I downloaded the OpenBSD ISO and tried to run install, but after reading the online documentation and manual pages, it appears to be a daunting prospect to get it to dual boot with Windows, as it doesn't install any boot loader by default and also requires very careful partitioning with the rather arcane "fdisk" utility (I shudder involuntarily)

So is OpenBSD worth the effort of installing on a desktop system?

I ask because I am very interested in exploring and learning a "true" UNIX like operating system and OpenBSD seems to currently be closest to the original BSD roots. I also feel the OpenBSD documentation seems to be pretty decent though rather verbose.

I installed FreeBSD earlier, but it seems to be stubborn about not connecting to my wireless network with WEP encryption in spite of my repeated efforts of 2 days (believe me, I tried everything documented and even used wpa_supplicant but no dice.) So I've reluctantly abandoned it.

What should I watch out for?

The OBSD installer is imho just as "easy" as Slackware.
The partitioning is different though (default settings are usually to small). If you follow their guide and increase the minimal sizes, it shouldn't be a problem.

It's a good and ultra stable/secure system if you don't need cutting edge packages and 3D support.

As for most "original BSD", OBSD itself is based/forked from NetBSD.

Hi Harishankar,

I tried OpenBSD about 2 years ago. In fact, much like yourself, I posted here about it:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...puter-441113/?

There are some good responses in that thread from Randux.

I gave up on it a few days later. I found it to be too much effort (for less functionality) compared to Linux.

The default installation is ridiculously skinny, which is why they can say that there are no security holes in it. There's not much else than a kernel, a shell and a handful of CLI utilities.

One thing which annoyed me was the use of a chain loader, which meant that the OS had to be installed on a primary partition. Linux is more flexible in this regard. You can boot it from anywhere on your system.

The biggest problem I had was with WPA support, but I'd expect that they'd have sorted that out by now.

Another issue was the length of time it took to install all of the packages I wanted. There was no command you can use to "install everything on the CD". If there was, I couldn't find it. For whatever reason, they ship quite a few conflicting packages, which would cause a "for" loop to crash out.

At the end of the day, I couldn't justify the time spent in trying to install it properly for the results I got compared to my Linux systems.

Cheers,

R

jens, FreeBSD's installer was far easier. More like Slackware and used a more familiar Ncurses based setup. OBSD's text based approach is easy for people wanting a "default" setup, but on a multi-OS machine, it can be a bit daunting - especially the disklabel part.

rkelsen, I actually found your thread while searching for OpenBSD multi-boot here.

I think it's a good idea for educational purposes to try and install OpenBSD, but for me, I've set up pretty much everything I want in Linux, so I agree with your assessment that it cannot replace Linux for me.

Also I couldn't configure wireless on FreeBSD no matter how many different things I tried - on ifconfig it simply said : "Status: no carrier" in spite of my configuring the interface correctly and trying both with traditional WEP and WPA - so I can relate to your own frustration.

But still, maybe if I use the x86 ISO, I could use virtualbox as a test bed and see how it goes.

Just something I noticed. If you are installing NetBSD for it's security, why are you using WEP?

I know all about WEP's security flaws if that's what you mean. I always prefer wired networks, but unfortunately the world (especially the corporate world) seems insistent on complicating matters by switching to wireless entirely because of the lower cost of installation and setup.

To answer your question: my office uses WEP for one of its wireless networks and WPA-PSK for the other.

Neither worked on FreeBSD and I gave up after repeated and persistent efforts. On Linux, I had to use ndiswrapper to get my USB wireless card to work (I changed it later to PCI) but even that seems flaky.

Just a little note - I've fired up Virtualbox on my Debian box to try OpenBSD. And so far so good.

It's certainly much less daunting when you can play around with the OS without being scared of trashing the hard disk. Also I can really experiment as much as I like with the partition setup.

I'm actually getting the FTP install to work now as I write this inside of vbox.

Edit: The FTP failed with a disk full error even with a 4.5 GB partition. I guess virtualbox isn't as perfect after all.

OpenBSD isn't daunting at all to operate. The documentation is light-years better than anything else out there, even better than most commercial products. Perhaps dual-booting is tricky, I never had to try that. I always use VMware when I'm going to need to run more than one OS on a particular piece of hardware.

