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Peter N. M. Hansteen walks through use of OpenBSD on a modern laptop in his latest blog post. While OpenBSD has a good reputation for servers and routers, many do not realize how well it works on laptops with supported hardware. He's been running it as the only OS on his laptops for well over a decade at this point and shares his experience with recent hardware. OpenBSD is clean, organized, and predictable. It does what you configure it to do, and only that, with no backtalk or second-guessing — like from other systems. Its documentation is second to none.
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Remember Darwin; building a better mousetrap merely results in smarter mice.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ledow on Tuesday July 11 2017, @03:03PM (14 children)
For user-friendliness then, why not "Do you want to set a computer name?"
Kinda solves the problem for everyone, rather than again presuming that the user is a computer expert.
This is part of the reason that Linux falls down for a lot of users (P.S. I deploy both Windows and Linux, server and client, for schools, and have done for over a decade).
Windows setup? Timezone. Computer name (with randomly generated default). Username. Cloud account. First-time-setup wizards. Into Windows
BSD / Linux setup? Everything under the sun, rarely a default or hint, partitioning menus and even things like "do you want to enable GPM in the console" on first setup...
It's not that it can't be done (some GUI distros are really quite nice to set up and require next to nothing), but that there is no concept of "novice user", what they actually need, or why you should have a hand-holding mode. Seriously, where is the boot disk that basically says at the start "Look, are you computer idiot who just wants their computer to work? Yes? Here's the wizard, with almost everything on Next a safe and sensible default that will work. No? Here's the setup menu."
Anyone remember Windows 3.1 setup that actually asked if you wanted to have a graphical tutorial on how to use the mouse, including double-click, right-click, click-and-drag, etc.?
To be honest, I have set up people who didn't want "fancy new windows" and were prepared to work at making a Linux distro work on their desktop, from zero knowledge (so no pre-conceived ideas of Windows usage). When you get left at a desktop, with only a bar at the top or a side-menu, it's quite daunting. When things start jumping out at you, popping up, etc. it's even worse. Bloody "search for what you're after" menus are atrocious for this purpose. But there's no way I'd have just given them a boot disk, told them how to boot it and let them get on with it. They wouldn't have a clue about such questions and - oddly - the "shall I format and wipe your partitions" bit is often not as well explained or guarded as those other questions! Hell, just the GRUB menu on some install disks is enough to put people off.
(Score: 4, Informative) by stormreaver on Tuesday July 11 2017, @03:32PM (8 children)
I can't tell if you're a troll, or just haven't done a new install of either Kubuntu or Windows in a very long time.
I can give a person a Kubuntu disk on a blank system, and tell them, "follow the prompts and accept the defaults," and then not say another word until they're done with the install. Kubuntu is damned easy to install, with the sole exceptions of having to deal with an already installed system on a UEFI board, or a wireless chipset which isn't supported by the stock kernel. The verbose warning messages about BIOS vs. UEFI are daunting for new users. Beyond that, it's, "Enter your user name and password, select your time zone, select automatic partitioning (which is the default), click on the install button, then wait until it's done. It can hardly get any simpler without taking away the ability for experienced users to setup their own partitioning scheme.
Windows, on the other hand, is a much, much harder process that involves hunting down driver disks, finding and selecting obscure intermediary executable files, rebooting multiple times, and then finding out that you're STILL not done because there are yet MORE drivers that Windows couldn't install during the installation.
A regular user has little to no chance of installing Windows correctly, while that same user has a very high chance of installing Kubuntu (and I would presume Mint or some other Ubuntu derivitive) correctly.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Tuesday July 11 2017, @04:22PM (2 children)
But OpenBSD, or any BSD, the regular user (for some values of "regular") has little chance of ever getting it installed.
OpenBSD only begrudgingly acknowledges the existence of graphical user interfaces, (via ports). The manual/installation guide walks you through setting up a couple of choices of GUI, but certainly not many.
I don't know if 15 years of Linux experience helped or got in the way of setting up by OpenBSD laptop the first time.
Its certainly not as polished a as the most new-born Linux distro.
As far as I can tell the principal reason to run OpenBSD has nothing to do with a GUI Its great as a server or firewall. But running it as your daily driver on a laptop, while certainly possible, is probably only useful for developing/maintaining BSD, because, like it or not, keeping it current will take some dev skills. And I don't care what the article says, don't use a new laptop unless you are willing to let half of its features sit idle for a couple years waiting for drivers.
