Dear everyone, I'm well aware of the bashing potential this message contains, and kindly ask you not to resort to the usual "offence is the best defence" strategy. I've been in the scene for a long time (you'll find my first e-mails to this list almost two decades ago) and I'm well aware of how operating systems and application software works. I do not need to be educated about the basics of proper software design, nor the fact that OpenBSD is developed with different goals in mind than all of the Linux crap out there.
With the above disclaimer said, and still knowing the potential for a war, I must say this: There is not much hope for OpenBSD to ever become a desktop (or laptop) OS if the nightmarish sluggishness of ALL modern web browsers can not be solved. Even I, who can easily take long delays etc. as the cost for having a much more secure system, am about to fry my poor brain because even the few sites I need to use are just totally unavailable if I browse them from OpenBSD. Everyday problems include (but are not limited to): Waiting tens of seconds to several minutes for a script intensive site like Facebook (yes, I actually need to use it) or LinkedIn to load. Having the whole system slow down to a crawl while the browser is trying to do it's stuff. Having the browser crash (without any error messages) several times a day -- after I've first waited 30-60 seconds for it to become responsive. Now I've spent lots and lots of time getting familiar with OpenBSD in server environments, so I'm pretty well up to date with what I can do to optimize the OS. I've been following the discussions that were around six months ago or so, when there was a patch that relieved the situation so that at least it became possible to finally watch YouTube videos -- quite an achievement, considering that was in 2016 when "everyone else" have had their videos running smoothly for at least a decade. I am not blaming anyone here -- I rarely do. I'm not asking anyone to just fix this issue for me. In fact, I don't even care if it gets fixed or not; I can always do my browsing on some other platform, even if it feels insanely stupid. What I am saying is what I already said: Unless issues like this get solved, OpenBSD will remain pretty much as it is, which is properly coded, very stable and secure, but (when it comes to a "normal" user or even an experienced sysadmin) utterly useless when it comes to doing the stuff everyone does these days -- browsing the net. Yes, I know many of you are browsing the net with OpenBSD. So am I. Just to make sure everyone understands what I mean: it is not that it would be impossible, it is just insanely irritating and slow. Now, can anyone provide a relatively clear description of what it is that make the same browsers (Firefox, Seamonkey, Chrome) that work fine in Linux, Windows and OS X so ridiculously slow when they are being run on OpenBSD? Peace, please. - Jyri
