(I was going to say, "exploits" re my recent experience with OpenBSD,
but that would imply something entirely different, I'm afraid)
Below are just a few notes / thoughts re my recent experience with
OpenBSD. In my continued exploration of Plan 9 and Unix, it seemed
appropriate to revisit OpenBSD on my PowerPC hardware:
- I had previous experience with OpenBSD on both x86 and ppc
- Always appreciated it for its simplicity (beauty, even?)
- ... security, elegance, consistency
- Installation target identified: my first-gen PowerMac G5 (dual 1.8)
- A weekly-use workstation running Gentoo Linux
- Took a bit of work to assemble a halfway-competent workstation
installation due to state of modern Linux PPC -- fair number of
broken / unsupported packages/toolchains -- never could get get
a working 64-bit toolchain/userland
- Took a couple of tries to find a compatible SATA drive
- Installation of 7.4 macppc from CD went smoothly enough, but
failed to boot from secondary drive. (rather, I was unable to
work out the necessary OF/bsd.boot incantations)
- ... reinstallation when reconfigured for primary SATA resolved boot
issues
- Package installation and workstation customization was
straightforward - lacks some things currently, compared to Gentoo
install, but was far more efficient in getting to a "competent
workstation"
- Took advantage of the delay in getting the G5 going to install
7.4 on my PowerBook G4 (1.67)
- I've really enjoyed using OpenBSD on both machines now
- Both workstations are proving useful in support of FRST efforts
- OpenBSD 7.5 upgrade went smoothly on PB, but macppc pre-compiled
packages are (currently) missing from server
- OpenBSD macppc shares same weakness w/ Linux PPC: many packages
simply unavailable on PowerPC, period. (But also, especially
32-bit PowerPC (which, it's also a little absurd that I have
to essentially treat these 64-bit PPC970s as 32-bit PowerPC (for
still-unclear-to-me practical reasons)))
- Still have much love for Gentoo, and appreciate Gentoo continuing
to carry the PowerPC torch. I will be returning periodically to
that install -- it's still there on that other drive. ;)
