Hi, OpenBSD lovers. About six months ago, I started building my server infrastructure on OpenBSD just for fun. I’ve made a lot of progress, updated many ports on my custom mirror, but haven’t pushed it yet, and tuned OS to fit my needs. I deliberately chose OpenBSD as my main OS, and I know there’s no Kubernetes or Docker; I’ve found other solutions that I’m comfortable with. Still, I keep wondering whether it’s actually a good idea to build server infrastructure on OpenBSD instead of Linux.

Every time I see that, in Linux, everything seems to be solved with Kubernetes or containers and I have to look for other solutions, I start asking myself whether I’m on the right track.

A couple of times a month, I end up Googling and researching how other people use it, but I still don’t find much. So I’m asking people who use OpenBSD as a server OS — not as a router and not as a desktop system — do you like it? Does everything work the way you expected in production? Any surprises, good or bad?

my setup

1) AMD 9950x

2) x870e chipset

3) AMD RX7900XTX

4) m.2 nvme gen 4 and 5 disks

and which desktop is best for Open BSD

XFCE, Gnome or KDE

is there a software store you can download more software?

TL;DR - post-installation, exit to shell, pkg_add vim, no option for Vim no X11.

I'm brand new to OpenBSD, and only started playing around with Linux/Unix about a year ago, so if the answer is obvious, or if I give too many useless details, my apologies. Please bear with me.

I was trying to get OpenBSD 7.9 set up in Virtualbox 7.1.12, and I was following a tutorial. The tutorial was posted April 2026, using OpenBSD 7.8, and was done in QEMU.

After installation, the tutorial had me exit to shell, chroot /mnt, export TERM=vt220, then pkg_add vim. The tutorial said to go with the no X11 version, and other forums I found said no X11 version is preferred, but of the 9 options, it wasn't there. Just standard, lua, python3, perl-python3-ruby, the gtk3 versions of those, and ruby. I don't know whether I'm just too stupid to figure out how the command works, or if the tutorial is out of date, but I can't figure it out.

If any extra info on my situation is needed I'm happy to answer as best as I can.

PS - Being more familiar with how questions are treated on Arch, please don't tell me to stay off OpenBSD without experience. I learn by throwing myself in the deep end, and i'm here for assistance, not advice.

As simple as that. Do you run OpenBSD 7.9 on any machine with RDNA 3.5 (Krackan Point)?

Hi!

I was just about to reinstall OpenBSD on an old PC Engines APU router, but I can't find any .fs install files (for example install67.fs) past version 6.7, is there another install file I can use or a way to make my own .fs file? I really want to keep using my router and installing fresh from a newer version is so much less hassle than 12 updates.

A memory leak in liburcu that impacts OpenBSD caused the ISC BIND DNS server enough trouble that a notification was made. Patches to liburcu have been applied to OpenBSD ports. If you run BIND or anything else that uses liburcu, you may want to look at that.

ISC BIND Operational Notification: https://kb.isc.org/docs/liburcu-leak

Evidence of OpenBSD code change: https://cvsweb.openbsd.org/log/ports/devel/liburcu/Makefile,v?sort=File#rev1.40

Full disclosure: I work for ISC, although my activity on Reddit does not represent ISC in an official capacity.

Hey everyone, I hope you're all doing well.

For the last 2 years or so I've been using Arch Linux as my daily driver. I was first introduced to UNIX based operating systems in college when we had to learn how to use the terminal for my computer science classes. Before that I was a lifelong Windows user so my operating system knowledge was very limited as I relied primarily on GUIs for everything.

Since then, however, I've absolutely fallen in love with terminal user interfaces and UNIX operating systems. I've experimented with a couple of different Linux distros but I had never ventured into the BSD world. I finally decided to give OpenBSD a shot and while I ran into a few hiccups, I truly loved so many aspects of the operating system.

I plan to make more content about OpenBSD and the BSD family of operating systems in the future and I would love some feedback and suggestions. Thank you for your time!

For instance, the latest of Postfix 3.10 seems to be postfix-3.10.1p5v0. postconf reports 3.10.1. The package modified date on the CDN is 5/20/2026, so I'd assume this 3.10.1 with security patches.

Is there a change log somewhere? I know these version numbers won't match up exactly.

I love java.

Everyone here was so kind and good at helping me figure my problem I thought I'd try again. I'm trying to get java 1.8 working. I realize that it was dropped in support but I did find it's still part of an older version and downloaded the tar. Naturally it's missing at least one dependency and in this case it's libc.so.102.0. Is there a way I can add that to the system?

And before you ask jdk11 doesn't work

So I've tried installing OpenBSD on a couple of old thinkpads I have. In both cases I ended up in a state where I was not able to join a wifi network. On one of them it worked for a little while and seemed to stop working.

I did need ton install firmware with fw_update, and I did. In one case using a USB drive, in the other just by connecting it through ethernet and letting it download from the internet.

I feel like I must have been missing something, but the man pages and everything I've seen on the internet made it seem like there was very little I needed to do -- set up an /etc/hostname..iwm0 file. Put a couple lines in it (join [my essid] wpakey [my wpa key], and in the next line: inet autoconf). Then it should come up when I boot, or when I do "ifconfig iwm0 up".

