1 Proser says...

OpenBSD expects you to read all related manuals, and with some amount of time things actually do make sense. It's not the most user-friendly OS for new users, but they make it clear that that's not top priority from their point of view. It's just a matter of taste :)

By the way, nice to read some of your experiences with new OS-s!

Posted at 12:26 a.m. on May 22, 2006

2 Phill says...

FreeBSD is much nicer :)

Posted at 8:04 a.m. on May 22, 2006

3 hey says...

There are plenty of "unofficial" iso's available to download.

Posted at 12:53 p.m. on May 22, 2006

4 Natalia Gorbski says...

Alright junior, learn to read next time instead of being a a child and whining about whow things are hard when you don't. Command Line Warriors? More like Graphics Loving Panzies.

Posted at 2:12 p.m. on May 22, 2006

5 Zeth says...

Fantastic Natalia!!! I'll put that on the header of of the page!

Usually I use 'Windows Wimp' as the opposite for 'Command Line Warrior' but 'Graphics Loving Panzies' works too.

I am not trying setting myself up as an expert or anything! I am attempting to create an open discussion on the command line and Linux.

Posted at 9:15 p.m. on May 22, 2006

6 Tom says...

1. OpenBSD is not a Linux distribution.

2. OpenBSD do not cater for users unwilling to read manuals. If you're

   not willing to read manuals, it probably was best that you thrown the CD in the bin.

Posted at 7:50 p.m. on September 14, 2006

7 dadexter says...

OpenBSD might have a point in trying to get people to read the manuals prior to installing. But if that's the way they want to be, maybe they should stop whining about not having any users.

Posted at 9:31 p.m. on November 1, 2006

8 craig says...

Uhm, I don't recall them ever whining about not having any users.

The have asked for financial support of their projects from the existing user base, which if you include all the users of OpenSSH is very very large and includes many large companies making millions.

Posted at 8:20 p.m. on November 18, 2006

9 BASH Cures Cancer - Brock says...

Zeth,

Not trying to rib you but this article inspired me to give it a go. My article is titled OpenBSD 4.0 Installed in 20 minutes.

I was using VMWare do I did not have to worry about losing my disk. It took me awhile to figure out that fdisk but I was able to figure it out as I think its similar to Solaris. The article is the 3rd try as the first two did not go as smoothly!

Cheers mate!

Brock

Posted at 1:08 a.m. on February 17, 2007

10 Dusty says...

LOL! It seems OpenBSD really is only for smart people. I have OpenBSD on all my computers. My laptop dual boots it with windows xp home. How did i manage all this? http://www.openbsd.org I kinda used these eye things and this brain thing and read those word thingys.

Posted at 11:23 a.m. on February 20, 2007

11 BASH Cures Cancer - Brock says...

Ah come on. He did not want to screw up his drive with a odd version of fdisk.

Posted at 4:02 p.m. on February 20, 2007

12 John H Dystra says...

Dusty, you used that brain thing, and yet you cannot spell thingies. Graphics Loving Panzies is nice, I much prefer it to Windrones and GNUbies.

Posted at 8:08 a.m. on May 5, 2007

13 parasew says...

The partition was within an extended partition? "All BSD systems have a common method of dividing up hard disks, even though the partition types and filesystem formats differ among all of the BSD derivatives. First you must assign a certain area (=slice) of the disk for your operating system, then you may divide it up into a number of partitions, on which you will put filesystems. This differs from DOS, Windows, and Linux in that they do not deal with slices, just partitions." And for dvorak: "If you use a Dvorak keyboard or a keyboard in a different country, press l (lowercase L) to see a list of keyboard types" - hope that helped. BSD rocks!

Posted at 6:35 p.m. on May 20, 2007

14 Joe says...

OpenBSD is not really that difficult to use, you just have to read the FAQ because it's different from most OS installations. Once you get your head around it, it's a piece of cake. I like OpenBSD because of the excellent documentation, both on the system itself, and on the website. I'm glad they spent more time on improving the OS and not on a pretty and helpful installer.

OpenBSD does not whine. The do complain to vendors about closed hardwared documentation and licenses that are not TRULY FREE.

