

[dfc]

You said it best the first time when you said you missed pf.

[tedunangst]

Openbsd was never meant to not be a desktop OS.

[derleth]

> OpenBSD was never meant to be a desktop BSD.

Where would people find this out? Has anyone listed the BSDs and said which task each was meant for? Are there any good BSD-to-BSD comparisons being done now?

[tedunangst]

Lots of people have listed the BSDs and said which task each was meant for. Lots of people have also been completely wrong. There's a whole internet of misinformation out there if you're really interested.

[hackermom]

Yes, of course, but there is a general aim and focus among the developers of the three main flavors, that is prevalent in the capacities of said flavors:

NetBSD - portability. OpenBSD - security. FreeBSD - performance and usability.

With that said, no, that definitely does not mean that each flavor can't stand out in the other two fields. Heck, I used OpenBSD as my desktop OS for 2 years on and off, so I know very well how capable it is "off field", and looking at the most popular flavor in BSD-powered server parks we see FreeBSD instead of OpenBSD contrary to what logic might try to dictate.