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For OpenBSD. A bit of delight

In 2019, he rediscovered OpenBSD.

Being a green Unix at the turn of the millennium, I tried everything that came to hand. Then Theo in the person of OpenBSD explained to me that I should go play other toys. And almost 20 years later, in 2019, it again surfaced - the safest OS and all that. Well, I think I’ll look - for sure all the same tin.

There it was.What a beauty it is. CWM, TMUX and others. PLEDGE! If you still do not know about pledge - drop everything and read. Beauty is in simplicity, minimalism, in respect for human brains (meaning the belief that a person can not only click the “Next” button). Unix friendliness in all its glory: “Unix is ​​friendly ...“ - well, you remember). Beauty is in focus. In this case, the focus is on security. In particular, it was hooked on uncompromising attitude towards “optional security”. If any element of the security system can be disabled for convenience, this will certainly be done. SE Linux is a cool thing, but what do administrators with weak nerves do first thing? :) So optional security is unacceptable, just by definition - I agree.

For myself, I concluded that the adoption of OpenBSD as a research project puts everything in its place. System for engineers. We set, study, get insights, use, grow professionally. The project gives rise to very interesting technologies that take root in other systems. The development approach itself, I apologize for the pathos, is honest and noble: We come up with -> We implement -> We implement it in third-party software -> We expect other vendors to accept the technology (we’ll quickly patch bugs, especially for security, and don’t forget to send whiners on the lists mailings to FAK).

Naturally, due to resource limitations, there will never be support for a wide range of devices, modern laptops, of course, there will be a performance drawdown (and even this is a “question”, there are many use cases - you won’t take everything into account). By the way, I wonder - is OpenBSD used in commercial systems? Nobody in the know? Judging by various, mainly foreign forums - yes, it’s used, but how large-scale - I didn’t find out.

In general, this was one of the first pleasant surprises a year ago, you can live quite well in OpenBSD - almost everything that your heart desires is already sorted.

The purpose of this text was to interest. If someone after this sets himself up, drives, penetrates, then the world will become a little better.

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