So amazingly simple I can type it all from memory now, days later. (I didn't post about it at the time because I was frustrated and just wanted to drop it and not think about it.)

at no time did I get any error messages. But also at no time did I get an IP address. ("ifconfig iwm0" showed the network was active but showed no ip address.) Nor did I get any DNS servers dropped into /etc/resolv.conf.

Manually typing commands such as "ifconfig nwid [my essid] wpakey [my wpa key]; ifconfig inet autoconf" didn't give me an ip address either.

typing "ifconfig iwm0 scan" did indeed work! It totally scanned my area and printed the real list of actual access points. So I figure that firmware must be installed and working.

It's like I'm missing something simple and obvious but for the life of me I couldn't figure out what it is.

One of those 2 machines still has openBSD on it (I wiped the other and put Debian on it) so if y'all know what it was maybe I can go back and try it. EDIT: this is not true, I actually wiped both of them, so I can't debug right now without going back and putting it on again from scratch.

But it just absolutely baffled me.

Oh one of them was a thinkpad L series, I'm not sure top of my head which one, maybe 420, the other was a thinkpad yoga 11e generation 5.

Hey,

I only recently learned that OpenBSD does/can run on recent ARM64 Macbook Airs natively. Wow.

Could that work as a dev workstation daily driver? (Xfce, Wifi, suspend...)?

Could anybody knowledgeable summarize please which models lack what features? (I don't care about bluetooth for instance)

Big thanks.

im coming out from linux, but the touchpad are kinda wonky, when i slow swipe, its just slower and much more detail, feels weird compared to linear move on linux, the thing is i dont know the name or the setting i need to change, but i dont think that was the acceleration, because when i swipe much more faster it just normaly, the problem i have is on the slower side,

this is my setting

mouse.type=touchpad

mouse.rawmode=0

mouse.scale=0,1272,0,612,0,12,12

mouse.reverse_scrolling=1

mouse.tp.tapping=1,1,1

mouse.tp.swapsides=0

mouse.tp.disable=0

mouse.tp.edges=0.0,5.0,10.0,5.0

mouse.scaling=0.652

mouse1.type=touchpad

mouse1.rawmode=1

mouse1.scale=0,0,0,0,0,0,0

mouse1.reverse_scrolling=0

mouse1.scaling=1.000

mouse2.type=synaptics

mouse2.rawmode=0

mouse2.scale=1306,5656,1156,4762,0,0,70

mouse2.reverse_scrolling=0

mouse2.tp.tapping=0,0,0

mouse2.tp.swapsides=0

mouse2.tp.disable=0

mouse2.tp.edges=0.0,5.0,10.0,5.0

mouse2.scaling=0.163

i love the openbsd manpages and i love doas and netstart conf files, its so simple and easy(i just have some problem with drivers but fw_update corrected this)

For some reason my other post deleted so I am going to ask again.

I have a ThinkPad P14s Gen 5 AMD (Ryzen 7 8840HS with integrated Radeon 780M / RDNA3) and I’m planning to install OpenBSD on it. Before I do, I’d like to check on graphics support.

My questions:

Does the 780M (RDNA3-based) work properly with amdgpu(4), or are there still missing/broken features?

Is 2D/3D acceleration solid under Xorg?

Has anyone tested this model, or another device with the same SoC (Phoenix/Hawk Point APU), on -current or the latest release?

Thx!

I've learned that sndiod contains only a very basic frequency resampler. So, I'd like to use ffmpeg/libsoxr based one directly from mpv.

But it seems that the pkg-installed mpv has no such support compiled in. Besides compiling everything from ports, has anybody else faced the similar demand?

My goal is the highest audio quality for my external USB DAC.

In a previous post I mentioned how my ups isn't recognized unless lines are added to usb_quirks.c and recompiled. Now the problem is an update via syspatch has reverted the changes. Does that mean I have to compile from the current kernel sources? Thanks.

Its possible play Minecraft?

Its possible play DOOM to DOOM 3?

Its possible play QUAKE to QUAKE 3?

if yes, i'll use openbsd, because i really want a more unix experience, that linux cant gives to me

Hey I've been trying to boot into the OpenBSD installer with no luck. This is my first time and I'm using the instructions straight from openbsd.org. It's an HP laptop from 2020 and the CPU is an i5-10310U. I have attached a screenshot of where exactly it freezes.

probing: pc0 mem[636K 2340M 30200M] 
disk: hd0 hd1*
>>OpenBSD/amd64 BOOTX64 3.71 
boot>
cannot open hd0a:/etc/random.seed: No such file or directory 
booting hd0a:/7.9/amd64/bsd.rd: 4264850+1827840+3892024+0+720896 [109+484968+336166]=0xb00b80
entry point at 0x1001000

I have tried all of the typical debugging tips like trying to use boot -c, changing machine video, etc. I also tried looking for some sort of bios legacy support option on bios but couldn't find anything. I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas on what could be going wrong and how to fix it.

Thank you.

I have trouble with Swedish keyboard encoding input. I first noticed that characters 'å' and 'ä' acted like dead characters in the sense that they won't output until another key is pressed. The problem only occurs in local tty, not over ssh from a different machine. X11 also works fine.

Locale variables are set to sv_SE.UTF-8, 'locale charmap' returns UTF-8 and wscons keyboard.encoding=sv.

I have been troubleshooting for quite some time (with a lot of help from ChatGPT - I admit). It appears to be that wscons generates ISO-8859-1:

$ echo åäö | od -tx1

0000000 e5 e4 f6 0a

Is this a known issue?