2015: The Year of the OpenBSD Desktop

"Now don't get me wrong, Linux does great things but it's never worked out of the box well enough as a desktop. There's always something to tinker with, some driver to compile, some knob to fiddle with."

Been using Linux (Ubuntu LTS releases) as my everyday desktop and laptop OS since around 2007/8. I had issues at first with drivers, especially with wifi and graphics cards.

But lately (approx since Ubuntu 12.04 LTS), stuff just works, no need to manually install or compile anything, no need to tweak anything unless I want to. Of course you can find hardware that doesn't work on Linux, but that's just a matter of a bit of googling before buying a laptop/desktop.

I've found that lately, it seems like Ubuntu requires less fiddling than osx or windows, especially with printers & scanners, where I just plug it in and it works (or it auto detects if it's on a network). But colleagues on windows or osx have to download drivers, usually filled with crapware (i.e. "YOU ARE OUT IF INK, BUY IT HERE" messages, unless they're careful to download the barebone drivers instead of the full driver pack).

"I installed OpenBSD 5.6 on my old Thinkpad x201 and much to my surprise, it just worked. [...] WiFi required a firmware update [...] I won't cover how to burn an ISO to a CD. [...] the various tweaks to config files in OpenBSD in my 'configs' github repo [... etc...]"

Is this a joke?

"Just worked". I don't think those words mean what you think they mean, even with the backtracking at the end of the post.

Marcellus Wallace would have something to say about how near "just worked" that is.

I recognize the problem of distro hopping for years and the comforts of proprietary operating systems. Then I found Arch Linux. Once installed, there is less fiddeling than for any other system I have tried, for my usecase. I tried installing OpenBSD on my laptop about a month ago, and it failed miserably, as it could not recognize the wireless network driver. There was also talk about this ancient technology called CD-ROM, which was disturbing. Within less than an hour, Arch Linux was up and running with all my favorite applications installed and a fully working desktop / window manager.

When the article says "wifi required a firmware update" the premise that openbsd "just worked" is false. This sort of tweaking and configuring is exactly the same as for any Linux distro. We've been doing this sort of Linux tweaking in my employer's systems group for 15 years, and no end in sight. For that matter, the same as downloading a new device driver for wifi on Windows, and of course we all have shared that experience too.

It seems to me that the only way you get a seamless experience with an OS install is if the hardware vendor has carefully tested and tuned the OS configuration for that specific piece of hardware. Apple does this, and even they aren't flawless.

I installed OpenBSD on an old Dell B130 last week, but it choked on the Broadcom BCM4318 wireless controller. I got it to connect with little difficulty after installing the driver, but speeds were slower than molasses (it took minutes to establish SSH connections between machines on the same LAN). Attempts to use the wired Broadcom BCM4401-B0 ethernet controller prevented it from booting. I finally gave up and installed Slackware Linux on it again, which also requires extra work for the wireless controller but yields great performance.

I don't blame OpenBSD and am still looking for an appropriate machine to install it on. I'm no stranger to the OS, having used it to build transparent bridging firewalls in the 3.x days. The installer has really improved a lot since then.

But I am concerned with the state of networking hardware, now that more and more machines are produced with WiFi only. The number of points for failure seem to be multiplying and the dependence on an Internet connection is a given these days (sometimes even during OS installation). I look forward to the day when all OS installations handle network connections as simply as OS X does (which I realize is by virtue of its control over hardware & software integration).

I like the sentiment, but reading http://www.openbsd.org/ftp.html about buying optical media as the best way to get openbsd, and how to boot a floppy, I immediately became skeptical. So I did a quick search for UEFI and Secure Boot and nothing comes up. I see a reference to GRUB (which can be compiled to boot UEFI computers) and rEFIt which is abandoned in favor of rEFInd. rEFInd can support both UEFI and Secure Boot. Any Mac or PC with Windows 8+ is (U)EFI based, and additionally Secure Boot enabled with Windows 8. Yes that can be disabled and then re-enabled to go back and forth between Windows and openBSD, but this is pretty well solved on Fedora, Ubuntu, and openSUSE out of the box. Maybe the best is openSUSE which has the proper chainloader patch to boot Windows from GRUB in Secure Boot mode, obviating the need to go through the firmware's boot manager to switch between OS's. If openBSD install media lacks UEFI support, it isn't a deal killer, however it makes it rather substantially less "out of the box" if this isn't just dealt with at install time like it is on at least those three linux distributions.

Perhaps the fact that simply installing an operating system and being shocked that it worked isn't really enough to start a mass migration.

OpenBSD is awesome...but anything that uses X windows isn't going to be the majority desktop anytime soon.

I'm pretty sure his surprise is that it mostly works out of the gate, not that it is a completely tailored experience to his desires. Having it boot to a desktop and have network access is a pretty big deal, especially with the expectations for a BSD that would have been set more along the lines of "server" for me and not "desktop experience."

I'm also sure he's joking that this is the year of the BSD desktop, and it's a funny joke.

The thing to remember in these "ready for the desktop" debates is that for 95% of Windows or Mac OS users, they never experience the initial installation and configuration of the OS. The manufacturer of the computer does that, and it (hopeully) "just works" out of the box. All the necessary drivers are preinstalled and the OS is configured for that specific combination of hardware.

With Linux or BSD on the other hand, you're almost certainly installing it yourself. The basic install for most distros and even OpenBSD is just about as painless as it could be, but even "simple" questions such as using existing partitions or creating new are going to lose a lot of folks, to say nothing of tweaking config files, choosing and configuring a window manager, etc.

Hand a user a computer with a properly installed modern Linux or BSD desktop, and most would be just fine. So "ready for the desktop" is not really anything to do with the state of the OS, it's all to do with someone actually selling a PC with that OS properly installed and configured.

