Hyperbola Linux-Libre ditches Linux, forks OpenBSD

Software & Operating Systems BSD
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The Free Software Foundation approved Hyperbola Linux-Libre distro is unhappy with the development of Linux.

As a result, future versions will be based on a hard fork of the OpenBSD kernel, and some userland utilities.

https://www.hyperbola.info/news/announcing-hyperbolabsd-roadmap/

Reasons given include:

  • The adoption of DRM (not the direct rendering module type) in kernel
  • The proposed adoption of Rust and the remote-fetches that brings with it
  • Poor security, including Grsec being non-free software and KSPP being inactive
  • The adoption of Pulseaudio and Systemd into GNU utilities without compile-time options to disable them.

I’m not a Hyperbola user, but I recently began a migration of my Linux systems over to OpenBSD for many of these same reasons.

They’ve got a lot of work ahead of them.

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This will not be a “distro” , but a hard fork of the OpenBSD kernel and userspace including new code written under GPLv3 and LGPLv3

Wow. Talk about going balls to the wall.

This sounds epic. I’m going to follow their progress since I have a very similar plan in the near future.

Weird, never knew about this.

Ah, yes, the *BSD crowd has their particular issues with Rust :wink:

As opposed to Jack and initV, I suppose?

Interesting all around.

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Weird, never knew about this.

HDCP

I can’t be 100% certain, but I’m pretty sure the elimination of previous libre video drivers is because of this.

Intel’s i915 driver used to be fully libre, but it switched to firmware based blobs in 2015. AMDGPU also requires blobby firmware, and Nvidia always has.

There could be other reasons, but obfuscation of HDCP keys is my prime suspect.

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I wonder if Google is primarily responsible for this. Or Microsoft. The future seems to be headed to an end-user dumb device (Chromebook/Surface) connecting to high end desktop/server computing service (API/function as a service, NT based server, Linux based server, etc.) and eliminating pesky F(L)OSS drivers/support might be a short term goal.

To be fair, the Linux kernel development team could have said no :man_shrugging:

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I wonder if Google is primarily responsible for this

Yes, because Chromebooks.

https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2017-November/159071.html

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That is a hard battle when you want mainstream users to feel comfortable but also tell them that stuff like Netflix and various other video streaming stuff plain won’t work and then having the explain to averaged people why, namely you don’t like a piece of software for ideological reasons. They would just give up and use windows or Chromebooks or whatever that actually does Just Work ™.

Sure you can say no but that leaves you right back with Linux only being for developers and command line junkies. Yes I know not the reality but that will be the view point of people who just want to turn on a box and watch Friends.

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I agree, and I get it. Which is why OpenBSD won’t ever be mainstream, because they have “standards” that prevent things like Nvidia and other hardware from working.

I understand that Linux wants to feed the masses and be the number 1 environment. They, like Microsoft and Apple, are probably learning that you have to make exceptions to your “freedom” to attain adaption.

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Seems to me like all good reasons, given their goals.

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If they really are going to be licensing their patches in GPL, I can imagine some of those patches will never be able to be upstreamed, right? To quote OpenBSD’s copyright page:

It follows however, that OpenBSD cannot include material which includes copyrights which are more restrictive than the Berkeley copyright, or must relegate this material to a secondary status, i.e. OpenBSD as a whole is freely redistributable, but some optional components may not be.

Not that I imagine there will be much core OpenBSD development done by Hyperbola, but maybe keep your metaphorical popcorn near the oven :wink: