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by gvozd 4166 days ago
Another anecdote: I had the same experience with my new Gigabyte laptop. OpenBSD 5.6 supported the hardware better than FreeBSD or Linux (Qubes-OS, which is based on Fedora). I ended up running OpenBSD on my laptop and FreeBSD on my servers: one leased physical box with lots of jails, and one hosted VM for redundancy.

I'd like to run OpenBSD on my servers, but acquiring the dozen or so machines I need for service separation is just not cost effective or resource efficient.
2 comments
smhenderson 4166 days ago
I do know what you mean there. After getting pretty much everything else I wanted working well I looked for a VM solution and was a little disappointed in the dev's attitude toward VM tech in general. I understand it but don't have to like it. :-)

I've used Linux for years and am only recently checking out BSD so I just kept Debian around for most of my servers.

I do like the new, very simple, httpd in OpenBSD though, been playing with that a lot lately.

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protomyth 4166 days ago
If you watch the the ruBSD 2013 interview video with Theo de Raadt[1] at the 6:36, he states that they should take a shot at dealing with modern x86 VMs. That gives me quite a bit of hope along with the work on vmware related drivers in each release.

1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXS8ljif9b8

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smhenderson 4166 days ago
Thanks, I will check that out. Based on some comments he made in the past I thought hell would freeze over before Theo went that route! I can't find the original kernel trap post at the moment but it was pretty, um, Theo. But I think it's at least 7-8 years old now so I guess times change.
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_delirium 4165 days ago
You're probably thinking of this post, I would guess? http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=119318909016582&w=2

The x86 landscape has changed a bit between that post and the recent video linked upthread, though (e.g. addition of a bunch of hardware protection instructions aimed at virtualization), which might have led him to reevaluate.

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protomyth 4166 days ago
Which Gigabyte laptop?
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gvozd 4166 days ago
It's a P25W with 16 GB RAM and 3T SSD (I dual boot with a Steam-only Windows install). I don't care about the nvidia card in OpenBSD-- the Intel card works fine with xfce. I haven't figured out how to make the internal speakers work, but I use headphones pretty much exclusively anyway. Linux has trouble with the trackpad, and both the internal wired and wireless NICs fail to work under FreeBSD.

OpenBSD works quite well as a daily use OS.

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