I saw this on Mastodon first and figured "well, I'm sure it's nothing more than being able to run some basic Windows apps", but no, I was shocked to learn that they got games up to AAA level running.
Of NetBSD and OpenBSD (since FreeBSD already can run Steam using its "linuxulator"), I much rather would've assumed NetBSD would get anything similar, with how particular OBSD is about security and whatnot.
I hope these efforts might cross-pollinate, it'd be fun to one day run NetBSD as a full (in the sense of able to do everything Linux today can) desktop OS.
I started using NetBSD as my main OS a couple months ago. I had to buy a used Thinkpad X250 for $99, since it wouldn't run on my Thinkpad T16 3rd gen.
Everything works really well, and the system feels fast. I'm running cwm (OpenBSD's WM), Firefox, mutt, vi, gforth, Python. Wifi works, sound works, bluetooth works, suspend and resume work (though I have to CTRL+ALT+F1 and back to CTRL+ALT+F5 on resume, for some reason). System is simple enough that I understand everything. Battery life is great, and I like that if the laptop breaks I can just buy another one and reinstall my dotfiles from Codeberg.
A few months ago, after failing to get wireless working under FreeBSD on a new-ish Thinkpad T14, I installed OpenBSD, and the whole process was shockingly simple. The installer recognized the wireless card, downloaded the correct firmware (over ethernet) and upon reboot, I had full desktop and working wireless. Getting XFCE and Firefox was also simple. It worked very well until I wiped the laptop to give to a friend.
It's come a long way. I remember an earlier attempt at an OpenBSD desktop taking hours, and requiring a lot more effort to get everything working correctly. This was also before the recent improvements to the FreeBSD installer, which I hear has improved significantly. The performance was low compared to linux on the same machine, but that's expected since OpenBSD favors security and correctness over performance.
I'm running FreeBSD on an X270 and wifi has been the major pain point. The only way to get decent speeds is through wifibox, but having to bounce through a VM like that makes things like KDE Connect much more challenging.
I don't have the machine I was using for OpenBSD anymore, but I remember being impressed by the throughput that the wifi chipset (Intel AX 200/201?) got under OpenBSD. I wasn't doing anything more intensive than some internet browsing and downloading packages but I didn't find myself waiting around for anything. However, my only other point of reference for *BSD wireless networking is a Realtek 802.11n USB 2.0 dongle.
I am using OpenBSD as a daily driver for about 4 years now. Thinkpads. It is great to get things done and not great for entertainment.
My requirements are pretty low: xterm, vi, git, go, zig.
I am using dwm as a tiling window manager, it narrows my interface to a few terminal windows and a single browser window.
OpenBSD is noticeably slower than Linux desktop. I assume that the decision to disable hyper threading and similar security measures are the reason.
This does not bother me much. A lagging browser is an indication that it is time to leave Reddit and get back to being productive.
for programming, using NetBSD is a challenge. Many tools (especially newer related to agentic dev) do not have a working distro for NetBSD.
Some tools, especially in UV-managed Python/Rust ecosystems do not install, because UV had a bug where it did not make the comparasing of the package's OS version with a OS host version, case-insensitive (so NetBSD XYZ CURRENT) was rejected by UV. Bug was fixed since then, but the package ecosystem (including pkgsrc) did not get the updates.
With all that stuff -- you can be 'out-of-service' so to speak with dev tools, for while (like one quarter).
With NetBSD 11, there are fever problems like that -- with NetBSD 9 and 10, there were alot of you were in Java + typescript kind of ecosystem.
Android Dev, IOS dev -- is not possible ... as far as I know. Neither in NetBSD nor in OpenBSD.
So a lot of dev tasks are difficult.
I also tend to use NetBSD or OpenBSD on VM hosts, and none of these have a normal xrdp or similar working (at least in the past), so I could not use an RDP client to get desktop environment.
Therefore -- commandline/tmux or Emacs Tramp is what I would use instead... but you cannot watch youtube lessons with that setup...
Because I rely on XRDP to connect to my non-windows non-mac hosts, I am probably in a minority -- but that's my experience.
I used to run it a few years back, but these days moved to Linux. For me, large applications were just "slower" on OpenBSD. I never really figured out why that was the case. I never did serious investigation either. Firefox on Linux starts in less than a second, but on OpenBSD, it would take close to a full second. This was back in like OpenBSD 6.1/6.2, which, to be fair was nearly 9 years ago. I don't know if the situation has changed. This was also on a machine without SSD (and an old spinning disk), but it really was much more performant on Linux.
It shouldn't be surprising, and yet it is, how this technique of swapping out underlying API calls let's you move between platforms with such broad support. Maybe I have too much respect for Hyrums law.
BSD is intersecting more and more with my world, seems like the boulder has started to roll, I'll be biting the bullet in an experimental capacity sooner rather than later.
nemin | 5 hours ago
I saw this on Mastodon first and figured "well, I'm sure it's nothing more than being able to run some basic Windows apps", but no, I was shocked to learn that they got games up to AAA level running.
Of NetBSD and OpenBSD (since FreeBSD already can run Steam using its "linuxulator"), I much rather would've assumed NetBSD would get anything similar, with how particular OBSD is about security and whatnot.
