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OpenBSD 7.6 release :marseypuffer:

https://www.openbsd.org/76.html
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Can anyone good vibes me on OpenBSD??? I dont get it :marseysad: Why would you use it over Linux???

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GNU/Linux :marseypenguin: uses the :soyjakdancing: GPL license, whereas OpenBSD :marseydaemon: uses the :marseychadthundercock: BSD license.

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Frick GPL, any r-slur calling MIT or BSD a "cuck" license should see what Oracle and RedHat have been doing with the GPL.

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Are you familiar with BSDs? BSDs are conventionally written with a "base" system in mind. This means your coreutils, essential system binaries, and even things like your X server are written in house along with the kernel. This is in comparison to Linux where each distro mixes and matches their system utilities and the kernel is made as its own thing. :marseychef:

This gets you a very holistic OS where everything in the base system is built for everything else. Everything ends up being meticulously documented and in sync with each other. :marseyreading:

OpenBSD in particular likes approaching code from a "security first" and "code correctness" perspective. :marseyglow:

Now, there are plenty of drawbacks. OpenBSD itself is quite slow. It's very easy to feel this difference if you have installed Linux on a system before you put OpenBSD on it. The driver situation is also much worse than Linux. You're not going to plug in random hardware and have it work unless it's generic USB or something. Both of these issues are more apparent on OpenBSD than FreeBSD, who is much less restrictive on code quality, licensing, and security posturing. It also remains to be seen if all of OpenBSD's security approaches are even based in reality ( see https://isopenbsdsecu.re ) :marseyveryworriedfed:

The feature set on OpenBSD is also very "scratch your own itch"- things like the filesystem are woefully out of date simply because no one has been interested in tackling it. You can also see this ethos in OpenBSD's source control where they still use the very dated cvs management system but someone is developing a git compatible source control management system from scratch. https://www.gameoftrees.org :marseynotes:

OpenBSD's "in-house" "security first" approach has lead them to pioneer widespread utilities and libraries like tmux, libressl and openssh.

It should also be noted BSDs are quite fond of "BSD licenses". These are usually liberal licenses that state "use this code for whatever you want, just say it's mine". Linux and the Linux ecosystem were historically more fond of "copyleft licenses" which stated "you can use this code for whatever but you MUST give back your source code/changes." :marseypenguin:

This has lead to FreeBSD being used in things like Juniper networking gear, TrueNAS file servers, or even the PS4 and PS5- hence the term "cuck license" when referring to BSD. :marseycuck:

Now the overarching question of "why" use OpenBSD is kind of hard to determine. I think the best case is using it as a hobbyist OS where you can "know" just about every component of the system. This is pretty unheard of in the modern era where everyone just wants to ship and ship fast, there's little time for cracking open the man pages and really understanding your operating system from first principles. :marseymonk:

!fosstards

PS I didn't touch on it either but another cool feature of OpenBSD is "base compiles base" which means if something can run OpenBSD it can compile OpenBSD from source - this includes all the super wacky architectures and systems on their "platforms" page. https://www.openbsd.org/plat.html I actually wrote about the weirdo Chinese MIPS processor they have listed there.

https://rdrama.net/h/slackernews/post/137520/homegrown-chink-laptop-marseyjewoftheorientnot-intel-or

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One practical reason: the BSD's, particularly OpenBSD's networking stack is infinitely better than the Cisco-bankrolled systemd/networkmanager/ufw/iproute2/iptables/netfilter pile of bullshit. I have vowed to never touch a Linux router again if I can avoid it.

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FreeBSD could be argued to have a performance leg up to Linux in networking (Netflix puts a lot of R&D there) however it also has three different firewalls in base...pretty moot if you're in the ability to choose your OS to this level (i.e. you don't need to worry about legacy firewalls).

OpenBSD just has pf but the performance is gonna be balls if you're doing even 1Gb networking let alone anything business class.

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You can type 10,000 characters and you decided that these were the one's that you wanted.

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Linux is just the operating system you use because you are some sort of techno hipster and bsd allows you to out hipster even those people

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The fat albert fish personally protects your PCs from glowies and saars trying to get ur doxx :marseypuffer:

Extreme security and custom tooling :peek:

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Most of the time I've encountered OpenBSD out it in the wild it was being used as a firewall. Once you get used to PF it's pretty nice.

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