Probably you may recall this slogan. I would like to use it tell why I
find OpenBSD as Just Works(TM) OS.
I have a local mini-server which serves as search engine, mpd server,
rss bridge and NTP server. I was struggling recently with correct setup
of added HDD, trying to add another partition. My fault was to add wrong
DUID in fstab, due to unknown reason OpenBSD was throwing ask for help
by running fsck, because partition looked wrong. Of course partition was
good, but this is another thing and not an OS error.
Initially I thought that there is really something wrong with disk, so I
ran fsck, SMART tests and all other things. Only OpenBSD fsck was
finding unreadable blocks. My assumption was that OS went crazy, so I
should replace it. Now, one might think - "Okay, you just install Linux,
docker and everything runs." Not this time. I installed Alpine Linux,
search engine, rss bridge and that looked fine. Another argument for
Linux was possibility of building btrfs partitions. FFS is sometimes
associated with ancient, unstable file system, so theoretically more
resilient btrfs should work well. The problem was somewhere else.
At the end I tried to setup mpd server, but I had a problem with sound
interface. Pipewire does not seem to work easily without dbus,
elogind/seatd/whatnot and desktop environment. The only easy setup of
Pipewire I know is inside Chimera Linux (just install pipewire and
wireplumber, then start wireplumber service as user). From TTY it just
did not want to play. I tried ALSA and PulseAudio too. They all need
some magic around dbus and DE. Mpd was must-have, so I returned to
OpenBSD, assuming that I will care about HDD other way.
Under OBSD sndio just works, you install mpd and its client, no
additional work is needed. Just Works(TM). As long as you aim to simple
OS, OpenBSD is great. And that docker thing. It is nice to download
everything with one or few commands, then run it with another one, but
configuration might be a struggle. Under OpenBSD you need to do manual
installation, but configuration is simple and is really applied. I was
even able to write simple service scripts to run those things as user,
without having any knowledge about programming.
I do not say that this will work for you. I think that OpenBSD (and
other BSDs) are for minimalist people who are not looking for OS which
will be able to do everything, but exactly what is needed.
