It is my growing opinion that OpenBSD is really annoying.
It's supposed to be annoying, mind you. that's what makes it secure. That's why its logo is a puffer fish, but being annoying for a reason doesn't mean it's not annoying.
It's like, we all have that friend, right? They're super annoying, but you understand why so you tolerate it.
It's supposed to be annoying, mind you. that's what makes it secure. That's why its logo is a puffer fish, but being annoying for a reason doesn't mean it's not annoying.
It's like, we all have that friend, right? They're super annoying, but you understand why so you tolerate it.
@sj_zero Why is it annoying? For me, the lack of a modern filesystem is one annoyance. Beyond that, haven't tried it in depth enough to have an opinion on the level of annoyance.
To understand why I found openBSD annoying, you have to understand what I was using immediately beforehand.
I started on ubuntu, which is something that's familiar to me. All the tools are gnu tools I'm familar with, and it took a few tries to build a package with dependencies but it was ultimately completely doable. Not only can you chroot into a base distro install easily, with linux you're basically able to chroot into different distros which is quite useful. The qemu/binfmt method is amazing -- it lets you chroot into a different CPU architecture's distribution and operate as if you're running natively. It's possible to build an entire matrix of linux distributions and platforms without what is typically considered cross-compilation, and all from one command line.
Next I moved to Haiku. It also used standard gnu utils, gcc and gnu make, and the shell was bash. Package installation and creation with dependencies were both really straightforward. Honestly, working on Haiku even fully through the shell was enough to convince me it's a solid OS worth looking at. I didn't try chrooting. The options for APIs were nice, havng extensive bsd and linux shims for cross-compatibility, as well as native APIs such as the window APIs.
After that I was on FreeBSD. That particular BSD has a lot in common with linux, and it's quite forgiving to compile on, to install on, and FreeBSD really wants you to be building in chroot jails. There are 3 major versions active at any one time and you really want to build and package for each with integrated dependencies, I did exactly that and it went very smoothly. There were few to no surpises.
Next I was on OpenBSD, and I got pretty annoyed. It really doesn't want you using gnu utils, but I need them for what I'm doing so I felt like a second class citizen. The make you call is totally incompatible with gmake. The shell is a bsd shell incompatible with bash. You can chroot, but you can't really spin up an isolated OS for compilation and testing because of limits on the local commands. A lot of files are in unusual spots. Everything else I used so far was able to use non pie/pic libraries without problems but you couldn't even build them on openbsd. The packaging tool has command line options documented for adding dependencies but it doesn't look like you can actually do that without going through their ports system which relies heavily on bsd/make. Then when I finally decided to pull the pin and generate a package without deps, I couldn't open a file dialog box in firefox because it was locked down too much, so I had to install a file manager to drag and drop my updated file onto my nextcloud to get the file off the system.
So yeah, it's just really annoying trying to do what I was trying to do on OpenBSD. I moved to netBSD afterwards and it shares some quirks with OpenBSD I've thankfully already resolved, but even then it isn't nearly as locked down so for example I checked and at least in firefox I was able to open a dialog box with no drama.
But, as I said before, it's all for a reason. OpenBSD didn't make those choices to mess with some dummy from the sticks. They made them as part of their security minded design. For that reason I can find it super annoying, but I can also understand it. If I wanted a thing that would happily just do as it was told, I've got lots of options. But if I wanted something that would not have a root exploit in its base install for years and years, obviously I'm going to pick OpenBSD.
I started on ubuntu, which is something that's familiar to me. All the tools are gnu tools I'm familar with, and it took a few tries to build a package with dependencies but it was ultimately completely doable. Not only can you chroot into a base distro install easily, with linux you're basically able to chroot into different distros which is quite useful. The qemu/binfmt method is amazing -- it lets you chroot into a different CPU architecture's distribution and operate as if you're running natively. It's possible to build an entire matrix of linux distributions and platforms without what is typically considered cross-compilation, and all from one command line.
Next I moved to Haiku. It also used standard gnu utils, gcc and gnu make, and the shell was bash. Package installation and creation with dependencies were both really straightforward. Honestly, working on Haiku even fully through the shell was enough to convince me it's a solid OS worth looking at. I didn't try chrooting. The options for APIs were nice, havng extensive bsd and linux shims for cross-compatibility, as well as native APIs such as the window APIs.
After that I was on FreeBSD. That particular BSD has a lot in common with linux, and it's quite forgiving to compile on, to install on, and FreeBSD really wants you to be building in chroot jails. There are 3 major versions active at any one time and you really want to build and package for each with integrated dependencies, I did exactly that and it went very smoothly. There were few to no surpises.
Next I was on OpenBSD, and I got pretty annoyed. It really doesn't want you using gnu utils, but I need them for what I'm doing so I felt like a second class citizen. The make you call is totally incompatible with gmake. The shell is a bsd shell incompatible with bash. You can chroot, but you can't really spin up an isolated OS for compilation and testing because of limits on the local commands. A lot of files are in unusual spots. Everything else I used so far was able to use non pie/pic libraries without problems but you couldn't even build them on openbsd. The packaging tool has command line options documented for adding dependencies but it doesn't look like you can actually do that without going through their ports system which relies heavily on bsd/make. Then when I finally decided to pull the pin and generate a package without deps, I couldn't open a file dialog box in firefox because it was locked down too much, so I had to install a file manager to drag and drop my updated file onto my nextcloud to get the file off the system.
So yeah, it's just really annoying trying to do what I was trying to do on OpenBSD. I moved to netBSD afterwards and it shares some quirks with OpenBSD I've thankfully already resolved, but even then it isn't nearly as locked down so for example I checked and at least in firefox I was able to open a dialog box with no drama.
But, as I said before, it's all for a reason. OpenBSD didn't make those choices to mess with some dummy from the sticks. They made them as part of their security minded design. For that reason I can find it super annoying, but I can also understand it. If I wanted a thing that would happily just do as it was told, I've got lots of options. But if I wanted something that would not have a root exploit in its base install for years and years, obviously I'm going to pick OpenBSD.
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@sj_zero Ahh... got it. Thank you very much for the detailed description.
Do you work as a developer? For me, I've mostly worked in operations, so most, if not all, software already was compiled and ready to go, so never had to mess around with compiling and stuff, except for my own small hobby projects.
No, I'm just a retard from the sticks. Whenever I announce completion of the project I'm working on, you'll see just how retarded I am.
You'll be like "Wait, you just spent all this time and effort to do *THIS*?
You'll be like "Wait, you just spent all this time and effort to do *THIS*?