[ale] BSD anyone?

[Chris Ricker]

On Thu, 22 Jul 1999, David S. Jackson wrote:

> I just got a copy of FreeBSD and have been running it about a month or
> so.  I like it.  I also recently bought a copy of OpenBSD, which has
> yet to arrive.  Has anyone tried these or any of the BSDs?  
> 
> Any thoughts about BSD and Linux from personal experience?

I've not tried NetBSD, but I've used both OpenBSD and FreeBSD for various
things.  Someone once wrote an essay in which she noted the luxury of having
not just one acceptable, quality free operating system, but instead having
four, and I think that summarizes it well.

You should have fun with OpenBSD.  The install is either painfully or
delightfully minimalistic, depending on how you look at it--it's a simple
shell script ;-).  It has the FreeBSD ports and package system, though it is
of course smaller since the development community is smaller [1].  There are
also various nice user features OpenBSD doesn't have, simply because no
one's written them (scrollback for consoles, for example, is one that I
miss).  It doesn't have SMP support either.  Virtual consoles are
<CTRL><ALT><Function key>, not just <ALT><Function key>.

On the other hand, OpenBSD has a lot of nice security toys in it
out-of-the-box.  My gateway machine at home runs OpenBSD, for example, just
because it's so easy to do IPsec and things like that on....  Also, if
you're into political issues, OpenBSD has a certain purity about its goals
that's closer to Gnu zealotry than the pragmatism of the Net / FreeBSD
camps (though they still use the BSD license, and anyone can and will steal
their code, as Apple did for Darwin).

Be warned that the OpenBSD community is *very* cliquish.  I'm not on their
mailing lists because they quickly became intolerable (newbies getting
flamed mercilessly, the inevitable three-month pout-fest over some article
mentioning Linux but not every other free OS ever in existance on the
planet, etc.).  The inevitable "this bug was fixed x months ago in OpenBSD"
post on Bugtraq whenever someone finds some new exploit for Solaris is
amusing at first, but gets old.  etc.  There really isn't the same helpful
community like there is with Linux.

In general, I prefer SysV-style systems, and the overall feel of a quality
Linux distribution like Red Hat or Debian, and one of those is invariably
what I use when I set up workstations.  Linux has the faster interactive
feel, far more programs [2], generally better driver support, better
cross-platform (well, for the platforms I care about right now) support, and
better SMP.  On the other hand, I'd rather use FreeBSD as a workstation than
Slackware....

For servers, I still usually prefer Linux, but that's more personal taste /
familiarity than because one is better or worse enough than the others to
base a decision on that (in general; obviously, for example, if you're
running SMP OpenBSD is out, or if you're running Sparc then FreeBSD is out,
or if you're running a Vax, NetBSD is your only option).  I've got both
OpenBSD and FreeBSD along with Linux at home, and I've done consulting on
all three as well.

later,
chris

[1] The OpenBSD development group is quite small, and quite strapped for
cash.  If you run it and like it, make sure to buy the official CDs b/c that
money really is needed.

[2] Free / OpenBSD can both run Linux binaries, but why bother when you can
just run Linux instead?

-- 
Chris Ricker                                               kaboom at gatech.edu
                                              chris.ricker at genetics.utah.edu