Title: Why I stopped using OpenBSD

	Title: Why I stopped using OpenBSD
	Author: Solène
	Date: 15 November 2024
	Tags: openbsd linux life
	Description: In this blog post, I share my experience and why I stopped
	using OpenBSD

	# Introduction

	Last month, I decided to leave the OpenBSD team as I have not been
	using OpenBSD myself for a while. A lot of people asked me why I
	stopped using OpenBSD, although I have been advocating it for a while.
	Let me share my thoughts.

	First, I like OpenBSD, it has values, and it is important that it
	exists. It just does not fit all needs, it does not fit mine anymore.

	# Issues

	Here is a short list of problems that, while bearable when taken
	individually, they summed up to a point I had to move away from
	OpenBSD.

	## Hardware compatibility

	* no Bluetooth support
	* limited game pad support (not supported by all programs, not all game
	pad will work)
	* battery life / heat / power usage (OpenBSD draws more power than
	alternatives, by a good margin)

	## Software compatibility

	As part of staying relevant on the DevOps market, I need to experiment
	and learn with a lot of stuff, this includes OCI containers, but also
	machine learning and some weird technologies. Running virtual machines
	on OpenBSD is really limited, running programs headless with one core
	and poor performance is not a good incentive to work at staying sharp.

	As part of my consultancy work, I occasionally need to run proprietary
	crap, this is not an issue when running it in a VM, but I can not do
	that on OpenBSD without a huge headache and very bad performance.

	## Reliability

	I have grievances against OpenBSD file system. Every time OpenBSD
	crash, and it happens very often for me when using it as a desktop, it
	ends with file corrupted or lost files. This is just not something I
	can accept.

	Of course, it may be some hardware compatibility issue, I never have
	issues on an old ThinkPad T400, but I got various lock up, freeze or
	kernel panic on the following machines:

	* ThinkPad X395
	* ThinkPad t470
	* ThinkPad t480
	* ryzen 5600X + AMD GPU (desktop)

	Would you like to keep using an operating system that daily eat your
	data? I don't. Maybe I am doing something weirds, I don't know, I
	have never been able to pinpoint why I got so many crashes although
	everyone else seem to have a stable experience with OpenBSD.

	# Moving to Linux

	I moved from OpenBSD to Qubes OS for almost everything (except playing
	video games) on which I run Fedora virtual machines (approximately 20
	VM simultaneously in average). This provides me better security than
	OpenBSD could provide me as I am able to separate every context into
	different spaces, this is absolutely hardcore for most users, but I
	just can't go back to a traditional system after this.

	Earlier blog post: Why one would use Qubes OS?

	In addition, I have learned the following Linux features and became
	really happy of it:

	* namespaces: being able to reduce the scope of a process is incredibly
	powerful, this is something that exists in Linux since a very long
	time, this is also the foundation for running containers, it is way
	better than chroots.
	* cgroups: this is the name of the kernel subsystem that is responsible
	for resource accounting, with it, it is possible to get access to
	accurate and reliable monitoring. It is possible to know how much
	network, i/o, CPU or memory have been used by a process. From an
	operator point of view, it is really valuable to know exactly what is
	consuming resources when looking at the metrics. Where on OpenBSD you
	can notice a CPU spike at some timestamp, on Linux you would be able to
	know which user used the CPU.
	* systemd: journald, timers and scripting possibilities. I need to
	write a blog post about this, systemd is clearly disruptive, but it
	provides many good features. I understand it can make some people
	angry as they have to learn how to use it. The man pages are good
	though.
	* swap compression: this feature allows me to push my hardware to its
	limit, with lz4 compression algorithm, it is easy to get access to
	extremely fast swap paid with some memory. The compression ratio
	is usually 3:1 or 4:1 which is pretty good.
	* modern storage backend: between LVM, btrfs and ZFS, there are super
	nice things to achieve depending on the hardware, for maximum
	performance / reliability and scalability. I love transparent
	compression as I can just store more data on my hardware. (when it's
	compressible of course).
	* flatpak: I really like software distribution done with flatpak,
	packages are all running in their own namespace, they can't access all
	the file system, you can roll back to a previous version, and do some
	interesting stuff
	* auditd: this is a must-have for secure environments, it allows
	logging all accesses matching some rules (like when was accessed this
	arbitrary file, when that file is modified, etc...). This does not
	even exist in OpenBSD (maybe if you can run ktrace on pid 1 you could
	do something?). This kind of feature is a basic requirement for many
	qualified secure environments.
	* SELinux: although many people disable it immediately after the first
	time it gets on their way (without digging further), this is a very
	powerful security mechanism that mitigates entire classes of
	vulnerabilities.

	When using a desktop for gaming, I found Fedora Silverblue to be a very
	solid system with reliable upgrades, good quality and a lot of software
	choice.

	# Conclusion

	I got too many issues with OpenBSD, I wanted to come back to it twice
	this year, but I just have lost 2 days of my life due to all the
	crashes eating data. And when it was working fine, I was really
	frustrated by the performance and not being able to achieve the work I
	needed to do.

	But as I said, I am glad people there are happy OpenBSD users who enjoy
	it and have a reliable system with it. From the various talks I had
	with users, the most common (by far) positive fact that make OpenBSD
	good is that users can understand what is going on. This is certainly
	a quality that can only be found in OpenBSD (maybe NetBSD too?).

	I will continue to advocate OpenBSD for situations I think it is
	relevant, and I will continue to verify OpenBSD compatibility when
	contributing to open source software (last in date is Peergos). This
	is something that matters a lot for me, in case I go back to OpenBSD
	:-)