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Old 21st July 2012
backrow backrow is offline
Real Name: Anthony J. Bentley
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Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: Albuquerque, NM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by vermaden View Post
Do You have these on OpenBSD:
- Flash support? (on FreeBSD You can use COMPAT_LINUX for that)

- Opera? (does it work using Linux compatibility layer on OpenBSD?)
- Nvidia drivers? (there are none for OpenBSD as I know, this is blob but still provides acceleration)
OpenBSD has both a policy and a culture against blobs. Blobs conflict with at least two of OpenBSD’s goals: security auditing and portability. Why would I want software that can only be debugged by a single vendor?

There are even decent alternatives for all of these three. Many videos can be downloaded with cclive and get_flash_videos. Firefox and Chrome are both available. Well, maybe there’s no performant alternative to Nvidia drivers… but I don’t buy hardware from them precisely because their specs, docs, and drivers are all wholly proprietary. AMD and Intel both have decent open‐source drivers, and as a result they get my money.

Quote:
Originally Posted by vermaden View Post
- Graphical Sound Configurator (PCBSD ONLY)
- Graphical Jail Management (PCBSD ONLY) - if I recall there are no such thins like Jails on OpenBSD
- Graphical Network Manager (PCBSD ONLY)
I’m not convinced that making something “graphical” is what makes it a desktop program. It makes it easier for Grandma, maybe—but why would she be configuring jails or IP addresses? And if we’re talking about people like you or me, I would prefer to do this from the command line, where I can pipe or sed or vi or whatever else I’m used to. And no, I don’t type “mixerctl -f /dev/mixer1 outputs.spkr=+8” to increase the volume—I press the volume key on my keyboard.

Yes, we do seem to have different definitions of a “desktop system.” Is this OpenBSD fanboyism on my part? Hopefully not—I mean, I like NetSurf for web browsing and mupdf for PDF viewing, neither of which are part of base OpenBSD. I just think that smaller is better (i.e., as an aspiration, it’s more sustainable, even if it doesn’t provide all features that bigger programs provide).

Quote:
Originally Posted by vermaden View Post
What OpenBSD can offer besides not having these?
Well, for one, its culture doesn’t include things like the above that I disagree with. Here are some of the things that OpenBSD provides me:
  • A base system that is small but complete (even providing X out of the box).
  • Ports to compensate for what’s not in base.
  • A focus on packages, not just ports! The OpenBSD culture discourages twisting knobs (compile options, etc.), and this means I am less likely to hit a problem nobody’s seen before. Plus packages mean I don’t have to wait longer (larger file download, combined with compilation times).
  • Security options that help program debugging, which I’ve mentioned elsewhere on the board.
  • The anti‐blob sentiment I mentioned above.

Just because I like OpenBSD doesn’t mean that I dislike other BSDs. I eagerly salivate over stuff like FreeBSD’s work on LLVM and jails, or Dragonfly’s HAMMER and multicore support. Likewise, OpenBSD provides OpenSSH and pf to others. I would rather we worked on what we have in common rather than sniping over desktop choices. People have this strange desire to use Unity or Gnome 3, which I don’t understand—I just accept it, in hopes that they’ll accept my desktop choices in return.
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