On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 10:37 AM, <za...@gmx.com> wrote: > Hi > > I am new to OpenBSD. In fact, I am a total newbie here. After reading many > posts on this list, I formed the impression that all or most OpenBSD users > are high-end IT professionals. > I was wondering: are there OpenBSD users who are not so advanced in terms of > IT expertise? That is, who are simple computer *users*, not IT > professionals?
I am a simple user who learned about OpenBSD upon beginning to share space with a sysadmin. I was given a sparc to experiment with, installed femail and used it as a mailserver, then got the bug and quickly built a webserver as well. I now default to using OpenBSD for various things and I often tackle complicated projects just for fun. > I need to know this because I am starting feeling that, as an average > computer user, I might be out of place here. I was attracted to OpenBSD by > its security-by-default philosophy. Admittedly, I don't know much about > security and I would not be able to set the proper security settings on my > own, so I have decided to adopt OpenBSD and use it for simple day-to-day > tasks, as a desktop OS (as I would any popular Linux distribution). Does > this choice of mine, and its underlying reasoning, make sense? I set up a desktop machine several years ago using similar reasoning, also figuring that even if it didn't end up any more secure when I was done, I'd learn more by using the machine every day than by playing with others just when I had a project in mind. I spent a lot of time learning how the new packages I'd installed sat on top of the base system, so at least from an educational perspective it was pretty fascinating. Made for a nice, clean system, too, since every time I debated installing yet more applications, I'd be reminded of that nice secure base I'd started with and had been chipping away at ever since. It did take me some time to get mine set up nicely into desktop system form back then, especially compared to the easy job I'm used to when setting up OpenBSD as a server. I couldn't get the hang of cwm for an embarrassingly long time and a Brother HL-2040 printer and I nearly fought to the death. But it worked/works fine. > Are there any significant drawbacks to my adoption of OpenBSD (such as > OpenBSD being too technical and too difficult, as compared, say, to Linux > distros)? For me it was more a matter of figuring out what types of useful things OpenBSD could do for me as only a casual user. Once I had a cool thing I wanted in mind and knew it was possible, I rarely encountered difficulty in making it happen, given some lead time for manual reading. You might be surprised at how quickly working with it starts to seem very comfortable. It helps that it's so streamlined. I never felt that way about, say, Ubuntu, no matter how much time I spent with the command line. There's some unifying logic to how things are organized and what is included by default that makes learning and exploring on your own a little easier. Regarding relative difficulty, I'm not sure I saw much of a difference between learning OpenBSD and the couple flavors of Linux I originally tried out at around the same time, but I began with almost no Unix background. It's not a matter of difficulty or technical knowledge so much as knowing where to look for the information you need. If you're firmly in the "simple computer user" category, sometimes you end up spending time trying to guess what names and terms people in the know might use for things before you can even get a useful result from apropos. This is, incidentally, a great use for the mailing list archives, where many useful man page directions have already been given. I'll echo the recommendation for Michael W. Lucas' Absolute OpenBSD 2nd edition. It's a great general refresher for those of us who don't use the OS heavily enough to really memorize the basics and it complements the documentation well. It also contains some quality of life tips - turning off incessant beeping, moving windows around, etc. - that might help out a lot if you do decide to dive into desktop use and don't yet know what all your options are. If you're using OpenBSD in the workplace its advantages are obvious. If you are thinking about it for fun or personal use, it all kind of boils down to your personal level of curiosity. If you love knowing how and why things work, you'll probably be really happy getting to know OpenBSD and will appreciate how useful it can be.