OpenBSD is not an OS to "try for the heck of it", and I have to just shake my head at people who would try to "install every package on the disk". If you don't have a reason to install OpenBSD, don't install it. It's not like trying different Linux distributions as if they are multiple flavors of ice cream, looking of which one tastes best... Use OpenBSD if you want a very easy-to-configure, extremely well-documented, highly-secure server (especially firewall). If you're trying to do something else, don't use OpenBSD.

Reading a few mailing list entries, I perceived something of the same attitude from the OpenBSD community as being somewhat patronizing.

But...

What's wrong with "trying for the heck of it"? I have the time, the curiosity and the learning aptitude required for it and it's not like I am going to be anything other than a novice BSD user. And I'm not even ashamed to say that I personally might never use BSD on a production system or even a desktop. It's just too much work.

In the meantime, my motivation for "trying it out" is that I want to learn. And any *NIX-like system is a good learning environment.

(By the way, the "disk full" error is actually a documented bug with Virtualbox with OpenBSD and nothing to do with installing all packages available. I didn't even download a few MB before this error cropped up.)

If you need wpa support, install the -current tree, it is the best wpa suport in any os and the easiest to use.

The OpenBSD community can see patronising to outsiders, but the fact is almost everything you'd ever need to know is in the FAQ

No complaints about the documentation.

I just feel that sometimes people on online forums and mailing lists misread the intentions of new users and try to drive them back where they came from. I think it's necessary to understand the spirit in which I'm approaching the problem.

Certainly I am a BSD novice and I don't intend to use it for regular everyday computing! But that doesn't mean I haven't a clue as to what it's about or that I'm not curious enough to learn.

That almost makes it sound as if it's not usable as a normal desktop system.
I run it on my laptop since 2.x
Stability is good enough as a reason.

...and I originally did "try it for the heck of it"

My "install all packages" comment was directed to this:
As for not using OpenBSD "just to try", that's because the typical attitude of casual users is "I don't have the time to figure this out, so someone please tell me how to do it". Everything about OpenBSD is documented in the FAQ (just like FreeBSD), or in one of the hundreds of beautiful man pages. People who actually have a real purpose to use the OS are going to take the time to read about what they are trying to do and understand it. Someone who is "just playing" typically doesn't even have a clear idea about what they want to do, let alone the patience to read the instructions. No one wants to help that kind of user--they're a nuisance.

There isn't much to "learn" about OpenBSD. If you follow the FAQ you have a functional system setup in an hour or two... then what? Well you have a very secure, very minimal box. There aren't dozens of knobs and dials to turn and explore, and there's no fancy GUI to navigate through (you could install a WM, but there isn't a system default with all kinds of control-panels). So what are you going to "learn"? OpenBSD is just a minimalist installation of UNIX (407MB on disk in my typical install) with a lot of specialized daemons for professional-grade networking, but it's certainly not something a casual home-user is going to appreciate.

OpenBSD users tend to be networking & security professionals and enthusiasts. If you're not a networking junky, chances are OpenBSD won't be very interesting.

This is not quite true; the default installation comes with three different window managers (twm, fvwm and cwm), a name server (Bind), a mail server (Sendmail), a web server (Apache), a firewall (pf), a spam deferral daemon (spamd), ntpd, dhcpd, snmp and hosts of other things. And with all these the default installation has only two remote holes in more than 10 years. Try that with any Linux distributions and commercial Unices like Solaris.

If you are a feature-creep and want to install everything then maybe OpenBSD is not for you.

According to http://www.openbsd.org/43.html, OpenBSD has over 4,900 ports.

In my opinion OpenBSD is the most cleanest and bloat-free O.S. out there.

OpenBSD isn't a "spam the forums with your question and have it fixed in 30 minutes" kind of operating system. OpenBSD requires a bit more...patience and determination. I spent years learning Linux, and when I moved on to BSD it was tempting to say "But *Gentoo* does this like *this*" and reinstall Linux. I could've followed that temptation, of course, but then I'd never learn much more past Linux.

And yeah, when you get the idea to upgrade from OpenBSD-STABLE to OpenBSD-CURRENT and you cry afterwards because your system won't boot anymore, it's frustrating...but I guarantee if you read the docs you'll see the step you overlooked...and that's even more frustrating than the initial failure.

But honestly, I've nuked dozens more Linux systems with "meh...I know what I'm doing..." and a terminal. I guess I've come to respect the OpenBSD developers for putting the effort they have into man pages and documentation (FreeBSD's docs are quite nice, too), so I tend to plan ahead a bit and think more about what I'm trying to accomplish before I open a terminal and fire off a command I'd later regret.