/tech/ - Technology★

OpenBSD

+ The default installation is very secure. OpenBSD has many interesting security features (pledge for example).

+ Competent developers who are committed to developing their OS

+ OpenBSD's sister projects like mandoc, OpenSSH and LibreSSl are cool

+ sndio sound server is comfy

+ Especially well-written man-pages and FAQs

+ Theo de Raadt is based

+/- Its developers and users expect you to at lest try to fix the problem yourself before they will help you. You get replies quickly on the mailing-lists. #openbsd @ Freenode is active.

+/- Doesn't have Bluetooth support anymore (IMO this is a good thing since Bluetooth sucks ass)

+/- OpenBSD uses cvs

notes and resources

* https://www.openbsd.org/

* Default package management: OpenBSD's ports and pkg_ tools. Currently has 10578 packages in ports.

* The OpenBSD FAQ (the installation guide): https://www.openbsd.org/faq/index.html

* Simply put, you can use pkg_info -Q foobar to find a package and pkg_add foobar to install it

* If you want, you can install the standard Ganoo tools: pkg_add coreutils

* If you wish to run X11 (xenocara) you should also enable automatic starting of OpenBSD's DM (xenodm) during the installation

* You should install ALL file sets during the installation

* If you have (created) a (MBR or GPT) partition with OpenBSD's partition type (A6) then OpenBSD's installer will recognize it and ask whether you want to install to that partition.

* OpenBSD gaming resource: https://mrsatterly.com/openbsd_games.html

* Rundown of OpenBSD's security features: https://www.openbsd.org/security.html and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenBSD_security_features

* You can install non-free firmware using the fw_update tool. Its man-page is self-explanatory.

* You can install patches with syspatch. Its man-page is self-explanatory.

* The binary packages are NOT updated for "release" or "stable" releases!! You must either build from source or use pkgsrc if you want newer versions.

* If you want to install pkgsrc on OpenBSD, make backups of the original pkg_add, pkg_delete, pkg_info and pkg_check binaries. (ProTip: use whereis command and cp) OR (better) install pkgsrc into your home directory (use ./bootstrap --unprivileged)

* I got pkgsrc working on OpenBSD 6.3 on AMD64, by using the following command-line: ./bootstrap --compiler clang --unprivileged --prefer-pkgsrc=openssl

* When you are creating disk partitions, you can specify a partition's size in (for example) gigabytes, by appending G to the desired size (for example, 42G means 42 gigabytes). (see also, man 8 disklabel, man 8 fdisk and man 8 newfs)

* You can browse OpenBSD's ports here: http://openports.se/

* OpenBSD has especially good support for ThinPads.

* OpenBSD uses doas instead of sudo. doas is very comfy, but it needs to be configured first (it's easy, see man 5 doas.conf)

* AMDGPU has been added to kernel on -current, however, it's disabled by default. At the moment you have to build the kernel yourself but AMDGPU is likely going to get added on the next release (6.6)

* Based on my experience, OpenBSD is the most pragmatic alternative for GNU/Linux and Windows.

>>1071319 (OP)

NetBSD

+ Supports a huge number of CPU architectures: "Of course it runs NetBSD"

+ Very lightweight: it has even lower system requirements than FreeBSD, OpenBSD or Dragonfly BSD. NetBSD offers the best performance on low-end systems.

+ lua-scriptable kernel (I think this is great for prototyping. You can find some presentations/PDFs here: https://www.netbsd.org/gallery/presentations/)

+ rump kernels, see https://wiki.netbsd.org/rumpkernel/

+/- The system is traditional

+/- The NetBSD also has some experimental features, however

+/- Apparently, the NetBSD project is going to move to Mercurial (hg), or so I have heard.

notes and resources

* https://netbsd.org/

* Default package management: pkgsrc. Currently has over 17000 packages.

* The NetBSD Guide: https://netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/index.html

* Remember to use the installer's configuration menu to install the package manager and enable installation of binary packages

* What NetBSD is referring to as a "port" is actually an "(CPU) architecture".

>>1071319 (OP)

DragonFly BSD

+ Has the best multi-core performance. DragonFly BSD offers the best performance on high(er)-end multi-core systems.

+ Has the best file system (HAMMER and HAMMER2)

+ jails

+ vkernels

+ Matthew Dillon is based

+/- Uses git for development (instead of cvs)

? I think Dragonfly BSD has slightly smaller community than OpenBSD and NetBSD

notes and resources

* https://www.dragonflybsd.org/

* Default package management: pkg (for binary packages) and dports (https://www.dragonflybsd.org/docs/howtos/HowToDPorts/) Has a lot of packages (Dports are FreeBSD ports + DragonFly BSD specific patches and files)

* Dragonfly BSD Handbook: https://www.dragonflybsd.org/docs/handbook/

* Press SCROLL LOCK to enable/disable scrolling the console with arrow keys

* If you want to install pkgsrc, you should do an unprivileged installation under your own home direcory; see the relevant parts from OpenBSD's and pkgsrc's posts.

>>1071319 (OP)

>>1072697

pkgsrc

Many other operating systems support pkgsrc since it's very portable, see https://www.pkgsrc.org/

Also, if you want to install pkgsrc on OpenBSD, please consider backing up (with cp) the original package mangager's binaries.

The TL;DR version of getting pkgsrc working on operating systems other than NetBSD is:

su - #We need to become root when installing pkgsrc _without_ the --unprivileged option

env CVS_RSH=ssh cvs -d anoncvs@anoncvs.NetBSD.org:/cvsroot checkout -P pkgsrc
cd pkgsrc/bootstrap
./bootstrap

General tips and resources

* pkgsrc guide: https://www.netbsd.org/docs/pkgsrc/

* An introducion to pkgsrc (pls note that DragonFly BSD doesn't use pkgsrc as its default package manager anymore): https://hooktube.com/watch?v=t6vlmJ84BSI&t=4m35s

* A beginner's guide to PF: http://srobb.net/pf.html

* Important: Before installation, use something like gparted to resize an existing partition and/or create a new partition for your *BSD installation.

