In this blog post, I'm reviewing a NovaCustom NV41 laptop with many operating systems

Disclaimer: I’m not affiliated in any way to any of the parties involved in this review. I just enjoy reading Solène’s writings in general and found myself to be especially in fond of this specific article. I share this in the hopes that others might somehow benefit from this as well!

The relevance of the review for this specific community would be that NovaCustom produces excellent laptops to be used with Linux (and other open source operating systems). Furthermore, in the review the reviewer installs a bunch of distros and tests how they work on the device.

  • Ramin HonaryEnglish
    2·
    11 months ago

    Could you elaborate on your willingness to switch to OpenBSD?

    I have a small ZFS NAS that I built myself running Linux, and I would like to use it for file sharing and running applications like NextCloud. I prefer OpenBSD and its derivatives (like OmniOS) because it of its security-oriented features, especially things like ZFS and zones, but I have not used it very much so I am not comfortable using an operating system I have not used before for something important like backing up my files.

    I would like to switch my daily driver, a Linux laptop, to OpenBSD so I can get used to using it as an administrator, but I worry about OpenBSD being able to support the laptop hardware, especially things like WiFi, BlueTooth, and managing the battery, screen dimming, laptop lid, and so on. I have another Linux computer with a Radeon graphics card which connects to my TV that my children use for video games, and watching streaming video, and I would like to switch this to OpenBSD as well but I worry that it will not be able to run Steam games very well.

    • throwawayishOP
      1·
      11 months ago

      OpenBSD and its derivatives (like OmniOS)

      First time hearing of OmniOS, thank you for mentioning it! EDIT: I just took a look at it and it doesn’t seem to be based on OpenBSD, at least the one I could find seems to be a derivative of Solaris instead. Though, I might simply not have found what you referred to*.

      because it of its security-oriented features, especially things like ZFS

      Does OpenBSD’s implementation of ZFS offer security features as well?

      I would like to switch my daily driver, a Linux laptop, to OpenBSD so I can get used to using it as an administrator, but I worry about OpenBSD being able to support the laptop hardware, especially things like WiFi, BlueTooth, and managing the battery, screen dimming, laptop lid, and so on.

      Do you think that using OpenBSD inside of a qube (from QubesOS) is perhaps something worth considering? Or don’t you think there’s any merit of doing this over the use of any virtualization software found on any other system?

      I have another Linux computer with a Radeon graphics card which connects to my TV that my children use for video games, and watching streaming video, and I would like to switch this to OpenBSD as well but I worry that it will not be able to run Steam games very well.

      From what I’ve read, running games on OpenBSD is a lot less mature compared to running games on Linux. Though, perhaps it’s worth noting that cloud gaming solutions (like Google Stadia in the past) are known to work great on OpenBSD. Not sure if you would want that, though.

      (On a more general note) I definitely agree that OpenBSD works wonderfully on the server side of things. But I’ve gotten skeptical over time to its feasibility as a desktop OS. Note that I’m well aware that OpenBSD’s developers use it as their daily drivers, so I definitely recognize the possibility. However, when it’s lacking features like Secure Boot (or any form of Trusted and/or Measured Boot for that matter), I just find it hard to justify putting it on something like a laptop that I carry around all the time. I hope that you can prove to me that my logic/understanding is flawed and that I should reconsider the use of OpenBSD as a desktop OS.

      • Ramin HonaryEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago
        • Sorry, I think I might have confused OmniOS with QubesOS.
        • ZFS is itself a security feature because of how well it guarantees the fidelity of your data. That said, ZFS support on BSD is generally much better than on Linux
        • For the reasons you stated, I can’t use OpenBSD on my daily work laptop, so I don’t think I will ever really have a chance to give it a fair trial or learn more about it, which is unfortunate.
        • throwawayishOP
          2·
          11 months ago

          Sorry, I think I might have confused OmniOS with QubesOS.

          😅, but QubesOS isn’t a derivative of OpenBSD either. It might have inspired some of its parts, but fundamentally it’s a completely different beast.

          ZFS is itself a security feature because of how well it guarantees the fidelity of your data.

          Do you happen to know if this goes beyond what Btrfs(/Bcachefs) provides on the Linux side of things?

          • Ramin HonaryEnglish
            2·
            11 months ago

            Do you happen to know if this goes beyond what Btrfs(/Bcachefs) provides on the Linux side of things?

            I think someday Btrfs or BCacheFS might have as many features as ZFS, but for now ZFS is still state-of-the-art, as far as I know. RAID-Z is one ZFS feature I use that is not fully implemented in Btrfs yet. All other ZFS features that I use are also available with Btrfs.

            😅, but QubesOS isn’t a derivative of OpenBSD either. It might have inspired some of its parts, but fundamentally it’s a completely different beast.

            Oops, I am really getting confused with all the different distros! Sorry!