Trying OpenBSD

[Randicus Draco Albus]

I used to use Synaptic to search and find out what stuff did before I used aptitude to actually install it.

I use pkg_mgr to search for available packages and their descriptions.

Code: Select all

# pkg_add pkg_mgr

[JohnDeere630]

Thanks, Randicus! That was what I was looking for.

@bmc5311...Thanks, I'll try that too. BTW, I chose OpenBSD because it has more distance from OSx....I'd use windows before I'd use apple's crapware.

[nodir]

kde is installed during installation of the OS ?

No, the install puts only the basic system on the disk, and a very minimal desktop...I'm not sure which one. I just prefer kde....old dogs, new tricks, and all that.
Adding software so far has been pretty easy; similar to Debian in some respects. You just point it to a mirror and use the pkg_add command to download and intall stuff. About everything I use seems to be there. It is pretty tough to find apps to do specific tasks if you don't already know what you want. I used to use Synaptic to search and find out what stuff did before I used aptitude to actually install it. If there are OpenBSD versions of synaptic, I haven't discovered them yet. Googling various issues is a bit harder, as there isn't as much on the net about BSD as there is about linux.

I see. Thanks.

on a side note: as far searching for packages (or searching for info about packages) is concerned i got similar problems with gentoo (emerge) and salix (slapt-get). I used apt-cache and at least compared with emerge and slapt-get i was pretty good with apt ...

and i got the same experience when it comes to searching for answers (either in forums or via search-engine). Other distros are often too small (or their users are too confused, compared to forums debian when i started with debian). It was the reason of the thread i made, to give feedback about the situation.

[cynwulf]

Thanks, Randicus! That was what I was looking for.

Or

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$ pkg_info -Q search_pattern

BTW, I chose OpenBSD because it has more distance from OSx....I'd use windows before I'd use apple's crapware.

I'd actually use OSX before I'd use windows. OSX is at least a UNIX. Though I'd have to be desperate in either case...

FreeBSD's and OSX's relation is mostly mythological. OSX is based on a base operating system known as Darwin. Darwin has elements of BSD and other free licenced code, but it's not really a 'BSD' of any kind and the kernel is actually much closer to the one used in GNU/Hurd than it is to either Linux or any of the *BSD kernels.

Due to the permissive nature of the BSD licences, Apple and others can freely use the code in proprietary software so long as they give credit to the authors.

[JohnDeere630]

Well, wireless is kicking my butt. I had a usb wireless thingamabob kicking around, and plugged it in. The system seems to see it, and loads the ugen0 driver, but when I add the appropriate (I think) line in ifconfig, it rejects it, saying device not configured. Obviously, I'm missing something, but damned if I know what. The online documentation sucks...what little there is is badly outdated. Systemd is looking better and better...

[cynwulf]

Well, wireless is kicking my butt. I had a usb wireless thingamabob kicking around, and plugged it in. The system seems to see it, and loads the ugen0 driver, but when I add the appropriate (I think) line in ifconfig, it rejects it, saying device not configured. Obviously, I'm missing something, but damned if I know what. The online documentation sucks...what little there is is badly outdated. Systemd is looking better and better...

The documentation is in fact among the best...

http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq6.html#Wireless

ugen driver is not a wifi chip driver however, so it might be you have an unsupported device. Plug it in and post the tail of dmesg...

[JohnDeere630]

Well, wireless is kicking my butt. I had a usb wireless thingamabob kicking around, and plugged it in. The system seems to see it, and loads the ugen0 driver, but when I add the appropriate (I think) line in ifconfig, it rejects it, saying device not configured. Obviously, I'm missing something, but damned if I know what. The online documentation sucks...what little there is is badly outdated. Systemd is looking better and better...

The documentation is in fact among the best...

http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq6.html#Wireless

ugen driver is not a wifi chip driver however, so it might be you have an unsupported device. Plug it in and post the tail of dmesg...

