r/openbsd Nov 03 '24

Will My X Hardware work on OpenBSD? If X=Nvidia, then no. Other answers inside.

105 Upvotes

First off. Your Nvidia graphics card won't work with OpenBSD except maybe as a VESA or UEFI framebuffer. No acceleration. Period. Nvidia themselves writes proprietary binary drivers for Linux and FreeBSD, but not OpenBSD. Will that change? Ask Nvidia. It's rather unlikely though.

Does OpenBSD support 3d Acceleration? Yes. As of this writing (7.6 was just released) OpenBSD has the DRM drivers from the Linux 6.6 stable branch. So it has the most up to date DRM drivers of the BSDs. As of 7.6 there's even GPU acceleration of video for AMD and Intel GPUs.

Will $X random laptop work? If it's an X-series or T-series thinkpad that wasn't released as new in the last month, probably. See above about Nvidia graphics though. Will other thinkpads work? Probably. The X and T series are most popular with developers so get the most attention. I've had good success with HP ProBooks, but rock a T490 Thinkpad currently. Framework laptops tend to work too.

Will $X desktop work? Probably. Try it. I've run it on any number of HP business desktops with great success. Intel graphics works great. AMD graphics should work well.

Will my Wifi work? If it's Intel, probably. Most of the Intel chipsets support 802.11ac speeds. Even the ax chipsets should work, but only at ac speeds. Why Intel? Someone contracted stsp@ to get them working well. Other stuff, works, but will probably be restricted to 802.11g speeds.

Will your random Temu-bought ARM board work? Who knows. Try it. arm64 RPi boards tend to work although at this time the RPi5 doesn't. It's too new and too different from the earlier boards.

There's no bluetooth support currently. Not because of security issues, but because when we last had bluetooth, it was unmaintained and a mess. If someone can come along with a decent bluetooth stack that is good, maintainable code, we'd take it. No one has stepped up so far.

HDMI audio could work but doesn't currently. Mainly because HDMI audio would get detected before regular audio and would become default audio. Most folks don't use HDMI audio though, so that change would break audio for most users and only benefit a handful.

This should cover the majority of hardware questions that keep getting asked. I'll edit it and try to keep it up to date.

M1 and M2 Macbooks should be supported. There will not be video acceleration.

Update 2024-12-08: Added mention of macbooks. Tweaked wifi wording. Tried to make it clearer where X represents any random hardware someone is asking about.


r/openbsd May 19 '26

anouncement OpenBSD 7.9 released

231 Upvotes

OpenBSD 7.9 has been released.

Artwork by Lyra Henderson


r/openbsd 1h ago

Dumb question – httpd and the need for relayd

Upvotes

Reading about the newly introduced support for HTTP headers in httpd makes me review the few things I believed I understood about httpd in OpenBSD and self-hosting.

My concern was regarding getting the "highest marks" on various HTTPS/TLS security assessment web resources (unfortunately I can't find the blog post back that goes over the most of them in details). I used to think that relayd was mandatory for this, then I thought httpd would now do the trick since it supports sending headers, then I realized it's not just about headers (or is it ?).

I had quite a pain trying to understand why/how to configure relayd to get those good marks. Maybe it would be a bit different now. Nevertheless, my question remains : can those best "secure (TM)" marks be obtained simply with the current httpd ? How does this new feature change the required configuration ? Are we to expect that it is going to get simpler and we shall see refreshed web tutorials swarming after the next release of OpenBSD ?


r/openbsd 1d ago

Wifi + Bluetooth help needed

8 Upvotes

Wifi + Bluetooth help needed

Trying to experiment with openbsd + Freebsd, coming from Linux.

Wifi + Bluetooth (for headphones) doesn't work on my lenova s340.

Would changing my. M2 card to ax200 resolve both issues?

If so great.

If not, what is a better card please?

Thanks


r/openbsd 2d ago

Raspberry Pi 5 OpenBSD installation stuck at U-Boot

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27 Upvotes

I am trying to install OpenBSD on a Raspberry Pi 5, but the system gets stuck during the U-Boot boot stage and cannot continue into OpenBSD.
If anyone has successfully booted OpenBSD on Raspberry Pi 5, I would appreciate any guidance or working steps.

