Installing OpenBSD on the Pomera DM250{,XY?}

(jcs.org)

18 points | by jandeboevrie 2 days ago ago

2 comments

  • altairprime 2 days ago

    I’m really glad to see this; I miss having openbsd on my long ago Sony Vaio, and I’d rather have a familiar editing environment on the Pomera’s hardware. I’ll have to study how keyboard layouts work to see if I can correct that; my DM250 has the U.S. layout stickers and I’d rather swap layouts than peel them.

  • sidkshatriya a day ago

    I tend to use FreeBSD and Linux mostly. Here is my take on OpenBSD.

    Good:

    - Small, comprehensible system

    - Emphasis on simplicity

    - Developers good about getting OpenBSD working on newer architectures e.g. Apple M1/M2

    - pf

    Bad:

    - Very security forward but userspace and kernel almost exclusively in C

    - Many security mitigations have questionable value but most certainly make the system a bit less flexible e.g. raw syscalls only via libc

    - No journaled filesystem in 2026

    - Still uses CVS in 2026

    - System feels a bit slow and not yet fully tuned for multicore (improving gradually though)

    - Community a bit insular and does not feel very welcoming (you may disagree)

    TL;DR - I'm not a fan. Linux for maximum features and performance. FreeBSD when you want to use a BSD. Why FreeBSD ? See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47322710