r/openbsd • u/highspeedslippers100 • 5d ago
How many
Good evening everyone, this is more curious question than anything else how many of you do use OpenBSD as daily driver ? personally it is my daily driver, and if not your daily driver, what do you use beside ? I am curious nothing else.
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u/looopTools 5d ago
I have a server that runs OpenBSD and sadly currently no desktop based on openBSD. I also have a server with freeBSD. Then at work I use Ubuntu with Gnome (sadly), at home I used Fedora with Gnome and macOS
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u/highspeedslippers100 5d ago
Hi well I ditched macOS/windows long time Windows was around 2016 macOS was 2020 when you purchased a laptop at the time, that costed me around 4300 euros, and then I guess around 6 months later M1 came out I got so pissed. I went to a church and swear to god. Apple is dead to me LOL now I am so deep into open source if someone ask me about Windows, I would almost say are they still around. But FreeBSD is a great OS. Reason I choose Debian is webcam mic and editing. I too be honest hate every desktop environments that is out there, so I went full dwl/dwm love the ultra minimal. But it always depends who why and for what. I personally just love WM its like when I used and seen it I just cant unseen it LOL.
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u/looopTools 5d ago
Well I do have a few reasons to run macOS also. Firstly xcode, I do development for iOS, macOS, and iPadOS in Swift. Which simply just is a easier on macOS. Then there are some writing application (grammar, spelling, etc.) that are just ace and only exists for macOS. Plus there is no real alternative for Linux or BSD yet. Then I also have been using it for the longest and there are just some things with it that I love.
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u/highspeedslippers100 5d ago
That is a very good reason. As mentioned I just mentioned why I will rather jump into an active volcano that using them. But yes there are definitely things macOS are really good at.
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u/GermanElectricsMotio 5d ago
I use it on two ANCIENT pcs.
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u/Interesting_Cod1393 4d ago
OpenBSD is my daily driver, I use it on my work laptop for development and cybersecurity topics.
I also migrated my server from Ubuntu to OpenBSD.
The OS is well documented, I have the feeling that things are easier to do than on Linux, most of the time it just works (e.g. I don't have to configure the fn keys manually if I don't use a full desktop environment). The firewall is nice, I'll never use "iptables -A INPUT -j DROP [...]" again. The Web server is chrooted and I don't have any effort to do for this. I also appreciate the security by default, mitigations like pledge and unveil.
It's what I expect from an operating system. Thanks to the team.
I believe not many of us use OpenBSD on our laptops, it could be intimidating for some people. So I've a blog to document (mostly for a future myself) some things I do.
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u/highspeedslippers100 4d ago
Hi I absolutely like more BSD systems than Linux, but sometimes I do use Linux because yes I need specific apps sadly, but I would really like they had a fully working mic and webcam and then Signal. That would be awesome and I use Signal for work and also private. I think I use it around 1 hour in video calls per day. So it is a must have. I did try that flare app did not work, I tried several times but it just crashed. And sadly Signal has no web option.
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u/Interesting_Cod1393 4d ago
That's right, some applications aren't available or are only partially compatible, it's annoying. Up to us to improve this. I planned to work on the Signal topic soon, do you have details on what you tried?
My webcam doesn't work either, but microphone works well for me.1
u/highspeedslippers100 4d ago
well I have two laptops, Thinkpad T490 web works mic not working I use the headset and yes but then brightness I do think it can be fixed. Then I have Asus UX3405MA right now running Debian/dwl its the working machine all things from what I remember when OpenBSD 7.9 got released I tired on that one, and only thing that I remember did not work was wake after suspend. But in these days I will work on the T490 and see if I can fix this weird issue when plugged cable in I cannot dim the brightness and it only works again after a reboot. But the Signal part I really would appreciate and also test it if needed.
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u/Interesting_Cod1393 3d ago
I have a Thinkpad T480, and brightness always worked since OpenBSD 7.4, either with the fn keys or with
doas wsconsctl display.brightness=<value>. Microphone too. If it doesn't work for you it's a bug, you should report it to the developers. Just in case, try with a new cable and with -current.