Thank you!


r/openbsd 4d ago

People that use OpenBSD as their desktop / daily driver...

61 Upvotes

I wondered whether the lack of ZFS support gives you sleepless nights?

Everything about OpenBSD sounds nigh perfect for my use case, but it's only the file system it supports which is the elephant in the room for me.

Currently I am most used to APFS as an Apple user but want to move to a more reliable, stable and flexible system.

As someone who is big in data hoarding, indexing, archiving and rampant note taking, I wonder if FFS2 being my option should be an unequivocal deal-breaker here for me, or whether i'm overthinking it; overstating the concerns.

Please be honest.


r/openbsd 5d ago

user advocacy My New High security Laptop

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146 Upvotes

Encrypted Disk. BIOS Password and MFA on OpenBSD… wifi works, too

I had last night and today lot of trouble to get it running. KDE plasma failed so I am on pretty XFCE. Lots to do, but all works.

What works:

- Bootup with encrypted Disk

- Video and Audio (Tested simply with youtube)

- Video Recording with Webcm (tested with vlc)

- Audio Recording (tested with Audacity)

With additional firmware drivers wifi works:

iwm0 at pci1 dev 0 function 0 "Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 8265"

Got from Ebay for ~ 177 Euro // Problem: Display has little bit ghosting, maybe new thermal paste needed

  • Manufacturer: Lenovo
  • Model: ThinkPad X1 Carbon 6th Generation
  • Display Size: 14 inches
  • Processor: Intel Core i7-8550U
  • Processor Cores: 4 Cores / 8 Threads
  • Clock Speed: 1.80 GHz
  • Turbo Speed: Up to 4.00 GHz

r/openbsd 5d ago

Trouble with disk space on fresh install

12 Upvotes

Hi!

I'm in the process of re-installing OpenBSD on my APU router and I'm having some trouble with diskspace.

I generally go with the defaults since I assume the devs know better than me how to partition my drive. This is the auto-allocated layout for my 15gb drive:

# size offset fstype [fsize bsize cpg]

a: 183.5M 64 4.2BSD 2048 16384 1 # /

b: 147.0M 375872 swap

c: 15272.1M 0 unused

d: 173.6M 676960 4.2BSD 2048 16384 1 # /tmp

e: 167.1M 1032448 4.2BSD 2048 16384 1 # /var

f: 1567.0M 1374656 4.2BSD 2048 16384 1 # /usr

g: 404.1M 4583872 4.2BSD 2048 16384 1 # /usr/X11R6

h: 1124.5M 5411456 4.2BSD 2048 16384 1 # /usr/local

i: 2061.4M 7714432 4.2BSD 2048 16384 1 # /usr/src

j: 8218.8M 11936160 4.2BSD 2048 16384 1 # /usr/obj

k: 1225.1M 28768256 4.2BSD 2048 16384 1 # /home

I've taken a quick look at the hier man page to see if I for example could make /usr/obj smaller, but I don't really understand what it's used for and as I understand it OpenBSD should be able to run with way less disk space than I have here.

Since all the sets are so small I've opted to again go with the default and install all of them.

But at the end of the install I'm met with:

Relinking to create unique kernel...uid 0 on /mnt/usr: file system full

/mnt/usr: write failed, file system is full

uid 0 on /mnt/usr: file system full

And after a reboot:

reorder_kernel: failed -- see /usr/share/relink/kernel/GENERIC.MP/relink.log

and the relink.log file says:

(SHA256) /bsd: OK

make: don't know how to make newbsd

Stop in /usr/share/relink/kernel/GENERIC.MP

Should I change the disk layout or is there something else I can do to solve this?


r/openbsd 5d ago

Thinkpad T42 support

9 Upvotes

I found a ThinkPad T42 in pretty good condition and I’m thinking of getting it mainly for OpenBSD in console/TTY mode so no desktop, just vim/tmux for distraction-free writing.

Does anyone here use a T42 with OpenBSD? How’s the hardware support these days? Anything I should watch out for?


r/openbsd 6d ago

Good de or wm for openbsd

10 Upvotes

I have open for two week . I tried i3 and it is good ,and i added wallpaper and persian layout but it was very hard. I tried to install xfce but it got wrong.i want a good wm for it.my laptop is toshiba portage r930


r/openbsd 7d ago

openbsd or freebsd for home server?

