Hello, I have tried different operating systems in the past ten years, Red Hat, CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Apple Mac and Microsoft Windows. I would like to try something new. I would like to try OpenBSD.
What "try"? I try something to test if it suits my purpose, e.g. desktop usage including basic text editing in office software (OpenOffice / LibreOffice) as well as server usage including serving files and database connections.
I would say I am a general user because I have not participated in developing any of the operating systems. I developed some software on those operating systems in the sense of exercises or testing. Yeah, you can say that I am a conservative user. What does a conservative user do? He or she does testing most of the time before relying on some systems.
How does a conservative user test an operating system (OS)? He or she needs to know that the OS will boot correctly within a minute on a medium level personal computer, not necessarily using a very powerful central processing unit (CPU). Not everybody has a lot of money and will spend a lot of it on buying new computers and renewing computers every year, yes, I mean every year. Suppose you spent USD520 on buying a computer each year. You would have spent USD5200 on buying computers for ten years. Most computer users do not spend a lot of money all the time.
A conservative user needs to save some money for food, housing, clothes and transportation. The remaining amount could then be spent on computers. Microsoft Windows is expensive. It let me learn basic things out of the box.
Other OSes I mentioned are totally free of charge. I just needed more information or education to set up and they work very similarly. It was a workshop-like activity when I used Red Hat. The tutor gave me some practical set up advice from booting a CD to installing the OS. That means I could start installing an OS using a CD. A CD is an ancient tool where you can store some data. Some computers these days are not equipped with a CD ROM. They allow you to use USB devices to boot.
Apart from the economics a conservative user has to consider, he or she needs to think in the long run. After three years or four, will he or she be using the same computer and OS? He or she does not want to learn all over again. As technology evolves, human beings do not want to change the way they work with familiar things. People think of folders and files. They cannot think of other better ways of organizing the data. Artificial intelligence (AI) may help but not at this moment. AI needs to be trained to understand human beings.
Linux OSs _were_ quite good because they did not change very often, e.g. every 1.5 years. Now Linux OSes change every 1.5 years. The conservative user needs to test all over again to ensure that he or she can save files and can read files in addition to booting correctly. Since systemd was adopted on Linux OSes, e.g. Red Hat, CentOS, Fedora, Ubuntu and Debian, the OSes have become unreliable to the conservative user. The technical evidence includes being unable to boot and shutdown a computer correctly.
Thanks, Linux developers. I have learned to administer Linux servers and to user Linux on desktop computers.
Now technically OpenBSD does not change drastically to the point that a conservative user cannot boot a computer. Remember, "A job is running (seemingly forever)" systemd message.
The user needs to be sure that the system can boot correctly. He or she needs to consider OpenBSD. I have used OpenBSD for a few months and do not see any issues booting. I do not see any issues shutting down the machine either.
OpenBSD is the way to go. It has been a reliable system. I will continue to evaluate it because it has been reliable for a few months.
I know what I want. I want reliability. I do not want fancy features which do not work at all. Besides, OpenBSD is equipped with a better firewall than iptables on Linux OSes. The better one provides easier syntax and can reload firewall rules without halting current network connections. Everybody needs a firewall on the computer because the Internet has become a dangerous attack vector. Malicious software is so common, especially the one with a ransom note.
No one wants to be attacked. As the attack exists, the conservative user needs to do something to protect his or her data, e.g. photos taken many years ago. OpenBSD is a good choice. OpenBSD provides syspatch and pkg_add -Uu for updating software.
OpenBSD gives you good documentation. A conservative user needs to know where to look for help. Real help, I mean. Those commands not useful for fixing a problem are not real help. The documentation of OpenBSD really helped me from installing to using it as a basic computer.
A conservative user always focuses on doing basic things correctly. OpenBSD aims at correctness. I agree to the notion of correctness.
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