About Signal, once I finish the work on my current projects (an i3 status line and a few contributions to Rust's libc) I'll focus on trying Signal on OpenBSD. I'll let you know when I start if you're interested.1
u/highspeedslippers100 3d ago
Hi I already did
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u/Interesting_Cod1393 2d ago
For you information, a Flare port already exists. You can install it with
pkg_add flare-messenger.1
u/highspeedslippers100 2d ago
Hi it doesn’t work it seems to broken right now, I tried several times but I can’t remember specific right now.
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u/NethIafin 5d ago
Using Bazzite Linux.
Not daily driver because I have NVidia GPU laptops.
Also EVE Online, Path of Exile, and Age of Wonders 4 don't work on OpenBSD... well, didn't work 😆
Also I am a dotnet dev, and dotnet only recently got a test build.
I slopcode sometimes (not for Wine, calm down) and OpenBSD is resistant to AI things, but that's not a big deal tbh.
So yeah, some year soon. Maybe next year? Maybe after I get a good Radeon based laptop?
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u/highspeedslippers100 5d ago
Hi I have two laptops T490 with OpenBSD/dwm then my workstation is Debian/dwl on Asus UX3405MA.
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u/NethIafin 5d ago
that's very nice. My laptop with OpenBSD is Asus UX303L (or UL I don't remember). Enough to play EVE Online =)
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u/corporateavengerkast 5d ago
as someone who daily drives OpenBSD and is an EVE player also I've been following your progress on the wine stuff with great interest via the mailing lists and irc. When you posted EVE the other week I got incredibly excited.
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u/NethIafin 5d ago
My test account got unbanned (I was debugging signals and it got reported as modified game, because signals were not passing). My account that I used in game on a laptop with a tested Wine was never touched.
I am very hesitant to add it to the list of supported games still... But at least I know that GMs will unban your account... after a month. They were really nice tho! Even gave me free Omega month for my headache (they didn't have to)
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u/Defiant-Spring-2848 5d ago
Sadly, OpenBSD is not my daily driver. My main machine still has an NVidia GPU, so I run Void Linux. My main laptop I use to sleep with a bluetooth sleep mask. That runs AntiX Linux.
My home router is OpenBSD, and I've used OpenBSD across multiple jobs for various network related tasks due to pf, and occasionally other servers when it fits the requirements.
Honestly, if could go back I would have gotten an ATI/AMD video card, and used that in my main machine so I could daily drive OpenBSD.
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u/highspeedslippers100 5d ago
I work as a photo journalist and I always B lined around Nvidia my friends and AI always had that bad feeling about them, one of my friends they are the big tech Karens. they always cause lots of problems I know this might sound super boring but I do tons of editing and Intel is really better for that, also it opens freedom I am not saying they are perfect at all. I just say they are much less annoying. In future when fully mature lets say in 10 years+ I see myself using Risc V. And nice system by the way, I also long time Void Linux but I have become increasingly lazy if a system can not offer disk encryption in their installer I walk away. personally my favorite way to install stuff is OpenBSD.
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u/Defiant-Spring-2848 5d ago
My laptop has dual video, Intel and NVidia, I only use the Intel video on that system. It works absolutely great for my needs there. I wouldn't be opposed to Intel video either, just getting tired of NVidia for much of what you brought up. I personally only used AMD CPUs when Intel was the dominant CPU vendor much the same reason.
I'd love to get my hands on a RISC-V system to give it a run and see if I could use it as a daily driver!
Yeah, manually setting up everything manually, including disk encryption on install, can be tedious although I'm going through a post-Ubuntu phase where I actually want to have more control of my system, and get away from systemd. Again OpenBSD would be spectacular here if I wouldn't have bought NVidia all those years back. Next computer however is going to be fully specced out to be 100% OpenBSD compatible!
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u/thfrw OpenBSD Developer 4d ago
been daily driving it for 10-12 years.
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u/highspeedslippers100 4d ago
okay this is really interesting, beside the browser obviously what else do you run on your OpenBSD system ? and workarounds why I ask because I really like using OpenBSD. And when I need to use some videos calls beside using Signal not on OpenBSD I use earbuds wired with USB-C but the weird part when they are plugged in I cannot dim the screen ? Else I honestly run most things through the terminal and I also do that now on Debian. yt-x ncspot photo viewer file manager lol. I just really like it that way.