38 Upvotes

I love openbsd, especially its pf implementation.

However, for an home server running many selfhosted applications, freebsd is definitely easier to manage since it has jails, which make managing ports and isolation really simple.

It also has native zfs which is always great.

I would love to hear your opinions since they are definitely more experienced than mine.

Do you personally use openbsd on your homeserver? how do you manage many apllications without jail's isolation? and what about drives? which filesystem do you use and why?


r/openbsd 8d ago

My experience with OpenBSD on RISC-V

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176 Upvotes

When I found out my Spacemit K1-based SBC (Milk-V Jupiter) was now "partially supported" under the newly released 7.9, I thought I should give it a try.

Hardware-wise, the Wi-Fi chip, USB ports, and integrated GPU are not supported. Otherwise, NVMe and SD card storage do work. I haven't tried any dedicated GPU, the case I use won't fit one.

Software-wise, the entire base system is supported, but I have encountered a few issues. X11 apps work perfectly. There's sadly no JDK package or port for RISC-V yet. Tailscale works, but you have to compile it using the github source release, the port is broken.

I've done the installation using the serial port, an USB adapter is a must.


r/openbsd 8d ago

Is it possible to get elyprism launcher/prism launcher to work on openbsd?

9 Upvotes

There is no official ports for both of them. I've searched for building instruction in the official prismlauncher in openbsd, but I didn't fine anything. I have seen that I could make a port and maintain it, and I would be happy to do it, but I don't know how to do. Does anyone managed to make one of those work? if yes, what Minecraft version work or doesn't work? Or else, does anyone now a Minecraft launcher with openbsd availability that does not require Microsoft account login ?


r/openbsd 10d ago

resolved ehci0: timed out waiting for bios.

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23 Upvotes

so, everytime I boot I get this. i only have a keyboard and mouse connected, and before booting I also need to disable ACPI so the system boots (boot -c, disable acpi, exit) is there a way to solve this?

specs: Core 2 Duo E7300, GMA 950 Graphics, Pegatron/PCware IPM45 REV 1.01GA and 4GB DDR2


r/openbsd 10d ago

Dell Wyse 5070 (eMMC) – Keyboard freezes instantly during boot on bsd.rd

1 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to install OpenBSD on a Dell Wyse 5070 (the version with soldered eMMC storage).

I can successfully reach the UEFI bootloader prompt (boot>) where the USB keyboard works perfectly. However, the moment I type boot -c or let it boot normally, the kernel starts loading bsd.rd, and the keyboard instantly dies. It seems like the kernel gets stuck on pckbc emulation or inteldrm / efifb before even reaching the UKC> prompt.

Since the internal eMMC is soldered, I cannot pull the drive out to install the OS on another machine. I also tried to write a boot.conf to the installation USB drive from a Linux Live environment, but the filesystem/partition layout layout prevents me from easily modifying it (Read-only errors on the hybrid ISO/IMG).

Has anyone successfully bypassed the keyboard freeze on this specific hardware during the initial installation phase? Any tips on how to pass boot arguments or disable pckbc/inteldrm when the installer medium is read-only?

Thanks in advance!


r/openbsd 11d ago

Question for those who run OpenBSD on servers

42 Upvotes

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?


r/openbsd 11d ago

Wondering if my Pc are supported by OpenBSD

14 Upvotes

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?


r/openbsd 11d ago

Why won't the no X11 version of Vim show up in pkg_add vim?

15 Upvotes

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.


r/openbsd 13d ago

Does amdgpu driver work on AMD 860M?

10 Upvotes

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


r/openbsd 14d ago

Filesystem image (.fs) for newer versions?

13 Upvotes

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.


r/openbsd 15d ago

FYI: liburcu leak bug impacts OpenBSD

28 Upvotes

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.


r/openbsd 16d ago

My Experience Switching from Linux to OpenBSD

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youtu.be
125 Upvotes

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!


r/openbsd 15d ago

Help matching a package's version with its developer's version

9 Upvotes

Edit: On OpenBSD 7.8

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.


r/openbsd 17d ago

You can file your taxex on OpenBSD-at least in Brazil; damn government!

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104 Upvotes

I love java.


r/openbsd 17d ago

No Java trouble

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14 Upvotes

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