Then there is the fact that the principal developer, who has been turffed from every project he has ever worked on, started OpenBSD to to have a place he couldn't be asked to leave. He makes Poettering look like the Pope. You can over look that, but be very careful before asking any question on the support mailing list because one never knows when his rage will kick in.
Mi Ledlow simply has to realize that that not every OS was intended for HIM.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Informative) by tekk on Tuesday July 11 2017, @04:36PM (1 child)
>OpenBSD only begrudgingly acknowledges the existence of graphical user interfaces, (via ports).
You're thinking FreeBSD, which doesn't have X in the base install. OpenBSD has Xenocara (their Xorg patchset), a window manager (cwm, their own), and xdm enabled by default if you don't tell it no in the installer.
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Tuesday July 11 2017, @08:42PM
There's also TrueOS, the easy-setup (or easier-setup, because the FreeBSD installer isn't really at all complicated) version of FreeBSD that comes with X and pre-configured desktop and GUI package manager.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Tuesday July 11 2017, @07:42PM (3 children)
I deploy hundreds of machines a year. Would you like to know how many modern Windows installs / images I have? One. It was created from a standard install CD, hotfixes slipstreamed for convenience, and then a bunch of software installed (office, etc.). The image gets updated every year for convenience but otherwise it's the same image throughout the network, on every machine.
You push it to a machine over PXE, it boots, finds all drivers, works. I'm not suggesting we need a Linux Update site, but it works, because Windows Update just does that for you. I don't claim it'll pick up the latest nVidia drivers, but it works enough to get the computer going. The same is true of the same install CD but the reason I use PXE as an example is that it literally takes seconds to redeploy HUNDREDS of different machines, to a working config, with fully working drivers, no matter the underlying hardware. And I do that all day long. Literally, 1 image, 15 revisions over 3 years (mainly to update software, or put in some more Windows updates). There is precisely ONE device that needs an extraneous driver - an all-in-one PC that needs a decent driver to complete Windows setup from a network (i.e. NDIS2 driver) - on the entire network.
Sure, there's a device or two it doesn't like, or aren't optimal. But driver disks? Really? Not unless you're booting some server from a RAID that is unsupported in Windows Setup which is incredibly rare nowadays.
UEFI is a major complication - I understand that, and why that is, and I'm not saying it's anyone's fault on the open-source end. It's a tricky problem. But Windows setup hasn't had the problem you describe since Windows 7/8 either.
A regular user doesn't NEED to install Windows. It's done for them.
But a regular Linux / BSD user *does* need to install Windows. In fact, almost all of them. So it can't be done for them. So they need more help.
It's about raising the standard of experience, not "we can theoretically do what Windows does, that's good enough".
That said, I rolled out a bunch of VM's to a school full of pupils. To show them what real OS are like, how they are installed and deployed. Literally just put Windows 10 education ISO image into the HyperV VM and then let them access it on a locked-out network. They worked it out in seconds. These are kids that have NEVER installed an OS in their life. It's not that difficult. But even partitioning properly would be beyond them (fortunately Windows setup rarely cares!).
Try the same with Linux distros, it does NOT go as smoothly. I know. We did it. With the kids. The success rate wasn't high and they had all kinds of images available to them. That was without exotic hardware, dual-boot, or anything else.
To be honest, with the kids we tried it on, they ALL went to grab the mouse to select the initial (text mode) boot menu. That's a sign of the times.
Almost as bad as when we have a new intake being shown the computers for the first time, who are young enough to expect to just be able to prod the screen directly.
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Wednesday July 12 2017, @02:25PM (2 children)
You completely ignored and mischaracterized the discussion. We're not talking about corporate installs or pre-installs, where there is an IT department to hold your hand. We're talking about consumer-level users who want to use a BSD or Linux desktop or laptop that isn't pre-installed with the same. We are also talking about the same level of user who needs to reinstall Windows because it did what Windows is want to do: puke all over itself.
1) BSD is usually a non-starter, because its consumer-level hardware support is abysmal. Even if its installer is on par with Kubuntu, there is a high degree of probability that the system just won't work for lack of device drivers.
2) Installing Windows is also a non-starter, because it's a scattered mess. Install device driver, reboot. Install the next device driver, reboot; ad. infinitum. The last Windows 7 install I did required five or six reboots for device drivers that Windows couldn't find.
