In May 2022 I wrote about switching from FreeBSD to OpenBSD. Today I want to revisit that post, as a lot has changed since then in OpenBSD land.

The Hardware

My hardware has changed since:

  • Ryzen 5800X

  • Some B450 motherboard

  • 32GB DDR4 at 2666MHz

  • OS Drive: 500GB WD Black SN750

  • MSI RX 6700XT

  • ZSA Ergodox EZ keyboard

  • Ploopy Adept trackball

  • AudioEngine D1 DAC/amp

Environment/Software

  • i3 (i3bar + i3status)

  • Nextcloud client

  • keepassxc

  • neovim (also dabbling with Helix as I write this)

  • Firefox

  • Audacious music player - Strawberry no longer compiles, and same with Clementine

First Impressions Revisited

When I was running FreeBSD, my Ethernet port didn’t work out of the box, my graphics card was not supported, and U2F was not supported in base. I can’t confirm if that is still true today, but I do know now that my graphics card is supported with the latest drm-kmod package.

My Elecom HUGE Problem

I stated that not all my buttons worked on the Elecom. I found a solution by editing the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and adding

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "mouse driver"
        MatchIsPointer "on"
        Driver "mouse"
EndSection

I still have that with my Ploopy trackball. Would it all work the same without it? Maybe, haven’t bothered to try.

FreeBSD Revisited

My experience with what I stated then is outdated. I hear that Wifi with Intel chips is getting better. Maybe it is catching up to OpenBSD? On OpenBSD with an Intel AC7265(?) I was able to get 400x400Mbps. I don’t know if I was on 2.4GHz or 5GHz, but at any rate, that was totally acceptable to me.

I also hear there’s been great strides made with USB audio and disconnecting devices. If so, that is also fantastic as it was such a pain if I accidentally disconnected my DAC and found it being almost easier to reboot my computer than do the dance to get everything back in order.

OpenBSD Experience Revisited

USB Audio

When I started using OpenBSD, USB audio was probably worse than it was on FreeBSD. The constant stuttering was so bad that I would have to about every 30 minutes kill Firefox to get my audio in order.

Eventually I got an AudioEngine D1 anticipating using the SPDIF port on it. But to my dismay, SPDIF on my system wasn’t supported by OpenBSD! BUT, switching devices did really help my problem. Instead of restarting Firefox every 30 minutes, it was more like twice a day. Still don’t understand that one. Even better, over time I only had to restart Firefox once a day or not at all in a day to solve the stuttering audio issue.

Even better better, some kind soul submitted updates to OpenBSD that supported the sound device on my motherboard! So now I have my DAC doing audio through the SPDIF port on my motherboard and it has been smooth sailing.

Firefox

These days the Download button in the file manager in Firefox actually takes me to the Downloads folder. Previously, I had to train it at first to remember. From time to time, Firefox may crash when trying to upload/download a file. It can be very frustrating. But I assume there’s some sort of pledge or unveil violations going on and assume that these security controls are doing their job.

keepassxc-proxy

All works great. Though I did eventually stop and switched to hosting Vaultwarden and using the browser extension. I still use KeePassXC for a lot of credentials, ones I don’t want in Vaultwarden.

Erlang

Works! The port maintainer has chosen to support multiple versions, so currently there’s erlang25, erlang26, and erlang27 in ports and I’d have to go through the steps of symlinking a bunch of stuff so I didn’t have to type erl27 and stuff like that. So I just download the tarball, set my own feature flags and build and make install the package myself. Overall, I don’t mind this.

hostname.if for Wireguard Clients

I still use wg-quick. I think there’s a way to not autostart the interface, but I prefer my method of having an up/down script to wrap wg-quick.

sndiod…​is Great!

My issues have been solved here, I like using sndiod. I’m still not super used to the different tools, but the man pages are helpful, sndio is pretty straightforward. I’ve gotten sndiod to work well with my USB microphones, minus one I mentioned before. Oh well, now I hardly use a microphone.

One issue I have encountered though, not sure if it is sndio or usb related on OpenBSD, but I tried to record some audio with aucat in over USB and there was a constant audible tick in the recording. This problem did not happen on Linux where I also tested for this problem.

Overall Thoughts

OpenBSD is still slow compared to FreeBSD. But I find every release something gets better and better in OpenBSD. New stuff supported, new security features, better hardware support, performance gains here and there, it has been a fun 2 years of using OpenBSD on my computers.

I stated previously that I would likely switch back to FreeBSD on my desktop once my graphics card was supported. At this point, I am very happy with OpenBSD and will not. But, I will revisit FreeBSD on the desktop again some time again. I have accumulated extra SSDs so maybe it’s time for a triple boot and have some fun!

I see both FreeBSD and OpenBSD improving release after release and that is exciting to me. 2 great operating systems that deserve much love. In the end, I don’t regret moving my desktop to OpenBSD. Maybe sometimes I miss a package that might be on Linux or FreeBSD, but I haven’t missed anything so much that I feel like I have to abandon OpenBSD as my daily driver, and it will be here to stay on my systems.