I tried installing OpenBSD 5.6 with XFCE on a Thinkpad X300, and I didn't have any trouble with the hardware I use, or the base system, in fact everything looks well though out and documented in the manpages. (Gnome works too but it feels quite slow even on Linux)

In the end I switched back to Linux when I encountered trouble with applications from the ports, for example libreoffice dumping core everytime you click somewhere in a spreadsheet. I did write down all the tweaks/configuration that I've done on the system in an ansible script, and my plan is to try again with the next release, and report some bugs if it still fails.

No.

I think what the BSDs do is great and they are fantastic for servers of varied types and sizes however running it on a laptop is backwards. The power management and hardware support just aren't there, even in Linux, to rival the kind of integration Apple has with it's hardware and OSX. You can get close with Linux or windows on a thinkpad, sure, but running BSD on X where X isn't a server is not the way forward for a non commercial desktop.

Yes Linux and OSX have their own problems today but they aren't the the ones discussed in this article. Sometimes you have to suffer through changes and progress for the end result.

I'm not an OpenBSD user (I was briefly, but now use Linux or OS X because of software availability, though I may go back at some point), however, one thing I really like about OpenBSD is the philosophy of doing it their own way. It's very opinionated and I find that to be a good thing. One of the things I find frustrating with Linux is that it tries to be everything, which is good for flexibility, but bad in some other respects. OS X on the other hand has a lot of opacity to me, and I'm not particularly fond of Xcode or objective-C.

The year of the mixed desktop is upon us. Who can afford to use just one OS these days?

I use OSX because it's a Unix that runs Photoshop and Python. I use Linux because the hardware is readily available through /dev and its USB stack is sturdy enough to put up with my crappy firmware. I use Windows because that's the only place a lot of tools (e.g., embedded debuggers) and games are available.

The web browser has really made it possible for me to be mostly OS agnostic for most "normal" users' desktop needs (email, documents, video, music, &etc).

A lot of people get a bad first impression by trying OpenBSD in virtualization, if you want to see how it really performs then try it out on your laptop.

OpenBSD has kernel modesetting (KMS) for Intel and AMD graphics. Here's a video from OpenBSD's GNOME 3 port maintainer, Antoine Jacoutot:

https://www.bsdfrog.org/tmp/undeadly-gnome.webm

He's running 5.5 release in this video, and it looks much better in person. Of course, things have improved in 5.6 and the upcoming 5.7.

2000 should have been the year of the UNIX/Linux desktop. Windows XP was late, users were fed up with Windows 95 crashing, the Internet bolt-ons for Windows 95 were not very good, and Windows 2000 wasn't compatible with many old 16-bit applications. There was a big window of opportunity there. It was missed.

When XP was EOL'd, I started wiping old systems (most in rough shape or running some kind of malware) and installing Lubuntu. Everything has worked with little or no adjustments, most importantly printers. We use Terminal services for the few Windows apps that people need, but otherwise they rarely use it.

Does Is there a desktop Carlisle of being secure enough for OpenBSD? Last time I installed it X and window managers were in ports and therefore didn't get the same kind of scrutiny as the rest of the OS. If you're wrecking security by installing an insecure GUI you may as well run Linux.

".profile - This file is loaded for each new logon session. In order to get it to reload fully, you need to logout and back in."

Just use the dot command in the shell, like if still in your home directory ". .profile" Or if in root, ". ./.profile"

There is no need to log out and in again.

Rufius do you have any clarification on what trouble you ran into with FreeBSD 9.x?

Funny to read an article that says that "X" is going to become main stream and who opens the argument with

"I won't cover how to burn an ISO to a CD."

Highly recommend you try Arch Linux. But if you don't like to configure anything then Ubuntu may be a better choice for you.

2015 the year of elementary os on mid 2007 iMac! everything works out of box, except have to do source compile for emacs 24.4.

The most important part of the post was: "YMMV." Believe me, it will.

ridiculous, they missed almost every techinical progress of the last decade. Also this "year of the desktop" stuff is linked to usability. Debian or Fedroa do a nice job there nowadays.

Of course no screenshot. What did I expect ...

Did they finally implemented command history in shell? Last time I used OpenBSD it was considered as possible attack vector.

I don't understand programmers who say that Linux has so and so unsolvable problem.

A certain program running on Linux has a problem on your particular hardware? You wanted a Unix environment, so surely you've investigated the market for compatibility with Linux, when you purchased your hardware.

Second, I've been running arch linux with standard packages on several random laptops and desktops and never had any problem whatsover. It's been my main OS for years. Actually my only OS.

Third, a certain program crashes/ has a bug on your hardware? Then switch that program with something else. If what you care about is a Unix environment for programming, and Gnome is having some problem with your hardware, than switch to Xfce, or Xmonad, or i3 ... That the rational thing to do.

If you still want that particular program that's having problems with your hardware, because, maybe you really like the UI, then by all means fix that bug. It shouldn't take you more than a few minutes, at most a couple of hours in 90% of the times. This assuming you're a C programmer, of course, and maybe some experience with device drivers.

If you're not a hacker, don't like playing with the internals of various userland programs or OS components, then don't compare Linux with Mac or other commercial crap. Set up a bounty for fixing your problem, or donate to the Linux foundation, or the software you would want improved.

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This being said, I'm currently in the process of switching to FreeBSD (later maybe some other BSDs), because of the cleaner, lighter code-base.

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LE: apparently, as seen by recent down-voting patterns on some of my latest comments, there aren't a lot of hackers on this site. I don't see why a reply that expresses an opinion that is not hurtful to anyone would warrant downvotes, but who cares.