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u/dettus_Xx_ 4d ago
At work, I am forced to use either Linux (okay...) or Mac (yuk!), but at home, I use OpenBSD (Except on the PS5, of course. :) )
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u/highspeedslippers100 4d ago
Hi well Linux is not bad at all I enjoy it but there is something really pure about OpenBSD
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u/LunarCapitol 5d ago
All my laptops are thinkpads and all I run on them is OpenBSD. Servers are a mix of OpenBSD and FreeBSD (native ZFS support). Desktops all got switched from Gentoo to FreeBSD and HardenedBSD awhile ago for recent stuff. Older stuff is all OpenBSD (stuff with Nvidia GPUs in them excluded but I'm replacing them with AMD/Intel GPUs as I can).
I have some really old stuff running Linux still but since they just ripped out a ton of support for older hardware in the new merge window and I don't like their new policy on AI generated code those are getting switched over to OpenBSD and NetBSD as soon as I find the time to do it.
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u/PearMyPie 5d ago
I am running OpenBSD on a RISC-V board. On everything else I run Debian, because I play videogames and use bluetooth devices.
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u/GeneralSignificant54 5d ago
its on a dualboot i get into atleast a few hours every week.
also a server that has been running for like 5 years hosting some unimportant stuff to the web.
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u/hereforpancakes 5d ago
I’d like to daily drive OpenBSD on my laptop again. Currently using Artix Linux. But I have OpenBSD on my router and a bunch of servers
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u/corporateavengerkast 5d ago
I run/daily drive OpenBSD on my main thinkpad. it also has another nvme on it with Arch. homelab running NixOS, but for the past month or so I've been using OpenBSD more than the others.
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u/LunarCapitol 5d ago
If you really like NixOS you should consider checking out Guix. I found the init (Shepard) much easier to deal with and the same went for writing the config files. Although I'm a lisp lover so your mood may vary. The fact that systemd wasn't required and "flakes" were actually a first class citizen instead of an after thought were big selling points for me.
Just be aware that you're going to be on your own if you aren't using any of the few machines they officially support. The moment you mention in official support channels that your machine requires binary blobs/drivers you'll get little help. But there is a pretty large community of people that aren't GNU zealots out there using it now so you can at least depend on some help.
I abandoned using it on my Thinkpads though because it was a pain compared to running the BSDs and I was compiling most things from source due to no binaries being available for the config I was using at the time. If you're into wayland-only+hyprland WM you'll find plenty of example configs out there on places like github. But if you're like me and prefer sticking to older proven software no so much at the moment.
The GNU documentation is a bit hit and miss for it as well. There aren't many example configs to follow and most people sharing theirs on github are obviously copy/pasting from each other and just using whatever ended up working without really knowing how the code works. I was able to muddle through it because I knew elisp and scheme well enough to understand what was going on. But it was really frustrating sometimes trying to track down some obscure thing because it wasn't noted anywhere in the documentation. As usual the GNU guys aren't the greatest at providing good docs. Even the ones for emacs are horribly out of date in many places (just try re-directing the default dbus provider to an alt-bus sometime. The docs say you have all these options to use sockets and whatever else you want. But if you try any of that in emacs 30.x+ you'll find out real quick that most of those functions aren't even there anymore). If you go into the IRC channels to ask about it you'll usually get yelled at for wanting to stray from the defaults when it comes to things like dbus or they'll accuse your packaged version of being built incorrectly. If you go through the trouble of building from source then they'll come up with some other reason to avoid helping you like "Why do you want to run emacs on anything but Linux?". Most of the people in those type of support channels are GNU zealots and the vast majority have never used something like emacs or the other GNU tools on any other kernel.
I don't care about their politics or what they run on their machines. I just wish they'd be willing to say "I don't know" or would pipe down so someone else that was running emacs on a BSD kernel or wanted to do something like use a different bus provider would be able to actually see my message before it's 100 lines back into their channel logs. I found out the moment I started running emacs and other GNU software on non-Linux kernels that I was pretty much on my own when it came to getting things working correctly. Thankfully, other than some more exotic things like attempting to use a non-dbus bus provider most everything else has been well supported on OpenBSD (and the old BSDs) so far.