OpenBSD is not in need of users. They developers are focused on making/improving an OS that works right and is correct. They don't really care if they have 10,000 users or 10,000,000 users. Read the project goals. They are not trying to compete with anyone. The project is void of that kind of garbage which is why I use it. OpenBSD is a great project and I'm sure you are experiencing the fruits of it every time you fire up ssh on your linux box.

OpenBSD is free, but if you want a bundled cd set, you must pay. This helps cover the cost of the hackathons (where lots of great work is done on the OS), the hardware, the bandwidth, etc. They've already given away their source code with a FREE license, they don't charge anyone any money to use OpenSSH. What more do you want? Developers need money too.

So in the spirit of "don't knock it until you try it", you haven't really tried it out, since you couldn't install it. It's a great OS. It's done right, in my opinion. Just because you are popular, does not mean you are the best or right. Also, you can't expect OpenBSD to be like "most linux distros" since most OpenBSD developers don't even use Linux.

Hope that helps. I'm not trying to blast you, I just thought the "command line warrior" would have a real appreciation for a well made, correct, secure, and well documented OS that has a command line install (fastest install I've ever done btw).

I challenge you try again: * Read the OpenBSD FAQ pertaining to installation before installation. * Get a OpenBSD 4.1 system up and running. (post a dmesg to your blog) * Read undeadly.org. There are lots of posts about the current OpenBSD hackathon.

Posted at 6:36 p.m. on June 5, 2007

15 Zeth says...

Hi Joe, thanks for your comment.

>So in the spirit of “don’t knock it until you try it”, you haven’t really tried it out, since you couldn’t install it.

Well if the only way to try it out is this complex dated FTP nonsense then I'll skip it until I come across an ISO. If I want an operating system that I cannot try before I buy then I might as well use OS X or Windows or whatever. I think we should just accept that I am a Linux guy, it seems to be in my blood. Either that or I try FreeBSD as Phill suggested.

Having said that I do quite like Solaris, but that is another story.

>OpenBSD is a great project and I’m sure you are experiencing the fruits of it every time you fire up ssh on your linux box.

Caldera Linux contributed a few cool open source components once upon a time, many of which are still in wide use, does that mean that I should go out and buy SCO Unix?

OpenSSH is great yes. Your posters are great. Your approach to drivers and freedom is great. Your operating system seems somewhat outdated however.

> post a dmesg to your blog

Why would I want to do that? It does not sound very exciting reading?

Posted at 7:52 p.m. on June 5, 2007

16 Joe says...

I understand your reluctance. To each his own. But a network install isn't exactly outdated. In addition, the installation is not complex. It is simple and to the point. I'm very happy with the installer because it just works. I've had many gui based installs (debian, ubuntu, fedora) fail for various reasons due to complex partitioning tools that crashed to graphics driver errors.

Thus, "new" (colorful whizbang gui grafix) is not necessarily better.

Posting a dmesg is more a *bsd thing I guess. It's an easy way of showing, "hey, it works on this hardware!"

Posted at 8:23 p.m. on June 5, 2007

17 KlfJoat says...

I'm OS-agnostic... over the years, I've run or used the major Linux, *BSD, Windows, and Mac OS's. I read a quote somewhere in the past few years that I think might be relevant to your apparent confusion. I'm sure a google will turn up its source if you're interested. It went something like this.

"Linux was created by PC users who wanted a Unix-like operating system on their PC. The BSD's were created by Unix users who wanted a Unix-like operating system on their PC."

Ever since I read that, I've more fully understood the differences between the two.

Good luck with your next BSD install. :-)

Posted at 7:49 a.m. on June 9, 2007

18 Maximo Variano says...

Sounds to me like someone is too dumb to read, you belong with Ubuntu.

Posted at 5:45 p.m. on June 17, 2007

19 Eddie Thieda says...

"Then was presented with a number of arcane charts, which after a few seconds I realised it was my existing disk layout. It was fdisk captain, but not as we as know it."

I like how you use 'arcane'.

Posted at 11:25 a.m. on August 13, 2007

20 Edward Thieda says...

If you decide to try again just remember read the manual it's your friend! :) Plus on a side note OpenBSD can become a functional/secure desktop if you take your time configuring everything the way that you like it.

I prefer to use it for a firewall and have FreeBSD on my desktop system.

Posted at 9:14 p.m. on January 3, 2008