Then one needs to launch it. Not sure if there are any lancher UIs out there, or if one has to write custom code for that.

▲ eschaton 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

My point is that as long as OpenBSD can boot like Linux, you just have to tell whatever VM front-end you’re using that you’re booting a Linux but give it an OpenBSD kernel and RAM disk.

Traditionally BSD has booted very differently than Linux, because Linus adopted the same boot process as MINIX when he first developed it (since he was actually using the MINIX boot blocks at first).

BSD has historically used a bootstrap that understands V7FS/FFS and can load a kernel from a path on it. MINIX takes the actual kernel and RAM disk images as parameters so it doesn’t need to know about filesystems, and that tradition continued with Linux bootstraps once it was standalone.

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43 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

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Rediscover 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Who else was rdev'ing the Linux kernel to tell it where the root ext2(?) partition was long before they were using RAM disks? Like with SLS or MCC?

	▲	fragmede an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Originally Linux had Minix FS, followed by ext. Ext2 wouldn't make an appearance until 1993 by Rémy Card, so it depends on when you were using it.

▲ fragmede an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Parallels will run a VM that can (manually) boot bsd.rd from the EFI shell if you stick BOOTAA64.EFI and bsd.rd on a FAT32 GUID formatted.dmg, connect it to the VM, then boot EFI shell. Type:

    connect -r
    map -r
    fs0:
    bootaa64.efi
    boot bin.rd

Then you'll be in the OpenBSD installer, having booted an OpenBSD kernel.

You can grab the files from: https://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/snapshots/arm64/

Actually installing the system is left as an exercise for the reader.