[OpenBSD]

OpenBSD/i386


OpenBSD/i386 runs on the standard PC's and clones, with a wide variety of processors, I/O bus architectures and peripherals supported.

Table of contents


History:

The OpenBSD/i386 port has been present since the inception of the project. Over the years, more and more hardware support has been written specifically for OpenBSD (such as the cryptographic accelerator drivers), or adapted from FreeBSD and NetBSD.


Current status:

It can be expected to install and run with minimal difficulty on most current hardware. Machines using custom BIOS (such as older proprietary PC's, laptops, and some specialized server machines) may cause problems.

Although OpenBSD/i386 does not currently support multiple processors (SMP), it will run on multi-processor system boards, using only one processor.

Through its binary compatibility layer, OpenBSD/i386 can run Linux, FreeBSD, BSD/OS, SVR4 (including Solaris) and IBCS2 binaries, to some extent. Most applications will work flawlessly.

XFree86 support is available for most graphics cards, using either recent XFree86 (as of OpenBSD 3.4, 4.3.0) servers whenever possible, or XFree86 3.3.6 servers otherwise.


Supported hardware:

Most laptops are supported. We have a page that details the specifics of some common laptops.

The list of supported hardware is relevant to OpenBSD-current. It will differ slightly from the support provided in the latest release version.

Processors

OpenBSD does not currently support multiple processors (SMP), but will run using one processor on a multi-processor system board.

All CPU chips compatible with the Intel 80386 (i386) architecture are supported:

Regular floating-point coprocessors (80387DX, 80387SX, 80487SX) are required when not built into the processor.

Everything that is a clone of the 386 or up should work fine. The only CPU that is known to work poorly (due to flawed motherboard designs) is the Cyrix 386DLC.

Buses

The MCA bus found in various official IBM PCs is not supported.

Bus interfaces

Entropy sources

Disk Controllers

PCI IDE and Serial ATA Controllers (pciide)