People using a search engine and blindly selecting the top option is PEBCAK, not an OS issue. Except when the developers of the OS don't bother making man pages easily accessible, or add unnecessary hurdles in the way. Some Linux distros do that, but not all of them. Some make it easy and user-friendly.

Take Debian, for example. Going to //manpages.debian.org/git will redirect to current version of Git's manpage, with single click links to older versions, or to the package tracker.

If one knows the old version, they can go direct to //manpages.debian.org/buster/git which will redirects to the relevant docs for that version, whether the user enters "buster" or "Buster".

Ubuntu has similar (//manpages.ubuntu.com/git), but also generates a table of contents, and it has a prominent link to "report a bug in the contents of this documentation".


However when we compare to //man.openbsd.org/git that gives "No results found"? Really? Same with vim, curl, rsync, firefox ?

Ok, so //man.openbsd.org/man goes to the current page for man, but it takes three clicks to go to an older version, has no links to package information.

Also, whilst //man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-7.4/man goes to the old version, trying //man.openbsd.org/openbsd-7.4/man gives "Bad Request" because why not force people to type uppercase...

(Checking //man.freebsd.org/git, that redirects to current version of Git manpage, but still needs three clicks to change version, and not selecting a "...and Ports" version says "no data found", and there appears to be no concise URL for going direct to a specific version, nor indication of if a package is a port or not. It does at least have a generated ToC, though it's at the bottom of the page.)


There are undoubtedly areas where OpenBSD is better, but this does not appear to be one of them.

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And that's a perfect example of where OpenBSD 'hamstrings' itself. The developers don't care if the OS doesn't work on hardware they don't own. Strict implementation of certain features means that you end up with a kernel that either doesn't work or performs poorly on some machines.

There's nothing wrong with idealism, but it's a significant part of the reason that the BSDs are where they are in the market.

Having said that though, Linux is quite clearly heading down a rabbit hole with nobody knowing where it will end, and I can foresee myself switching to one of the BSDs in time.
That's hilarious! Thanks for the laugh.

Microsoft says that their software has these features, but have you ever looked at the source code to know this information first hand?

Quite clearly the secure design of their OS is the reason we're forced to download anywhere up to 1Gb of updates every "patch Tuesday."

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None of which are part of the OS - hence why they are absent. No idea why you would think that git was part of OpenBSD. OpenBSD uses CVS by the way.

Well if that's all you've got, they must be doing ok. I've not had any issues, as I've not had to type in the URL. But if I did, it still wouldn't be an issue, as I've spent decades with case sensitive file systems - and for me that's the norm. I thought most if not all Linux users were the same - or has that changed recently? That will probably be Lennart's next project "systemd-caseinsensitived"... now that he works for Microsoft, it seems all the more likely.

Well, as you're talking about a web page and some 3rd party software from the ports tree, then I'm not so sure.

I have no idea why you would think W^X is a "hamstrings".

OpenBSD introduced it back in 2003: http://www.openbsd.org/33.html

Microsoft introduced DEP in XP in 2004.

OpenBSD is a tiny project, a research OS, which is minuscule compared to corporate backed Linux... pray do tell how the developers are supposed to develop driver support for hardware which they don't own?

Linux is a "commercial" offering, it has input from all of the major "big tech" corporations, such as Intel, AMD, Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, IBM, HP, etc, etc, etc. Thousands of developers all on the corporate payroll work on the Linux kernel, backed by a foundations which is funded by those same corporations - and a board of directors made up of the same.

Like you I also found it disturbing that IBM decided to take the Red Hat source code and put it behind a paywall. RHEL is no longer really FOSS, it's something else. I'm hopeful that the remainder of the Linux ecosystem doesn't follow this trend.
I really like the BSDs, I'm dual booting OpenBSD on this Slackware box, and running FreeBSD virtually. At the moment I'm not planning on just running a BSD exclusively. For me to fully adopt the BSDs completely the BSDs will need to be more fully embraced by big business and given access to proprietary software.

Git was a thought of something not installed by default that might have security implications if misconfigured, given the suggestion towards OpenBSD having superior documentation as a security feature.

The others were simply common software to sanity check the unexpected lack of results.

(I am confused that OpenBSD not only uses GPL-licensed CVS, but appears to have it as part of the core OS - not as part of ports, but in the main sourcecode - huh?)

Anyway, if one runs "pkg_add git" on an OpenBSD system do they get Git installed? Which version? Does it come with local documentation? Does it pull in libcurl, or use some other library? Does it include gitk, or is that in another package?


Good documentation is not just about the raw contents of pages - it's also about navigability and discoverability, and about being able to easily answer questions like those above prior to installing anything.

-

There's a lot of people using Linux-based systems who are increasingly worried about what is being done - by Lennart, yes, but not just by Lennart - and it seems that OpenBSD may not be the viable backup plan a lot of those people seem to want it to be.

That isn't the fault of OpenBSD - if OpenBSD is by and for its users, and those users are happy with what it is, then great for them - but maybe it's the case that, unless one of the other BSD distros caters for the potential "Linux refugees", at some point there'll be something else that does.

*shrug*

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http://www.openbsd.org/opencvs/

It will pull in whatever dependencies are required by the port/package. Not sure what your point is there. Looking at a local mirror 2.42.0 seems to be available.

In FreeBSD, which I mostly use these days, this is what I have:

Among a load of potential package updates:
Looking at the output of the pkg list command, man pages are installed in the usual place.

None of the BSDs serve as a "backup plan" for Linux "refugees".

OpenBSD in particular doesn't do advocacy - they prefer not to have an influx of that type of user.

You have noted that this in a branch under /usr/src/gnu. In /usr/src/gnu/README, it says, in part: "This directory contains software that is Gigantic and Nasty but Unavoidable." Humor aside, there are still some GPL-licensed legacy tools remaining in the OS from its incept, even though no new GPL-licensed components are currently considered.On the most recent -release, the git version is 2.42.0. I'm a little ahead on my -current laptop, where the git package I installed is version 2.42.1. This has a library dependency for net/curl (8.4.0), and also installs the full set of git man pages (in /usr/local/man/), git core templates (in /usr/local/share), and gitweb (also in /usr/local/share), though the gitk tool is installed separately as a component of the git-x11 package.

All of OpenBSD's third-party binary packages are built from instructions in the OpenBSD ports tree, and while the ports tree is primarily build-instruction scaffolding, it can be parsed. A public server running the OpenBSD "ports-readmes-dancer" package is available at openports.pl. Here is the link to the -current page on the devel/git port, from which the git packages are built: https://openports.pl/path/devel/git Most packaging questions can be answered through it. Most any details not parsed automatically may be ascertained through review of the ports tree through its CVSWeb interface, or through its Github mirror, or if desired through obtaining a local copy of the tree.

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This is blatant misinformation.

Extract from the Linux kernel changelog for version 2.6.8 (which was released on the 14th August 2004):
Also, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addres..._randomization

Windows doesn't support W^X. They use their own methods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micros...ing_mechanisms

Further reading on the history, if you're interested in facts at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execut...ace_protection

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Ah, so this devolved into another "Windows vs. <anything>" thread. Enjoy your laugh, I'm out of puberty and - thus - of this thread.

i use OpenBSD on my daily pc.
it acts as a filtering bridge but i use it to browse lq etc from time to time.

i could use it (OpenBSD) on my main box but i use arch and windows on it bcus i am a gamer.
my pc is high end hardware with Nvidia graphics card and nice amd CPU, if OpenBSD would support Nvidia drivers (blasphemy, i know) and were made for gaming i would use it on my main pc.

Yes actually you can run these in BSD Firefox and Zoom are both useable. Firefox I believe is installable on BSD you can do all the things you would do on linux. Except I dont think it has drm though for watching stuff like Netflix. An you can use Zoom in BSD you can use Zoom in the web browser. However as to installing it as a desktop application on BSD no not really. An I have no idea what FPGA software is though.

If you look on your motherboard, sbc or mobile phone these days, you'll find a couple of big chips about 30mm² that do everything. They are expensive ASICs for large volume. The tooling is expensive. Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are low volume write-your-own-chip type things. So the fpga software is a complete IDE for these chips, typically 15G of database, program editors (vhdl & verilog) & chip simulator. There's also pin assignment stage & compiler. All your efforts go into a program that is read in on power up and configures the FPGA. Then if one of your test units misbehaves, you can fix it (reprogram) in in the field. New program = New device .

Zoom in the browser means you can't use the zoom client, which is heavily Qt based, but also has it's own (glibc) libs.

Interesting, when I tried OpenBSD (and other BSDs), the learning curve was very easy. BSD's documentation is 100x better than anything Linux has.

Since this tread is about OpenBSD, this statement does not make sense for OpenBSD, patches are all binary for amd64 and i386 and very easy to install. Or are you running BSD on some exotic hardware ?

In a way correct, but pledge(2) unveil(2) IMHO, is much better than flatpacks, appimages, docker or whatever on Linux. Firefiox, Chrome and a few other packages have been pledged and unveiled. Plus they are very easy to call in your program.

Everything I use on Linux has been found and works fine in OpenBSD. If not there I have found better alternatives.

Firefox on OpenBSD works great and due to pledge(2) and unveil(2), I have absolutely no concerns visiting any page. On Linux, I avoid many pages if I need to enable JS via noscript on more than 2 sites.

I do not know what FPGA is. For Zoom, I would never let that near any home desktop I am on. I think you are better off using zoom on your Cell Phone. FWIW, I have no need for zoom.

More of an opinion, personally, I like Slackware's init slightly better than BSD's init setup.


Maybe, but when I developed software for AIX, I would test on Slackware, RHEL, OpenBSD and NetBSD. Testing on the BSDs found lots of Issues that Linux had no problem with. So, if you are a developer, you really should at least test on OpenBSD, and I would suggest NetBSD too.

To add to this, the Corporate take-over of Linux is a big concern for me. If not for Slackware, I would have abandoned Linux almost 10 years ago.

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