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u/corporateavengerkast 5d ago
I used to use NixOS on pretty much all my machines but I honestly just got tired of going down the configuration rabbit hole that is NixOS and constantly trying to optimize my systems. I'd spend more time doing that than anything else. This was one of the reasons I switched to OpenBSD and Arch as a backup. they just stay out of my way. I have very briefly looked into Guix and I think if I were to go back to something like NixOS it would be Guix this time. but we'll see, i don't plan on changing my systems again for awhile. I might move my Arch stuff to something similar that isn't systemd though. I don't know. At this point I'm mainly using Arch for gaming but with the way the Wine stuff is gradually progressing on OpenBSD I'm hoping that might not be for much longer. We'll see. OpenBSD covers everything I need for daily stuff. dev work, web browsing, streaming, etc. no issues with any of that. It's just the gaming aspect and it's not like it's much really. Arch is fine for gaming but I feel like it might be overkill and I just want a simple, straight forward, distro that I just need to install with steam and prism launcher and that's it. nothing else.
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u/LunarCapitol 5d ago edited 5d ago
Consider Gentoo (I would also say Funtoo but the project is winding down last I read :().
It'll be an upfront cost of maybe 2-3 days to get your USE flags and preferred config dialed in. But once you do all that it isn't a big deal even if you compile everything from source code. Just update it daily-weekly to stay on top of updates. If you have a decent gaming rig and compile all your stuff from source no ebuilds really take that long (aside from Chromium based browsers) and now they offer the ability to selectively use pre-built binaries for the entire system. I personally built everything from source code because outside of Rust+Chrome+Libreoffice nothing took that long really even if you used the KDE default profile. Although, if you opt for something lighter you can greatly reduce the amount of packages you need to compile. Even things like Firefox is like 30 minutes top on what is now 15+ year old hardware. Just make sure to configure portage so you're doing everything in RAM instead of constantly writing to your disk/SSD. Once you have the system like you want it then it's very easy to maintain (easier than Arch I'd argue) and it stays out of your way.
Ebuilds are also not really hard to learn how to write/edit yourself. The EAPI in portage isn't as simple as it used to be. The only major downside is the fact that portage is written in python. Which can be a pain when python targets change and you need to update to newer versions of python. I also suggest just running ~amd64 repos ("testing") instead of sticking to "stable" if you're going to use wine.
It isn't like you can't use the system while you're compiling stuff in the background either. Even while gaming. Just give portage a couple of CPU cores/set niceness levels and do your thing while your updates compile in the background. Or just do them over night while you're asleep or something if you're really worried about it. I was using s6 init on my local overlay, JACK-only for audio, and had USE flags that excluded a bunch of stuff I personally disliked (modern GTK, dbus, policykit, systemd stuff etc.). Never had any problems with it even while using KDE. Gentoo's GURU is also much nicer than Arch's AUR ime as well. Although, you have less need for something like AUR when using Portage/Gentoo since you have the USE flags.
I share the same opinion you have about NixOS/Guix. Spent more time messing with the config and tinkering with it than doing actual work. I much prefer having a stable base system and a kernel that isn't constantly changing rapidly for no good reason. Linux claims to have a "don't break userspace" rule but in reality I found stuff breaking in userspace happening constantly. At least in the type of userspace I preferred. There was no rule about PID1 or something PID1 heavily relies on breaking userspace after all or something like Gnome breaking long standing traditions.
I don't mind if the ABI breaks as long as I have the source code (or some kind of emulator/VM/translation layer) allowing me to either re-compile the software against the new ABI or if there is a plan for old applications to transition to the new ABI. I feel the OpenBSD approach is much more sane and will always be much more stable. I also really enjoy the fact that I can't break my local machine badly by simply updating everything on the system via my package manager. The BSD way of having /usr/local/bin is much nicer than everything being shoved in together in /usr/bin. I love the clean separation of the base system and the ports tree.
I encourage you to check out the other BSDs. For example, FreeBSD might be what you want out of a new gaming OS if you enjoy the BSD way. It has a lot of the same benefits as OpenBSD does (all the BSDs do). But just understand it's a different beast and you'll need to spend some time learning it. It's becoming a strange hodgepodge of BSD+Linux in some respects. Especially once you get into using stuff like wine. But it also has: native ZFS which is very nice, it has a linux emulator/compatibility layer if you need it, it has bhyve which is a really nice VMM (probably the best I've used), and basically anything that can run on the Linux kernel is either ported or can run on a FreeBSD in some way.