* Pls rember that wen you feel scare or frigten, never fforget to reed the manual. (esp. man afterboot on OpenBSD/NetBSD)

* BSD utilities can behave slightly differently (have different command-line switches) than the essential utilities provided by GNU. Read The Fine Manual.

* You probably want to use the korn shell (ksh)

* Remember to check info-pages in addition to man-pages. The info-pages of GNU programs are usually more comprehensive than their man-pages.

* What *BSD is referring to as "slice" is what most other operating systems refer to as "partition". In *BSD, slices contains smaller parts, called "partitions".

* Install all file sets during the installation, unless you have a very good reason not to (This will save a lot of trouble later)

* Don't assume that *BSD has GNU programs by default.

GRUB MBR/UEFI Multi-booting example for OpenBSD/NetBSD

* if the installer doesn't install bootblocks, you can spawn a shell after installation and chroot /mnt and then just use installboot(8)

* after installing the bootblocks (in UEFI ESP partition), reboot into GNU/Linux.

* check that you have the OpenBSD's *.efi files in your EFI ESP partition (the dir that OpenBSD's installboot created is named "boot" by default. you should rename it as "OpenBSD")

* copy /etc/grub.d/custom_40 as /etc/grub.d/custom_42

* create following file in /etc/grub.d/custom_42 and generate a new grub.cfg like usual.

* It's recommended to take a look at GRUB2's manual and the man-pages for fdisk(8) and boot(8) N.B. the fdisk is can be a bit different to what you are used to! Pls RTFM.

menuentry "OpenBSD" {
    insmod part_bsd
    insmod part_gpt
    insmod part_msdos
    insmod chain
    
    set root='hd0,gpt1' #This should be EFI ESP partition for UEFI systems
    chainloader (${root})/EFI/OpenBSD/bootia64.efi
    
    #instead of what was written above, write these 2 lines for BIOS MBR systems
    set root='hd0,msdos3'   #this is OpenBSD's MBR partition. To boot NetBSD change openbsd1 to netbsd1
    chainloader +1          #this works for NetBSD, too
    
    # N.B. chainloading is the recommended method. (!)
    
    
    #Wanna use GRUB without chainloading?   ／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼  
    

    #instead of chainloading, you can also try something like this:
    #kopenbsd (${root})/bsd
    #just FYI, to boot NetBSD, you can also
    #knetbsd /netbsd
}

Avoid these

- FreeBSD (it sucks a CoC)

- TrueOS (it's unstable)

- GNU/Linux (it sucks a CoC; it wont get ruined over night, however, the code quality is expected to lower over the course of next 2-5 years. The SJW community is extremely toxic; be prepared to get #MeToo'd for online hugs)

- MINIX (very outdated programs; it isn't suitable for desktop use)

- OpenIndiana (An anon said it has very outdated programs)

- Microsoft Windows (it's a botnet)

- ReactOS (it's not ready yet)

- PureDarwin (not very usable)

- 9front (Apparently it sucks a CoC, too)

Other operating systems

* TempleOS (https://archive.org/download/TempleOS_ISO_Archive/TempleOSCDV4.13.ISO)

* Shrine (https://github.com/minexew/Shrine)

* FreeDOS (http://www.freedos.org/)

* ReactOS (https://www.reactos.org/)

* ToaruOS (https://gitlab.com/toaruos)

* Haiku (https://www.haiku-os.org/)

* GNU Hurd (https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/)

* MINIX (http://www.minix3.org/)

* OpenIndiana (https://www.openindiana.org/)

* AROS (http://aros.sourceforge.net/)

* MenuetOS (http://www.menuetos.net/)

* KolibriOS (http://www.kolibrios.org/en/)

* Genode (https://genode.org/)

* PureDarwin (http://www.puredarwin.org/)

* MorphOS (http://www.morphos-team.net/)

* Mezzano (https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano)

* Visopsys (https://visopsys.org/)

>>1072766

>its in some oceanic scribbles

These guys might have a dl from me someday

>>1072923

Some ports have a FLAVOR that can be selected, which is how they end up with different binary packages. For example see: /usr/ports/mail/mutt/Makefile

But basically you have to check every Makefile and see what options it has, if any. An alternative would be to use pkgsrc, which lets you set global package options. For example, this what I've got in my /etc/mk.conf on NetBSD:

# package defaults, from "make show-options"
PKG_DEFAULT_OPTIONS=    caca
PKG_DEFAULT_OPTIONS+=   -rpi -opengl -sdl2
PKG_DEFAULT_OPTIONS+=   -dbus -inet6 -qt5
PKG_DEFAULT_OPTIONS+=   -pulseaudio -nas -alsa -jack -esound -openal
PKG_OPTIONS.libcaca=    ncurses imlib2
ACCEPTABLE_LICENSES+=   dungeon-license

The downside here is that you won't get the benefits of pledge/unveil that any OpenBSD ports might have.

>>1072836

aiju, the faggot who is leading the project after uriel killed himself is an antifa faggot. If you browse web archive for past versions of the 9front website, you'll see that the addition of that antinazi symbol and the gayflag favicon happened soon after his death. It was also he who tryed to ban a trannyphobic guy from the maillist to make it into a safespace, but it did not get as public attention as opalgate did.

I miss uriel, he was a true libertarian fellow.

His posts on economics and politics in cat-v are worthy of an autistic ancap.