The best part about having an #OpenBSD development environment is that you have no choice but to keep all the annoying Electron apps out of it.
Vi and emacs instead of VSCode, Curl rather than Postman, using the web browser for other apps. It’s a shame that Spotify and Netflix don’t work but there’s no shame in a little piracy.
I’m challenging myself to exclusively use #OpenBSD on my desktop because I grow tired of the Linux ecosystem. I used #FreeBSD 12 as my main desktop for over a year before so it’s not much of a challenge, but I did mostly C and C++ back then and now I’m focusing on Web technologies.
I was delighted to see that the amdgpu driver works naturally on OpenBSD while FreeBSD still requires the drm-kmod if I’m not mistaken.
I love OpenBSD’s bundled software. The Operating System does everything I want it to out of the box, all with very well designed home solutions.
BSD is always a very pleasant experience.
@xi I'm curious as to what it is about the Linux ecosystem that tires you.
Rest assured, this is not a trolling. I really would like to hear your thoughts.
@mikeesternb The software comes from all over, there are many competing distributions delivering basically the same system, each with a slightly different package management system, all of which can break easily, and if that weren’t enough snap and flatpak are competing as yet another package management system which is, for better or for worse, but mostly for worse, proprietary-friendly.
OpenBSD, in the other hand, is a single distribution with every developer focused on making the next release a high quality one. It isn’t proprietary-friendly, it’s set-up so that as little blobs as possible run on the system. OpenBSD software often has a more pleasant interface and documentation than its Linux counterparts. Much of this is also true for every BSD.
It’s not about the Linux ecosystem not being good enough, it’s more about it being a mess. I want to use a system that I can wrap my head around.
@xi Well explained, and all good points. Thank you.
@xi I ran OpenBSD as my work desktop for a year around 2006. I’ve since switched back to FreeBSD on my servers, Ubuntu on my desktops. Been thinking of converting a few desktops to FreeBSD. I like OpenBSD, but I’ve gotten use to and now prefer FreeBSD. I’m very glad OpenBSD is still an@option, though.
@xi
This is good to hear. I have been using FreeBSD on my laptop but wasn't sure if the switch to OpenBSD would be worth it. I normally only use OpenBSD on servers.
Will give it a go now. Thanks
@xi I find myself thinking along the same lines (but less development focus).... trialing OpenBSD 7.2 on a laptop and trying to get my head around relayd and httpd for a self-hosting project
@xi
I tried this a couple of years ago and now all of my machines are running OpenBSD. I am convinced that my blood pressure is lower for it.