hello

i was wondering... who really uses openbsd as a day to day operating system on your personal computer?
with what kind of machine? for which reasons?
what motivated your choice?
does it brought you some issues with different crossed systems, eg using computer at a specific place (office, public organization..), or with some people dealing only with win/macos?

what is the impression of your relatives, or other people, when they see this rare os and how they "understand" philosophy of openbsd?

how would you convince another oss operating system user to taste openbsd, or even to have it for a longer term?
or just to make people understand you're using a different system?



(i ask those questions because i discovered that os recently, and looks like to be not so known, in addition of being really under the linux shadow, plus im wondering why so few people are running it..)

thank you for answers!

The BSD were the first free unix like systems, but there was a couple of files that were in dispute, & eventually got re writes - unfortunately by this time, Linux was just taking off, & the BSD got side lined.

I've run FreeBSD, NetBSD, & OpenBSD, there were/are driver problems regarding some peripherals, wifi in particular, (& graphics), that held/holds them back from more general use.

Linux gets drivers for new kit quite quickly these days, but some kit still isn't supported on BSD.

If you know what you are doing, & all your system is supported, they are just as easy to use as Linux - I keep my hand in with Open & Net, in case the 'commercial interests' really mess up Linux - pulseaudio/systemd are examples - unnecessary 'improvements' that the commercial company (RedHat) instigated - everything worked perfectly as it was.

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I tried Openbsd once because I was curious. It's a bit of a weird experience coming to it from Linux because it's so similar in many ways but also so different. But I quickly saw that if I was going to make it work for me as well as Linux does, I would have to make it my main system, install a lot of applications and use it every day. And frankly I didn't have the energy when Linux already gives me everything I need.

I tried it also. It's another big learning curve.

On the positive side, it is more secure. On the negative side, there is a lot more paranoia and a lot less support. You inevitably end up compiling software designed for glibc based systems on BSD's libc, which means compiling and patches. Things like flatpacks or AppImages won't be much use to you. Neither will the the precompiled packages we use every day. Can you run Firefox on BSD? Zoom? FPGA Software? etc. etc.

I think BSD's niche is for internet-facing boxes running firewalls or servers. It's true BSD is free of systemd, etc.

So, th answer your question: Only a minority with a distaste for linux and a willingness to do without run BSD.

Most GNU software will run on BSD, a lot of is in their own repos.

Ask your questions at one or more of the various 'BSD forums or mailing lists in order to get informed responses. This is a Linux site, so you will mostly only get responses from Linux users who dabbled briefly and couldn't make it work for them. Most of said users barely understand the differences between the four main projects, let alone how to install and correctly configure one.

I use OpenBSD to test software I develop on Slackware, it can find issues that do not show up under Linux. Some of this software was targeted for use on AIX at work. I have OpenBSD in a Thinkpad T420. I say I use OpenBSD about 30% of the time.

I do not fully understand the meaning of this, but no issues with people using MACs or Windows. When at work, you are forced to use the OS your company provides. Right now we have a choice of RHEL, MAC and Windows, I went with RHEL. When RHEL 8 goes EOL, we will be told to migrate to Fedora.


None, most people have no idea what they are seeing and it tends to get translated into some kind of Microsoft thingy. Same happens when on Linux. I did get 1 question from someone asking if I was using MS-DOS.

Do yourself a favor, do not do try this at home You will end up being a free Help Desk for the rest of your life. For all Operating Systems your friends and relatives use.

For me, I keep my hands in both OpenBSD and NetBSD as an "escape route". Plus when I write a utility I want it to be portable to those systems.

Linux seems to be heading in a direction I do not like. Right now Slackware is fighting this trend and I hope the team is able to resist these trends. They have been successful by using some magic I do not understand and that is way over my head

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Answer: You don't.

Let people use what they want to use. They need to be confident that their system can give them what they need from it. If that means they end up using an OS you don't like, then so be it. You'll have an excuse when they call you for help. If you push them to use something, then they will call you for help with every little niggle they come across.

You should learn about it first. You need to know where it's strengths lie, and what it's weaknesses are before you go recommending anything to anyone.

My advice to you as a newcomer is to use virtual machines. This will allow you to try many different OSes, to see what you like about them and what you don't.
On the contrary, it is very well known by the people who care enough to know such things. Unfortunately, they're not in the majority.

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Indeed. But you can't install linux packages into BSD. So precompiled Browsers, things like Zoom won't run. FPGA software is a poor example, because some source is available, although most precompile linux versions rather than support their source.

There's lots of pre compiled software for BSD, it's just like Linux, you use their package manager to install them to you computer.

You obviously are more familiar with BSD than me. Compare linux software vs BSD software, as you know them both.

I think BSD has the main planks of the OS and Internet/database usage, but falls behind on eye candy and home user software like the programs I mentioned.

You mentioned Firefox, FPGA Software (but not which), and Zoom.

• Mozilla's Firefox has been available as an installable package for OpenBSD since 2004. I'm replying from Firefox version 118 on an OpenBSD system at the moment. No issues.
• There are some FPGA tools in the package repository, such as OpenOCD or the gEDA suite. The gEDA CAD suite was ported to OpenBSD in 2010, and OpenOCD in 2009. I haven't used any FPGA tool, including these two, so can't comment on their scope of capability under the OS.
• Zoom's web client has been reported to work "just fine" and in daily use via the Chromium browser on OpenBSD by one of the OS developers, via email to the Project's misc@ mailing list in 2021. I'm not a Zoom user, so can't report any usability specifics.

I tend to just use simple programs myself, but I have Fluxbox, with Firefox, VLC, MC (my favourite, use it on all systems, Linux or BSD), & a few others, everything that I personally need to use a computer, & the installation is just as good as any Linux distro.

That's better than I thought. I purposely didn't mention whose FPGA software because each chip manuacturer distributes massive packages comprising editors, a simulator (Perhaps geda) and all their chip data. It's nearly 10 years since I was at FPGAs, so I'm understandably rusty.

Zoom, OTOH could well be a bummer. The package is ballooning massively. I would not put store in a 2021 trial, when zoom was only getting off the ground.

Usually, you won't find any closed-source third party application packages ported to OpenBSD. OpenBSD is an open-source research project whose members (the developers) will not sign NDAs for closed-source access and will not accept binary blobs. While a third party could certainly do its own porting, and faded memory tells me that one or two third parties have done this in the past, usually the audience for such an application is generally too small to justify that third party's support and maintenance effort.

The only partial exception to this that I can recall was Ports Tree scaffolding, just to simplify the installation of the 32-bit Linux binary of the Opera browser and its Flash plugin for use under the OpenBSD/i386 Linux emulation layer that was available at the time. This simplified provisioning a browser with video prior to the advent of HTML5. Note that the Opera browser was never ported to nor packaged for OpenBSD, and was never distributed through the Project's package repositories.