I hope these efforts might cross-pollinate, it'd be fun to one day run NetBSD as a full (in the sense of able to do everything Linux today can) desktop OS.
olliej | 51 minutes ago
Steam’s linux gaming support is built on wine, so assuming a complete port of wine you’d get all of that
notgull | 5 hours ago
Does anyone have any experience with using OpenBSD/NetBSD as a desktop? It seems to be improving quite well in recent months
beto | 4 hours ago
I started using NetBSD as my main OS a couple months ago. I had to buy a used Thinkpad X250 for $99, since it wouldn't run on my Thinkpad T16 3rd gen.
Everything works really well, and the system feels fast. I'm running cwm (OpenBSD's WM), Firefox, mutt, vi, gforth, Python. Wifi works, sound works, bluetooth works, suspend and resume work (though I have to CTRL+ALT+F1 and back to CTRL+ALT+F5 on resume, for some reason). System is simple enough that I understand everything. Battery life is great, and I like that if the laptop breaks I can just buy another one and reinstall my dotfiles from Codeberg.
[OP] nbyqvist | 5 hours ago
A few months ago, after failing to get wireless working under FreeBSD on a new-ish Thinkpad T14, I installed OpenBSD, and the whole process was shockingly simple. The installer recognized the wireless card, downloaded the correct firmware (over ethernet) and upon reboot, I had full desktop and working wireless. Getting XFCE and Firefox was also simple. It worked very well until I wiped the laptop to give to a friend.
It's come a long way. I remember an earlier attempt at an OpenBSD desktop taking hours, and requiring a lot more effort to get everything working correctly. This was also before the recent improvements to the FreeBSD installer, which I hear has improved significantly. The performance was low compared to linux on the same machine, but that's expected since OpenBSD favors security and correctness over performance.
jfloren | 4 hours ago
I'm running FreeBSD on an X270 and wifi has been the major pain point. The only way to get decent speeds is through wifibox, but having to bounce through a VM like that makes things like KDE Connect much more challenging.
[OP] nbyqvist | 3 hours ago
I don't have the machine I was using for OpenBSD anymore, but I remember being impressed by the throughput that the wifi chipset (Intel AX 200/201?) got under OpenBSD. I wasn't doing anything more intensive than some internet browsing and downloading packages but I didn't find myself waiting around for anything. However, my only other point of reference for *BSD wireless networking is a Realtek 802.11n USB 2.0 dongle.
bilinguliar | 4 hours ago
I am using OpenBSD as a daily driver for about 4 years now. Thinkpads. It is great to get things done and not great for entertainment.
My requirements are pretty low: xterm, vi, git, go, zig. I am using dwm as a tiling window manager, it narrows my interface to a few terminal windows and a single browser window.
OpenBSD is noticeably slower than Linux desktop. I assume that the decision to disable hyper threading and similar security measures are the reason. This does not bother me much. A lagging browser is an indication that it is time to leave Reddit and get back to being productive.
vladislavp | 4 hours ago
for programming, using NetBSD is a challenge. Many tools (especially newer related to agentic dev) do not have a working distro for NetBSD. Some tools, especially in UV-managed Python/Rust ecosystems do not install, because UV had a bug where it did not make the comparasing of the package's OS version with a OS host version, case-insensitive (so NetBSD XYZ CURRENT) was rejected by UV. Bug was fixed since then, but the package ecosystem (including pkgsrc) did not get the updates. With all that stuff -- you can be 'out-of-service' so to speak with dev tools, for while (like one quarter).
With NetBSD 11, there are fever problems like that -- with NetBSD 9 and 10, there were alot of you were in Java + typescript kind of ecosystem.
Android Dev, IOS dev -- is not possible ... as far as I know. Neither in NetBSD nor in OpenBSD.
So a lot of dev tasks are difficult.
I also tend to use NetBSD or OpenBSD on VM hosts, and none of these have a normal xrdp or similar working (at least in the past), so I could not use an RDP client to get desktop environment. Therefore -- commandline/tmux or Emacs Tramp is what I would use instead... but you cannot watch youtube lessons with that setup...
Because I rely on XRDP to connect to my non-windows non-mac hosts, I am probably in a minority -- but that's my experience.
drs | 3 hours ago
I used to run it a few years back, but these days moved to Linux. For me, large applications were just "slower" on OpenBSD. I never really figured out why that was the case. I never did serious investigation either. Firefox on Linux starts in less than a second, but on OpenBSD, it would take close to a full second. This was back in like OpenBSD 6.1/6.2, which, to be fair was nearly 9 years ago. I don't know if the situation has changed. This was also on a machine without SSD (and an old spinning disk), but it really was much more performant on Linux.
elliotmorris | 3 hours ago
It shouldn't be surprising, and yet it is, how this technique of swapping out underlying API calls let's you move between platforms with such broad support. Maybe I have too much respect for Hyrums law.
BSD is intersecting more and more with my world, seems like the boulder has started to roll, I'll be biting the bullet in an experimental capacity sooner rather than later.
FRIGN | 4 hours ago
Christmas came early this year. Wow, kudos to the developers! I never would have dreamt of this ever coming true.