Mayuresh Kathe wrote:
What is it about OpenBSD that I can't resist it?
After the past long exchange about "our ultimate goal" and a lot of
people advising me to go over to Solaris 10, I did, I removed OpenBSD
from one of my machines and installed "Solaris Express Developers
Edition".
It was slick looking, very graphical with most of things you want to
do, had Java SE 5/6 preinstalled, and had everything thing that I was
expecting from OpenBSD.
But yet, after 2 hours of fooling around, I came back to OpenBSD.
For one thing, it took me almost 1.5 hours to install Solaris, compare
that to 30 minutes with OpenBSD, including 'packages', 'src' and
'ports'.
The second thing was probably the knowledge that things are simple
with OpenBSD, none of the complicated layouts thing as with Solaris.
You could follow instructions from ancient books like "Practical Unix
and Internet Security - Second Edition" to the T.
Given all that, inspite of all the hammering I've taken over my
comments, I'd prefer to stick with OpenBSD.
Thanks to Theo and the core gang for delivering such a good, clean
operating environment.
Best,
~Mayuresh
yeah, I've been doing some things with Solaris for work, it's stunned
me that an OS can take most of DVD...and still be missing what I would
call absolute basics that OpenBSD has on an install that fits in half
of a CD. I know, deep down, Solaris is a very good OS, and inspires a
lot of the work OpenBSD developers do, but man, it's got user interface
"features" that were fixed in MS-DOS and CP/M decades ago, and What The
Heck do you put on an entire DVD when it doesn't even have a C compiler
or some very basic management tools...
I think the "conflict" you saw is very much the CAUSE of the simplicity
and usability of OpenBSD.
"Community" or committee designed OSs are filled with compromise and bloat
to keep all parties happy. You can feel it in most systems -- five
different ways to do one task, three different applications for the same
goal, etc. You can just imagine people sitting around a room arguing over
things, and eventually, a "compromise" is reached, and things get bigger,
slower, and more bloated. If a better way of doing something comes up,
there is fear of alienating users and developers if the old way is removed,
so things get bigger and bigger.
OpenBSD is the vision of one person. He's surrounded himself with a bunch
of like-minded people, and they produce an OS they way they want it.
Is it for everyone? Of course not. Usually, you will know pretty
quickly if you agree with the design and philosophy or not. If not,
there are plenty of alternatives out there.
Funny thing is, I suspect most users of OpenBSD are happier with the
results of having that small group of people make decisions about the
direction of the project than they would be if the entire "community"
had input on the direction of the project. Yes, every individual person
would like it better if THEIR input (and only their input) steered the
project, but I suspect few would be happier if EVERYONE'S input was
blindly accepted and acted upon.
"Compromise" is an interesting word. It sometimes seems to have widely
different definitions -- there's what we are taught when young is the
"good" sense, everyone giving-in a little for the better common good,
and of course, the security "compromise" which is a very bad thing.
However, I sometimes wonder about that "good" sense of the word...how
often do we "compromise" on things we know are just plain wrong, just
to avoid conflict or to "make progress" even when you know the progress
is in the wrong direction. I guess you could call OpenBSD a "no
compromise" OS for a number of definitions. :)
So, when they say "OpenBSD is written by the developers for the
developers", my response is, "Thank goodness". :)
I still love this quote:
"Some of the people working on OpenBSD are nit-picking,
anal-retentive, pedantic, intolerant, fanatical, insistent,
demanding and relentless: in other words, the perfect people
to be crafting an operating system."
(possibly from Rich Kulawiec, but I've not had much luck confirming
that... and he's wrong: not some, ALL...)
Nick.