3) A Kubuntu install asks a few simple questions, and then does everything else automatically. There is one reboot, after the install is finished, to get into the new system. Its built-in device driver support is excellent, and there is a high probability that everything will work right out of the box. The only exception to this I have had in the last five or six years has been with USB wireless adapters. There are several excellently supported ones, but it's not as care-free as the rest of the system.
4) You apparently misunderstood what I said about UEFI on a Kubuntu install. The installer handles UEFI just fine. When the installer detects that there is already a Kubuntu installed in BIOS mode, it pops up a too-verbose message which tells the user that a UEFI install over a BIOS install may render the BIOS install unbootable. That's the end of the UEFI complication, which is only such because the average user won't have a clue what that means. If it's a tricky problem, then the Kubuntu installer hides it wonderfully.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Wednesday July 12 2017, @02:42PM (1 child)
No I didn't.
1) Correct.
2) NOT CORRECT. If your PC boots into a Windows boot environment (bog-standard boot disk, OEM setup pre-installed on the machine, whatever), it will connect to Windows Update and get everything else it needs. HUNDREDS of different models / manufacturer of machines, each with all kinds of weird devices, standard Windows install (just the boot-disk drivers, and whatever it can get from the net) and it all just works, to the extent that the average home user would get things working enough to use the machine. The worst culprit is wifi drivers, but almost every device I've seen can load Ethernet drivers without a hitch to do this, and then work from there. Windows has this to the point where I don't EVER install a driver for a machine, whether brand-new out of the box, 2017 model, or re-imaged junk that's been in place for nearly a decade.
3) Somewhere in-between. Networking is generally good, wifi is generally much worse off (firmware etc. mainly), and other things are highly specific on models (e.g. some graphics cards take a LOT of messing to make work right, e.g. Intel/nVidia Optimus for many early models)
4) Such things are not in the realm of things that Kubuntu should be tinkering with, not in an environment where dual-boot is a possibility. Damn right it should be asking. A problem that you can't get around, I agree, but it's not something that should be hidden anyway.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by stormreaver on Wednesday July 12 2017, @07:00PM
In the decades in which I have had to install Windows, I have never, ever experienced this. It's how Microsoft would like the world to believe Windows installs work, but it's a lot like Bigfoot sightings: people claim to have seen it, but the pictures are always fake. In every single Windows install I have ever done (or even seen done), I have seen nothing but Windows failing to find drivers through Windows Update. I have always had to either hunt down the driver disk, or go to the manufacturer's Web site.
It's entirely possible that there is some obscure magical incancation that allows Windows to find drivers on Windows Update, but I have no idea what that might be. But having fought with the sadism of Windows for too many years, I stopped caring. Kubuntu installs have been so trivially simple for so long that I leave the Windows mess to the more masochistic crowd.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday July 12 2017, @12:01AM
Mint is just as easy.
I can't remember the last time I had trouble with any Linux install. Maybe 1999? Something like that.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by kaszz on Tuesday July 11 2017, @04:58PM (2 children)
Actually there might be some advantages to deter "idiots" from joining a project. It will at least catch some SJW in the bud.
Though things like "do you want to enable GPM in the console" might be quite non-obvious.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 11 2017, @07:26PM (1 child)
I actually encourage SJWs to make suggestions to Theo (tee hee hee).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @02:22PM
Joke's on you. Some of the younger OpenBSD devs ARE SJWs... Peter Hessler and Reyk Flöter for example.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Tuesday July 11 2017, @05:02PM
It's hard for me to judge the difficult of an installation, because I've installed both a zillion times. The main things that strike me, though, is the software installation. I'm not working in any sort of enterprise environment, but typically for some microbusiness with a couple of computers. So, when installing a replacement system, I will have a long list of programs that need to be installed.
- On Linux, using mostly OSS, this means calling up Synaptic, clicking a bunch of boxes, and going to lunch. It "just works". Of course, there may be some special programs, like maybe an ERP client, but all the standards stuff is there, done.
- On Windows...it's awful. You have to find and install each individual program. Which version of Office do they have? Where are the damned language packs? Where's the damned license key? Creative Suite, right. Sometimes a program is on a DVD, sometimes the license key can't be found. Sometimes there are unexpected dependencies that the installer didn't bring with it (just today I had a windows installer abort with a cryptic message about the "wrong" version of DirectX - I don't yet know WTF it actually expects). There's nothing difficult about any individual step, but the whole thing typically turns into a day long slog that leaves me wanting to murder someone.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday July 11 2017, @07:06PM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?