In this one, we have some nasty flaws in AMD and Intel CPUs that require performance-reducing mitigation patches (potentially brutal for Intel especially).
We also have some nice features for #KDE Plasma 6 and #GNOME 45, and an alliance between SUSE and Oracle to offer RHEL source code to the community:
Whenever news breaks of bad decisions a popular product, there's a flurry of recommendations of various alternatives, and in that mix there's always folks extolling the virtues of hosting your own.
As a person who works on security for an open source project, my spicy take is this: unless you enjoy being your own sysadmin (some folks do!), any hosted solution from a vendor that is currently reputable and currently has acceptable terms is a better, safer option than self-hosting.
Exactly!
Because whilst #OpenBSD is propably the safest Operating System that one can hook up to the Internet out-of-the-box, noone's gonna yeet all their #Linux boxes out and force themselves to migrate everything to it.
Just because I know people who earned their living doing #Mailservers on #OpenBSD doesn't mean it's something I'd recommend to anyone even if on paper that's the "most secure option"...
The same is also true for #freeRTOS and #RTEMS which drive rockets into space. There are many #openSource programs involved in rocketry at the highest levels, both civil and martial.
Perhaps most importantly to them, these are things you can exploit freely, a torch passed to you by others, free as in speech, a tool to better command whatever hardware you elect to use.
I hope you succeed in giving them some food for thought about different ways to achieve success ;)
Woke up this morning #BSD curious. For all the users out there, is there a reason for someone running Linux desktop to consider running #BSDDesktop (of any kind or flavor), or is it more useful to have as a tool for servers? My only previous experience with BSD is brief dalliances with TrueNAS.
#OpenBSD includes Xorg and some VERY basic utilities in the base OS install. #FreeBSD only gives you a text mode install. Xorg is in the ports. Can't remember about NetBSD.
In BSD, there's kind of two package managers -- the OS-level, that takes care of the OS file, and the Ports package manager, that gives you stuff like firefox and GIMP.
Ah, I get that, and I do understand that binary compatibility != kernel compatibility, which is what's really needed for Wayland to work without a lot of porting work.
Is #Arcan ever going to be used as a display server? I'm still not clear on what it actually is, but I've heard some folks in the #OpenBSD world are kinda excited about it.
#NetBSD - This felt like #OpenBSD minus the super aggressive security mitigations (Open is a fork of Net). It could not S3 suspend at all, so I didn't spend much time on it. I don't remember the installation process, but since I don't remember struggling with it or having to go through a video walkthrough, it must have been easy enough. ;)
One of the main (I think) NetBSD devs has a presence on the #Fediverse, and is very helpful.
#OpenBSD - This is an OPERATING SYSTEM, not a distro. Very nicely organized. It's created by people who love unix, and is not beholden to any corporate sugar daddies (although they do work with them and give their code away freely). I had horrible performance on my Core 2 Duo, sadly. BUT it dealt with S3 suspend on my laptop flawlessly.
@kint@RL_Dane@royal@spaceraser@ianthetechie The problem with #Wayland, in terms of #OpenBSD support, is that it relies heavily on #Linux subsystems. Since OpenBSD has no Linux compatibility layer, that means that either ports or workaround have to be developed. Porters would naturally prefer to upstream as many patches that might be applicable to other platforms and/or security, but the likelihood that Wayland merges patches for non-Linux OSes is significantly lower, if even non-zero.
#FreeBSD is the most Linux like, and even has partial Linux binary compatibility. #OpenBSD is more security-focused, is a smaller and more focused (there's that word again) team, priorities-wise. #NetBSD probably has the strongest ties to the BSD of old, and has the least surprises for a BSD veteran. But I spent very little time on Net, so I can't say much about it.
@RL_Dane@kint@royal@spaceraser@ianthetechie I think you mean was a compat_linux(8). I believe #OpenBSD 5.9 was the last release that included it before it was ripped out. The fedora_base package that was required is long gone too.
#OpenBSD will probably give you the best hardware compatibility, in my experience, but possibly the worst performance, because of the very heavy security mitigations (hey, there's a reason they're there. I'm not knocking it, but I am realistic/pragmatic about it).
Ah, my desktop had an ET4000. I don't know why I didn't try tha -- oh yeah, I gave it away, because a 4 year old computer was "useless" back then facepalm
RH 5.0 had fvwm95, which was pretty cool.
#OpenBSDstill ships with fvwm as the default wm. ;)
I really liked WindowMaker for a while there 20 years ago :D
@RL_Dane@royal@spaceraser@ianthetechie Yeah, not sure what the future holds for #OpenBSD in terms of display server, although someone actually got Wayland to do things on it. Saw a post about it on the fediverse not too long ago.
I just love #Debian with #Xfce :debian:
It's simple, stable and get's out of my way
It might not be the most eye candy desktop - but I need it to just work.
@nichtq
I could run #OpenBSD - and do so (x240 ThinkPad).
For my desktop I have chosen #Debian
It does what it needs to do.
(I do use #Docker and some #Linux only thingies here and there)
In the end: I could run #OpenBSD on the desktop, that would be ok. :openbsd:
Today has been a beautiful sunny day, not too hot, and I decided to take a break and relax, anticipating another busy week ahead.
While performing a #duperemove on a #btrfs file system (and it seems that soon this will be possible on #zfs too!), I'm reading about the progress #hammer2 is making on #OpenBSD (https://github.com/kusumi/openbsd_hammer2). This would be a winning combination, as the versatility of the excellent file system of #DragonflyBSD and the security of #OpenBSD would be an incredibly powerful union. Let's hope the development continues smoothly without any major issues!
If anyone wants to know what #OpenBSD looks like: In my case, it's just a Firefox window showing Fosstodon, taking up literally the whole screen. There is a one-pixel white border around it. Pretty boring.
#OpenBSD is one OS you could learn a lot about with nothing more than a single offline OpenBSD box. Start with the Afterboot(8) and just go from there.