« BackInstalling OpenBSD on the Pomera DM250{,XY?}jcs.orgSubmitted by jandeboevrie 4 days ago
  • altairprime 4 days ago

    I’m really glad to see this; I miss having openbsd on my long ago Sony Vaio, and I’d rather have a familiar editing environment on the Pomera’s hardware. I’ll have to study how keyboard layouts work to see if I can correct that; my DM250 has the U.S. layout stickers and I’d rather swap layouts than peel them.

    • sidkshatriya 4 days ago

      I tend to use FreeBSD and Linux mostly. Here is my take on OpenBSD.

      Good:

      - Small, comprehensible system

      - Emphasis on simplicity

      - Developers good about getting OpenBSD working on newer architectures e.g. Apple M1/M2

      - pf

      Bad:

      - Very security forward but userspace and kernel almost exclusively in C

      - Many security mitigations have questionable value but most certainly make the system a bit less flexible e.g. raw syscalls only via libc

      - No journaled filesystem in 2026

      - Still uses CVS in 2026

      - System feels a bit slow and not yet fully tuned for multicore (improving gradually though)

      - Community a bit insular and does not feel very welcoming (you may disagree)

      TL;DR - I'm not a fan. Linux for maximum features and performance. FreeBSD when you want to use a BSD. Why FreeBSD ? See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47322710