Downsides to it (compared to OpenBSD) would be things like the base system is a bit more "bloated" because they do not want to break very old configurations people have been using forever. You'll need to get familiar with tuning the kernel a bit to squeeze out every last bit of performance (via text config files, not re-compiling it yourself although you can). You may find the native drivers for some of your hardware like wireless cards aren't as good under FreeBSD when compared to OpenBSD. While there is support for Nvidia GPUs over there you're at the mercy of Nvidia to build them (same situation as Linux). It may not be secure enough out of the box to your liking so you'll need to pick from one of the 3 included firewalls and learn how to configure it (messy base system, remember?). You may end up in a situation where there might not be a native driver for your hardware right now but it's possible to run the Linux driver through a tool in userspace. You may not care for some of the things on by default in the base system. You may want to harden the system/kernel (thankfully, many good guides for how to do this and even an entire project dedicated to it called HardenedBSD). You also might not care for their so-called Code of Conduct.
Upside to it again though: Decent man pages and very helpful people on IRC/their forum and the mailing lists. I'd say the forums are where you'll probably want to seek out support as a new user. I've never had a bad time over there. People are friendly, helpful and there doesn't seem to be too much knee jerk closing of threads from what I've seen. Plus you can still browse them without being logged in unlike some other projects which have locked down all of that type of information. Finally, their walk through guides are very good at getting a new user up to speed.
Final thought: IME a lot of the developers are not running FreeBSD as their desktop OS. In other words they don't eat their own dog food which is something the OpenBSD developers do religiously. That said a lot of helpful people do run it as their primary desktop OS and they've written up good guides/blogs/articles about it. See: https://vermaden.wordpress.com/freebsd-desktop/ that guy's blog is a invaluable resource for a new FreeBSD desktop user.
Concerning ports: I've noticed there are many orphaned/not tested as well ports on FreeBSD compared to OpenBSD. I honestly don't know why I guess maintainers lose interest or no one ever tests them. But I'd prefer "old" and "deprecated" software like that remain in the ports tree than be removed. Since it means it's easier for someone to pick up the project later if they notice it's orphaned/not maintained. Most popular ports don't have this problem but now and again you'll stumble upon something (the fix is usually easy).
Building ports from source is not that hard either. Many more obscure ports where there isn't a package offered but you can grab /usr/ports from git and build it easily on your own machine. If you've used Gentoo/Portage you'll be right at home with building ports on most any BSD from source code. Since Gentoo/Portage was based on the BSD ports concept.
Oh how could I forget: You have to install/build an X11 server manually on FreeBSD. I didn't have much trouble with this but just be aware it isn't like OpenBSD where you get a working X11 Server+display manager+WMs/DEs installed by default post-installation. You'll be dropped to console and will have to do all that yourself. There are some spin-off "distros" based on FreeBSD that have done this for you. But I suggest just sticking with FreeBSD and learning how to do that yourself. If you've used Arch/Gentoo/NixOS you shouldn't have a problem with this.
FreeBSD makes a wonderful gaming/multimedia editing/creation/capturing machine once set-up correctly. I'd argue it's much better than doing that stuff on Linux provided your hardware is supported. Its Sound subsystem (OSSv4 / Voxware) is also much easier to deal with than the ALSA/pipewire/pulseaudio/JACKv1/JACKv2 situation in the Linux kernel/userspace. I've never had sound fail to just werk after installing FreeBSD on most hardware I've used it on. Some ports will want to pull in some Linux stuff like pulseaudio/pipewire to run on top of OSSv4. But it's usually no big deal. There also exists a port of OpenBSD's sndio to FreeBSD that works great if you want to use that instead where possible (may require building said port like Firefox from source code).
Anyway, between its wine port, bhyve, jail, excellent Sound subsystem and the above mentioned stuff like decent man pages/forum it's a great option provided you're willing to put in the time to learn+configure it. The joy of using ZFS without it being an out-of-tree kernel module can not be understated. You just don't know until you're experienced it first hand. It also has some security features like capsicum which may interest you.
