Hacker News Reader

Comment by alex1138 | Hacker News Reader

BSDs are interesting projects. As I understand it there's a broad difference of them all doing things reasonably well but a) Free is general-purpose, b) Net is especially portable/many architecture and Open is security focused

View on HN

OpenBSD's primary purpose is to create artwork (https://www.openbsd.org/artwork.html), releasing an OS is a side project.

That's 9front where CSP, GeFS and the like are futuristic artwork, kinda like modern DaVinci. We are not ready yet.

9fronts site will always be one of my favorite place on the net. I don't like plan9 (architecturally it is amazing, I just am to bigoted to stay sane on its userland) but the humor is so my style of humor

Based on the CD covers I used v2.3 and v2.4. That's been a while. I might still have the CD sets somewhere out in storage with other legacy stuff.

FreeBSD is mainly server focused. There's been work on the desktop recently, but it isn't what FreeBSD devs are paid to focus on. To be fair to the people paying them, it's a damn good server OS.

Also, check out DragonflyBSD. It has a really nice filesystem and Dillon does good work

DragonflyBSD is a beautifully well done OS.

Especially their SMP model. Shame they didn't pick traction.

FreeBSD is focused on making a good, general purpose operating system. It just happens to be very good at being a server. It's also very good at being a desktop.

Subpar wifi performance compared to Linux(perhaps better now?) subpar bluetooth, etc, etc, hardly makes it a good desktop OS.

Passable yes, if you love it, but let's be realistic.

I love FreeBSD btw.

I have used OpenBSD as a desktop for 7 years. Though my usage and the machine were minimal. But I thoroughly liked it. I want to go back to it. One good thing is that if your hardware has some problems or about to have problems then installing OpenBSD will make your computer kernel panic. So I use it as a diagnosing tool for my hardware

> So I use it as a diagnosing tool for my hardware

Same, it's particularly good for troubleshooting older hardware too since most bog standard x86 parts are well supported.

If I have a random ISA/PCI/AGP/PCIe card that OpenBSD can't see or properly initialize, it's probably an issue with the card.

I always wanted to get into bsd, especially openbsd. I like the idea of a more cohesive os.

But I don't really know what to use it for to get started. My desktop runs linux with steam for games. My AI server needs rocm drivers so ubuntu-server. My vps runs debian, maybe that one, but there is no DO image for BSD. Open for ideas..

OpenBSD for the layer where you need the highest security. We use it for hosting our Postgres clusters. You could easily use it for your VPS. There is a learning curve. But if you’re already comfortable with Linux you’ll pick it up in a few hours.

FreeBSD would work well for your purposes, it has a really good hypervisor and linux abi compatibility

I doubt it.

I am a diehard FreeBSD fan and I used it on my laptop for 20+ years, and dualbooted it for windows only for gaming.

I tried my best to get gaming going, even running Arch in a jail, but it's not great for gaming purposes. I was even virtualizing OpenBSD to use PCI passthrough for better wifi...

Today I am using Arch Linux instead of my dual boot setup. Is it perfect? Nope, but at least I can play Age of Empires 2.

I still use FreeBSD on my servers, obviously. FreeBSD is great, but on the desktop, and especially on the laptop, there are some warts.

The main differences between OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD and DragonFly BSD

https://unixdigest.com/articles/the-main-differences-between...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com