Analyze OpenBSD’s Kernel with Domain-Specific Knowledge | Hacker News Reader

Analyze OpenBSD’s Kernel with Domain-Specific Knowledge

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80 pointszdw13 comments

The thing that the *BSD world have over the "Linux" world is that the *BSD community tend to produce more readable content. The "Linux" world try be more elitist within themselves, I loathe man pages because of this. (re "Linux" - yes, I fully understand the GNU/Linux bollocks).

Christian Ludwig took his complicated project, explained it in a way that completely understandable. I like that.

While the topic of BSD is at hand, if you have a sense of humour you'll enjoy this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oLuJSFZKEs

The way I see this is that the *BSDs simply don't have the staffing to do all the things, so they say a more explicit "no" more often.

And if you do fewer things, you can perfect those things.

Like look at the history of the big kernel lock in BSDs and Linux. Actually just look at SMP support. OpenBSD was actually very late to the SMP game, because they said "no" to these multiprocessor machines. It wasn't until consumer CPUs got multicore on a die that their hand was forced and it was no longer feasible to say "no".

Or Wayland (or really, any alternative to X). X is fundamentally broken for many reasons (security, screen tearing, input handling, …), but it seems that OpenBSD simply doesn't have the staffing to do this yet.

OpenBSD will say "no" to shitty drivers, or closed source drivers. You know what you get. That wifi card you want to use may just plain be a "no" from OpenBSD.

Do less, but do it right (or their opinion of "right").

Neither approach is right or wrong.

I specifically bought hardware for OpenBSD, I like the OS a lot but it is not my daily driver. I reported something incorrect on their website and was responded to very quickly with oh, you spotted that too soon that's correct on the next release, that was really good in my view (what I was doing was fairly niche, it was maybe 1-2 days before what I noticed was no longer relevant.).

I also have FreeBSD on a RPi3b, just to have it around. FreeBSD has tells that there a many fundamental things that should have been corrected years ago, tip of the iceberg. I reported a bug (258863) and provided a workaround, there was momentary interest then it was forgotten. Their forums are incredibly insular, cult like in that whatever the foundation or developers decide we side with 100% (no one overtly says as much though).

For most things I use "Linux" (Debian&Ubuntu mostly), 20+ years now. Change for the sake of change is modus operandi for the "Linux" world for some time, then that's perpetuated as it tends to attract developers that enjoy that. systemd is awful.

Wayland. I just lack interest in it. I'm not pro X either just can't be arsed.

Most people things it's a competition between various Linux Distros or BSD Flavours, I'm quite happy to use them for what they are.

OpenBSD is not like FreeBSD at all.

Given I didn't say the opposite what were you getting at? Is it a random statement just tagged on because OpenBSD and FreeBSD were mentioned in the same post?

Yeah, systemd is a perfect illustration of running, coding, and shipping code before thinking.

Or, in short, "Lennartware".

> Or Wayland (or really, any alternative to X). X is fundamentally broken for many reasons (security, screen tearing, input handling, …), but it seems that OpenBSD simply doesn't have the staffing to do this yet.

There was a long time ago a windowing system called MGR https://hack.org/~mc/mgr/

> That wifi card you want to use may just plain be a "no" from OpenBSD.

OpenBSD supports more wifi cards than Linux-Libre. You know, for OpenBSD firmware it's "hardware".

>Or Wayland (or really, any alternative to X). X is fundamentally broken for many reasons (security, screen tearing, input handling, …), but it seems that OpenBSD simply doesn't have the staffing to do this yet.

XTerm has a secure input mode which locks the keyboard into that terminal. Everyone bitches about X, but they know shit about what they already have.

> Everyone bitches about X, but they know shit about what they already have.

I have two dealbreakers about X, both of which have been confirmed by core X developers as "not fixable".

But you do you. I'm on Wayland.

> OpenBSD supports more wifi cards than Linux-Libre. You know

Maybe. I had to buy 5 different USB wifi NICs on amazon, all of which were supposed to have the right chipset, before I found one that actually worked.

Linux doesn't have this problem.

And yes, I know why. I'm not arguing.

>Maybe. I had to buy 5 different USB wifi NICs on amazon, all of which were supposed to have the right chipset, before I found one that actually worked.

First: plug that device, check dmesg. If it says it has an issue on firmware, tether your smartphone and run

    fw_update -a

I did.

Odd. I have two USB WLAN NICs, Atheros and Mediatek. Both supported by OpenBSD 7.1. Sadly the last one requires propietary firmware, but I had no issues.

Both were bought in "cheap stores" in Spain. Less than 8EUR (~$10) each.

X had security in Solaris with B2 security extensions.

By 2006 at the latest: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Solaris

Window tearing is a function of the drivers or some poor design decision and not intrinsic to X11.

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