The man pages are fine, it was the scarcity of online info like forums & stuff I was referring to. I did find the wireless page you referenced & that is pretty good. I came to the conclusion that the thing simply wasn't supported. In all fairness, it didn't work with linux, either. If I get back to this project, I'll rummage around & find a supported card, now that I know which chips are supported.

Kde4 now keeps crashing, and the terminal spews so much gibberish so fast that it might mean something to God, but certainly not to me. One line that I did see was something about too many files open..(KDE...too many files? What a surprise...... )So that is a separate issue, or, I could just use a different desktop, I suppose.

Long story short, it's been real, and it's been fun, but I now have too much on my plate to fool with this....maybe I'll get back to it later. I hadn't realized just how good Debian worked. OpenBSD is solid, but it's where Debian was 10 years ago, there is just too much jigging around with configuration files to get it to work. Wireless is always a PITA, so I won't hold that against it, but I expected better from KDE. There is a giant to-do list of stuff you have to do to get it to initialize and run properly, and I just don't have the time or patience right now. Debian runs my CNC mill, it runs my CAD/CAM station, and all my office computers, as well as this lappy. It works very well, is easy to maintain, and does everything I need. I'm not thrilled about systemd, but I can live with it. It seems to be the direction the herd is moving, and I understand the devs decision, even if I don't 100% agree with it. Their alternative would have been to either officially fork it, or continue to creak along with an increasingly out-dated init system. Either way would have pissed people off.

[golinux]

Their alternative would have been to either officially fork it, or continue to creak along with an increasingly out-dated init system.

Hardly. You've bought into the FUD . . .

This from earlier today on #devuan. Everyone was very chatty this morning:

8:45 am
kelsoo
Hi folks. I know Devuan for init freedom and I assume

8:47 am
sysvint the default init. Do you have anyone that would be up for helping the Debian maintainer getting it up to date

[cut]

9:38am
jaromil
the good news is that, if you really want to touch it [sysvinit], rleigh is the maintainer and with us

[cut]

10:15 am
rleigh_
chillfan: Note that sysvinit itself was "done" a long time ago; it's very minimal by design. If you look at the scripts and tooling built on top of it though, that does have more activity.

10:15 am
chillfan
yeah i noticed the starpar part had some more releases that are recent

10:17 am
rleigh_
Yes. Even those are mostly done as well though--startpar/insserv do a single task and are also basically feature-complete in that they do their task as designed. Not to say they can't be further improved, but that the lack of change is because there was no need to make any further changes at this level.

You can check the logs here if you're interested

This conversation started with the news that systemd can brick your hardware.

[JohnDeere630]

Their alternative would have been to either officially fork it, or continue to creak along with an increasingly out-dated init system.

Hardly. You've bought into the FUD . . .

Wouldn't be the first time...nor the last.

This from earlier today on #devuan. Everyone was very chatty this morning:

8:45 am
kelsoo
Hi folks. I know Devuan for init freedom and I assume

8:47 am
sysvint the default init. Do you have anyone that would be up for helping the Debian maintainer getting it up to date

[cut]

9:38am
jaromil
the good news is that, if you really want to touch it [sysvinit], rleigh is the maintainer and with us

[cut]

10:15 am
rleigh_
chillfan: Note that sysvinit itself was "done" a long time ago; it's very minimal by design. If you look at the scripts and tooling built on top of it though, that does have more activity.

10:15 am
chillfan
yeah i noticed the starpar part had some more releases that are recent

10:17 am
rleigh_
Yes. Even those are mostly done as well though--startpar/insserv do a single task and are also basically feature-complete in that they do their task as designed. Not to say they can't be further improved, but that the lack of change is because there was no need to make any further changes at this level.

You can check the logs here if you're interested

This conversation started with the news that systemd can brick your hardware.

I got the "Hi all", but every sentence after that was over my head & headed for the stratosphere. The gist was don't rm -rf important stuff. I can brick my hard ware with a hammer, or bucket of water...I don't even need to type anything....

[golinux]

The conversation started with bricking HW then moved to sysvinit. The point I was trying to make is that sysvinit is NOT 'out-dated'.