this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
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Wow, I can't believe you tried so many different operating systems with this laptop, even Haiku and OpenIndiana! What a fantastic review!
It is a little sad that OpenBSD can't optimize by P/E cores, I have been wanting to switch to OpenBSD but obviously Linux supports the most hardware, so I stay with Linux. It is nice that the makers NovaCustom seem to have done a good job creating a mostly open, standards compliance x86_64 computing platform.
Just in case*, I'm just the middle-man that connects this specific article by Solène to the audience on Lemmy 😅. I'm sure you're aware of this, but I just wanted to make sure.
But yes, Solène has done an excellent work with her review! Which is precisely why I felt the need that it needed some more exposure 😜.
Could you elaborate on your willingness to switch to OpenBSD?
Definitely! I feel as if they might be somewhat underappreciated currently, but I hope their efforts to open source will receive similar mainstream reach like what we've seem for System76 etc.
I have a small ZFS NAS that I built myself running Linux, and I would like to use it for file sharing and running applications like NextCloud. I prefer OpenBSD and its derivatives (like OmniOS) because it of its security-oriented features, especially things like ZFS and zones, but I have not used it very much so I am not comfortable using an operating system I have not used before for something important like backing up my files.
I would like to switch my daily driver, a Linux laptop, to OpenBSD so I can get used to using it as an administrator, but I worry about OpenBSD being able to support the laptop hardware, especially things like WiFi, BlueTooth, and managing the battery, screen dimming, laptop lid, and so on. I have another Linux computer with a Radeon graphics card which connects to my TV that my children use for video games, and watching streaming video, and I would like to switch this to OpenBSD as well but I worry that it will not be able to run Steam games very well.
First time hearing of OmniOS, thank you for mentioning it! EDIT: I just took a look at it and it doesn't seem to be based on OpenBSD, at least the one I could find seems to be a derivative of Solaris instead. Though, I might simply not have found what you referred to*.
Does OpenBSD's implementation of ZFS offer security features as well?
Do you think that using OpenBSD inside of a qube (from QubesOS) is perhaps something worth considering? Or don't you think there's any merit of doing this over the use of any virtualization software found on any other system?
From what I've read, running games on OpenBSD is a lot less mature compared to running games on Linux. Though, perhaps it's worth noting that cloud gaming solutions (like Google Stadia in the past) are known to work great on OpenBSD. Not sure if you would want that, though.
(On a more general note) I definitely agree that OpenBSD works wonderfully on the server side of things. But I've gotten skeptical over time to its feasibility as a desktop OS. Note that I'm well aware that OpenBSD's developers use it as their daily drivers, so I definitely recognize the possibility. However, when it's lacking features like Secure Boot (or any form of Trusted and/or Measured Boot for that matter), I just find it hard to justify putting it on something like a laptop that I carry around all the time. I hope that you can prove to me that my logic/understanding is flawed and that I should reconsider the use of OpenBSD as a desktop OS.
😅, but QubesOS isn't a derivative of OpenBSD either. It might have inspired some of its parts, but fundamentally it's a completely different beast.
Do you happen to know if this goes beyond what Btrfs(/Bcachefs) provides on the Linux side of things?
I think someday Btrfs or BCacheFS might have as many features as ZFS, but for now ZFS is still state-of-the-art, as far as I know. RAID-Z is one ZFS feature I use that is not fully implemented in Btrfs yet. All other ZFS features that I use are also available with Btrfs.
Oops, I am really getting confused with all the different distros! Sorry!
Thank you so much for your insights!