“libpng support brings emoji rendering in the base system. Without that, we don’t know what all the AI tools are trying to tell us in the terminal.” <3
So, what are the main purposes of OpenBSD today? Where is it typically deployed and what is it ideal for? It seems oriented towards deeper networking, more than a typical user-facing server.
I think where obsd really shines is in the small infrastructure department, name servers, routers, time servers, web servers, mail servers. Obsd boxes tend to be easy to administrate, predicable and most importantly boring. It is a great system to build the back end of your small business or home network.
Personally I think it also makes for a very nice desktop system. But I like my desktops thin, a tiling window manager and lots of terminals. If you enjoy fat desktops, there may be a bit more friction. One reason I like it for desktop use more than other systems is that the software packaging feel higher quality. It is not a huge difference. mainly I have found obsd packages to more reliably work when installed. and those heroic obsd package maintainers tend to put a note in /usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readmes/ that will get you started.
It's extremely simple and straightforward for networking devices. Setting up an OpenBSD router or gateway is such a pleasant process.
The documentation in all aspects is superb, and you can run all sorts of servers just fine (ports is full of common software). You can technically use it as a desktop workstation too, but I can't point to anything that really stands out in this aspect — except perhaps the strong focus on security.
So many use cases. It serves as my mail server because it is secure and simple. It serves as my gateway via wireguard to my homelab. It serves as a daily driver on my x220. It is a simple and straightforward operating system. It can 100% serve you as a daily driver even on desktop (excluding maybe running Steam).
But the simplicity also yields stability. Upgrading Arch for example can sometimes backfire. Upgrading OpenBSD? Almost blindly. It just works (tm).
I use a bluetooth usb dongle for audio with my openbsd laptop.
It's very small and has a single button on the end for pairing, something like the creative bt-w3 [1]. You want to avoid something that won't work without windows drivers.
The os sees it as a separate audio device, doesn't care that it is bluetooth, and can be set to switch audio playback between the internal sound and the dongle automagically.
Doesn't that mean that there's always a delay in the audio since it doesn't know to buffer slightly? (I'm not sure how it works on Linux today, but it didn't used to work well a long time ago for that very reason.)
I assume you were talking about audio/video sync? I used to use mine to mostly listen to music, audio only.
But I still have a creative bt-w2 audio dongle, and was curious, so I gave it a try, using mvp to watch a yt-dlp mp4, showing someone talking on camera. The bluetooth speaker was 3 meters away from my laptop. No tweaks.
It looked good, I was pleasantly surprised. It definitely had better sync than I've seen on some badly compressed cable tv content.
I wasn't familiar with how bluetooth buffering used to be, but I can believe it's caused problems. I've noticed sometimes when people are using bluetooth on their phones.
Yeah there are certain compromises you have to make. Mainstream hardware generally works, but Bluetooth and Nvidia GPUs are two possibly big exceptions depending on your needs.
If the driver source is not freely available and it can't be reverse-engineered (or no developer is interested in working on it) then it probably isn't supported.
“libpng support brings emoji rendering in the base system. Without that, we don’t know what all the AI tools are trying to tell us in the terminal.” <3
Some people (including myself) might not want emoji rendering, though.
Simply don't install an emoji font and local programs won't render them.
So, what are the main purposes of OpenBSD today? Where is it typically deployed and what is it ideal for? It seems oriented towards deeper networking, more than a typical user-facing server.
I think where obsd really shines is in the small infrastructure department, name servers, routers, time servers, web servers, mail servers. Obsd boxes tend to be easy to administrate, predicable and most importantly boring. It is a great system to build the back end of your small business or home network.
Personally I think it also makes for a very nice desktop system. But I like my desktops thin, a tiling window manager and lots of terminals. If you enjoy fat desktops, there may be a bit more friction. One reason I like it for desktop use more than other systems is that the software packaging feel higher quality. It is not a huge difference. mainly I have found obsd packages to more reliably work when installed. and those heroic obsd package maintainers tend to put a note in /usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readmes/ that will get you started.
It's extremely simple and straightforward for networking devices. Setting up an OpenBSD router or gateway is such a pleasant process.
The documentation in all aspects is superb, and you can run all sorts of servers just fine (ports is full of common software). You can technically use it as a desktop workstation too, but I can't point to anything that really stands out in this aspect — except perhaps the strong focus on security.
So many use cases. It serves as my mail server because it is secure and simple. It serves as my gateway via wireguard to my homelab. It serves as a daily driver on my x220. It is a simple and straightforward operating system. It can 100% serve you as a daily driver even on desktop (excluding maybe running Steam).
But the simplicity also yields stability. Upgrading Arch for example can sometimes backfire. Upgrading OpenBSD? Almost blindly. It just works (tm).
It’s my daily driver. Simple and it works.
I'd like to try it again (it's been years) but unfortunately I can't live without Bluetooth.
I use a bluetooth usb dongle for audio with my openbsd laptop.
It's very small and has a single button on the end for pairing, something like the creative bt-w3 [1]. You want to avoid something that won't work without windows drivers.
The os sees it as a separate audio device, doesn't care that it is bluetooth, and can be set to switch audio playback between the internal sound and the dongle automagically.
[1] https://xosc.org/bluetooth.html
Doesn't that mean that there's always a delay in the audio since it doesn't know to buffer slightly? (I'm not sure how it works on Linux today, but it didn't used to work well a long time ago for that very reason.)
I assume you were talking about audio/video sync? I used to use mine to mostly listen to music, audio only.
But I still have a creative bt-w2 audio dongle, and was curious, so I gave it a try, using mvp to watch a yt-dlp mp4, showing someone talking on camera. The bluetooth speaker was 3 meters away from my laptop. No tweaks.
It looked good, I was pleasantly surprised. It definitely had better sync than I've seen on some badly compressed cable tv content.
I wasn't familiar with how bluetooth buffering used to be, but I can believe it's caused problems. I've noticed sometimes when people are using bluetooth on their phones.
Yes, that's what I meant. Thank you for testing this. I appreciate it. So, Creative bt-w2. Nice to see that Creative's still got the mojo.
I am just missing a similar dongle to hook up my ZMK split keyboards to my OpenBSD systems.
Yeah there are certain compromises you have to make. Mainstream hardware generally works, but Bluetooth and Nvidia GPUs are two possibly big exceptions depending on your needs.
If the driver source is not freely available and it can't be reverse-engineered (or no developer is interested in working on it) then it probably isn't supported.
For anyone interested in digging in further, I posted some OpenBSD 7.8 highlights over on Mastodon as well.
https://bsd.network/@brynet/115403567146395679