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OpenBSD Review at DistroWatch
jpkunst writes "Robert Storey at DistroWatch com has written an in-depth and favorable review of OpenBSD: OpenBSD - For Your Eyes Only. 'The first OpenBSD memento I ever saw was a T-shirt with a picture of a cop chasing a script kiddie. That image remained etched in my mind for well over a year before I finally got my hands on a copy of this fine OS. Now that I have it installed on my machine, I only wonder what took me so long.'"
The article is very clear and concise. While BSD was not trivial to install the very first time, it isn't too difficult for those with experience. However even noobs can install OpenBSD with this article.
BTW - A good idea is to install OpenBSD on a dedicated secondary hard disk, such as a 4GB or something that you can find for free now a days. That way you will not have to worry about ruining your partitions on your primary disk, as OpenBSD is a bit scarier with writing to your MBR than, lets say, the GUI for GRUB in the RedHat installer.
Now that is funny!
Perhaps you would like to know that FreeBSD usually gets new hardware support before Linux... It some cases, LONG before Linux... USB & Firewire support come to mind immediately, but there are plenty of other examples as well.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Something that might interest users of FreeBSD who envy pf:
pf on FreeBSD
-Dan
I am somewhere between newbie and novice when it comes to *nix. When I decided I needed a good secure operating system for my job to put their web server on, I realized that I didn't know or want to learn all the steps it takes to secure Linux.
So I decided on OpenBSD (that whole "secure by default" thing kinda enticed me). I picked up a copy of "Secure Architectures with OpenBSD" and went to work. Well, then I realized that it probably would have been faster to learn the steps to securing Linux, but I am really liking OpenBSD so far.
I can honestly say, installation was incredibly easy once I RTFM, and I'm finding it is that way with most stuff. And the things that I have hit snags on (making PHP and MySQL play nice together) have been resolved by a few posts to misc@openbsd.org.
And OpenBSD's clean filesystem makes it a lot easier to learn Unix than other OSs.
Oh, and did I mention that Ports and Packages kick ass?
I started using FreeBSD because my usb keyboard and mouse ran on it first before Linux.
The drivers were in kernel 2.4 but Linus and others held backporting it into 2.2 and the 2.4 kernel kept being held back with delays. When 2.4.0 came out due to those screaming for newer hardware support, it turned out it had a broken VM subsystem. Ouch.
The BSD kernels are updating more often for trivial things like drivers compared to Linux.
USB, Devfs, and even SCSI had better and earlier support in BSD before Linux. Infact Adeptec to this day creates their unix drivers on FreeBSD first and then ports them to Linux and Solarisx86 afterwards. Ide on the other hand was an exception since Linux was geared for pc's and BSD for servers.
Its those strange peripherals like no name laptop display drivers, nics, and winmodems that Linux has an advantager over.
http://saveie6.com/
Read my post here
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http://bsd.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=113848&
THe BSD kernels are updated every few months in minor releases. Yes the Linux kernels are also updated but for alot of items depending on new things like Devfs they are often ported to the latest beta 2.odd releases. 2.4 was over 12 months late and had all the newest drivers.
FreeBSD on the other hand puts things like driver updated in every kernel release and keeps the architecture changes in seperate -current series.
They have 2 kernel teams. One for -current which will eventually be the new kernel series. And one for -stable which are maintance releases. Drivers are almost always backported to the -stable releases or dual ported.
Most Linux kernel developers use the beta 2.odd kernels so they port the drivers to that and someone needs to back port them back to the stable releases.
I admit the 5.x series has newer drivers oddly that are not in 4.x because of huge architectural changes. BSD users do not like to do radical changes which makes writing drivers easier. Its an unusual change for them but FreeBSD users make up %15 of Linux users. 15 million Linux users = 1 million FreeBSD ones. That is alot of hardware that is being tested. Also most Linux users are hobbiest while the FreeBSD ones are more professional and capable of writing drivers.
http://saveie6.com/
The only potential difficulty, IMO, is getting past the the whole "partitions vs. slices" thing. The BSD and Linux versions of those ideas are dangerously similar - close enough to make a clueful Linux user think they understand then, but different enough to hose that user's system. Even then, there's nothing particularly difficult there as long as you wipe your mind of what you think you know before beginning.
Once you get past partitioning/slicing, there's really nothing to the rest of the install.
I guess the best bet for someone who just wants to try out BSD is Freesbie
A BSD newbie must also know that all BSDs have the same advantage over Linux. That is good documentation for development and for POSIX patterns.
But im not trying to start a flamewar, even because BSDs may not be the best OS for everyone.
for regular users, or for bigger OS flexibility, i would sugest to stay with our pal Tux! (ive used it for long time =) )
but if you want to build a stable server in which youll need to do some secure,well-documented development, BSD is always a good choice.
One must only have in mind that the BSDs are not all equal as ive read on earlier posts!! (people were talking about FreeBSD when the topic clearly states about Open).
just for the record:
NetBSD >runs on everything with 32 bits. (including toasters =D)
FreeBSD > good performance and stability. (My personal choice ! )
OpenBSD > awesome security but bad performance compared to the other 2.(what i have to work with in college)
just thought that someone needed to clear that out!
What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of their women.
I just started using to OpenBSD about two weeks ago because I wanted something minimal to run on some old equip that I wanted to use as an X workstation. I had attemped OpenBSD a few months ago with an old 3.4 install floppy that wouldn't work and I almost gave up. But after 3.5 came out, I wrote a new 3.5 install disk, re-read the install docs, and booted up the floppy. 10 minutes later, I had a fully functional unix with X and FVWM (the default WM instead of TWM as on most linux X installs).
/usr/local/bin to /bin and then executed vipw to make it my root shell. The second thing I did was install fluxbox which I find more functional than FVWM.
.profile. I highly recommend using pkg_add over ports unless you absolutely need to compile something to get customizations/optimizations.
So far I have been favorably impressed. I was absolutely blow away by the quickness of the install. The slowest thing about the install was the unfamiliar disk partitioning. Otherwise the only limit on speed was my bandwidth. The quick install means that there is no bloat. If you want it, install it, but you won't find useless packages installed by default like lots of linux distributions. Under Fedora, my old P3-450 used to be slugish and grind away swapping constantly. No it almost *never* swaps (at least not that I can hear)
I found the default shell csh to unfamiliar. Having come from linux, the first thing I did was install bash (statically compiled version) using pkg_add and them I moved it from
Even though ports "gets all the press" in BSD software management, I prefer to install binaries using pkg_add for most day-to-day packages that do not require customization. Do not underestimate pkg_add. It will resolve dependancies and install everyting that is a prerequisite for the package that you are asking for. It is the BSD answer to APT. It makes software installation trivial. The important thing to remember about pkg_add is to select a mirror and put a PKG_PATH=ftp://ftp.yourserver.here/ into your
Patching is all done by source diffs, so there will be some compiling there.
If you want to give OpenBSD a try without installing it head over to http://metawire.org. They offer free OpenBSD shells, they've got a pretty big community and it's a great place to play and learn with OpenBSD.