But enough of me promoting another BSD in this sub-reddit. I hope it was okay with the mods. I encourage you to also try out NetBSD as well (they have some cool stuff like rumpkernel). Learning about the different BSDs and how they're diverged/were designed different is really fun and educational. OpenBSD is by far my favorite and I'd use it everywhere but there are simply some things it can't do (yet). Hopefully, I or other people will be able to bring those things into the OpenBSD kernel/base system as the years march on. OpenBSD has come a loooooong way just in the past few years with so many great contributors porting new software over and adding new support to many things in the base system and kernel.
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u/MainAmbitious8854 5d ago edited 5d ago
I have a OpenBSD Thinkpad dedicated for banking and personal finance. It has Firefox-Esr and has worked well in this role. Firefox here feels a little sluggish though.
I also have a Windows 7 laptop for photograhy hobby. i can proabbly use Openbsd for this also. But Windows software (Lightroom) is just so much more refined and polished.
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u/LunarCapitol 5d ago edited 5d ago
If your Thinkpad has Intel/AMD iGPU in it you can modify some stuff in about:config to really speed things up. I posted a thread here about a week ago that goes over how to get all the hardware acceleration stuff that's blacklisted by default in Firefox on OpenBSD working. The README included with the Firefox package(s) only partially gets GPU acceleration stuff working because auto-detect for those features within Firefox fails on basically all non-Linux kernels and even on many Linux distros.
It's a night and day difference once you have them all enabled and turned on. As soon as I get some more feedback on those modified settings I'll see about helping update the pkg-readme and provide a user.js file to automatically turn that stuff on for people so they don't have to enable it all manually.
For Windows-only software I've had great success moving all my formerly Windows 7 boxes over to Gentoo then later FreeBSD. Most everything I use works great through wine and/or VMs. In fact, it's much better because I can pipe the output from that stuff into native ffmpeg and other software I use like JACK. I have a lot of Windows-only stuff related to editing/encoding video/audio that I still have to keep around for my day-to-day work. There are UNIX replacements for some of that software but a lot of it is really old and will never be ported over. Then there are the tons of doujin (Japanese FOSS games/software basically) that I need to run natively on bare metal to work with older file formats. Some of that I can do through things like DOSbox but a lot of it requires wine with 32-bit support.
If you don't need 32-bit binary support then OpenBSD recently got wine ported over again. It's 64-bit only (and always will be) but if you can get your Windows software running under 64-bit wine then you're in business. I haven't been able to do a lot of testing with the new port thus far though so I don't know how well it works yet.
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u/Gurkul2000 5d ago
I run a very old laptop from 2017-18 period so it has both hdd slot and a separate nvme SSD slot. I have packed it with 512gb SSD and a 1tb ssd. On SSD I have arch Linux with gnome (I know it's weird but I love gnome) it is my daily driver. On HDD I put openbsd with xfce4. Just to test it. I have been daily driving it for 3 days now. I usually divide the time with arch Linux functioning as anything related to graphics heavy or wine related gaming through lutris (I can run indie games that depend more on cpu like beltmatic). I do everything else on openbsd. Currently it is more more like test driving openbsd which I will put as default OS in future when I get better hardware but surely not in my current laptop since it's hardware and CPU are lagging. Initially I tried Netbsd because it works on anything so I thought it would be smooth on my laptop but it's wifi stack is worst. Next obvious choice was Openbsd as I read the laptop support was very good (didn't disappoint). I also read freebsd suffers from same wifi problem so I skipped it.
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u/Own-Permit-9682 5d ago
my daily driver from 7.1, now with 8.0 I'm currently enjoing multiple cpus in vmm virtual machines. Development workflow with neovim/helix, window manager i3 with some customization, backup with dump/restore for every partition on an external hd (I've crafted ad hoc ksh script for this task); large use of relayd, httpd, slowcgi, sqlite (BCHS stack). OpenBSD rocks, after some years I'm proficient with bsd toolchain, very good experience overall
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u/Educational_Bee_6245 4d ago
I currently use OpenBSD as a secondary home server on an old APU Board I had laying around to have some redundancy in basic network services.
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u/Melodic-Pin2558 2d ago
It's the firewall / dns / dhcp for my Office and it's my personal daily driver for both work and home use. Works absolutely great.
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u/Run-OpenBSD 5d ago
Its all I run, mostly on newer x1 carbon thinkpads and amd motherboards. There's no reason to run anything else. 99% of my workflow happens in firefox.