Which BSD for an Experienced Linux User?

Bruce C asks: "I'm a software developer with 28 years commercial experience. Although my day job is mostly on Windows software, I've been using SuSE Linux for 6 years at home. Before that I worked on HP/UX. I've no pressing plans to abandon Linux, but I am interested in experimenting with a BSD style operating system. My current motivation is largely curiosity. Of course, I might end up being converted, but that isn't my intention. I'm wondering which of the various *BSD systems would be the 'best' introduction for a person like me. The workstation I'm planning to use is a generic beige box: Celeron 1.2, 768Mb RAM, 120 Gb IDE, with about 80Gb free. It's on a LAN, behind a firewall. The live CDs for FreeBSD (Freebsie), DragnoflyBSD, and NetBSD all booted and started on it. I haven't tried an OpenBSD CDROM. Which BSD should I pick?"

Comments

All of them

[SilverspurG]

And find one that's right for you.

Re:All of them

[brilinux]

That is true ... though I was not as successful ... basically, I now use both NetBSD and FreeBSD; I like them both. I use FreeBSD on my laptop because it has NDIS support for my WiFi card (after 5.3), but I also like NetBSD, which is on my desktop. NetBSD seems to handle packages better than FreeBSD, as often with upgrades on the latter, I have some problems (I think that DragonFly is trying to fix that, though it is very preliminary right now). I have also used OpenBSD, primarily for the AFS support built in, but I did not like it as much as the others. I also have an UltraSparc, that, of course, is running NetBSD.
To each his own, they are all great OSes, you will find one (or more) that you like.

Re:All of them

[Anonymous Coward]

For a good general purpose (and portable!) BSD, you just can' beat NetBSD.

NetBSD is probably the best "starter" BSD of all. Actually, the attributes which make NetBSD good for beginners, are the same attributes that make old timers like myself stay with it. NetBSD is all the BSD most folks will ever need.

Re:All of them

[Gendalia]

https://lists.openafs.org/pipermail/port-netbsd/20 05-January/000011.html discusses AFS on NetBSD, if that'd be useful.

Re:All of them

[brilinux]

I go to Carnegie Mellon, and have talked to the guy who does a lot of the work for NetBSD and AFS here, and my general feelings now are to avoid using it on all OSes, but thank you much.

Re:All of them

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that the "all of them" replies are the ones closest to the mark. It may also depend upon where you are coming from. For example, Debian has created a distribution using a NetBSD kernel but their own Debian userland. That should get some NetBSD benefits while keeping the system "feeling" like Debian GNU/LINUX.

Between the NetBSD, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD systems, I'd add these thoughts:

a) Security isn't something you get out of a box.
If you think that it is, then I hope that
you're not running any boxes that I ever have
to rely upon!

b) Performance isseus are mostly transient if you
stay up to date.

c) Ease of use is subjective. I found the
FreeBSD install tool to be cumbsome and
unclear on the AMD64. I just wanted a base
system installed so that I could boot and
build from FrreBSD's pkgsrc-like source
package system (they call it "ports").
I had to goof around selecting and unselecting
stuff before the right things were all turned
on.

That said:

NetBSD is the only real choice if you require one of the platforms that only it supports. Or if you need to cross-build a slow Motorola 68K box from a fast AMD64. (The current benchmark superiority is nice, but not a long-term selling point.) Code cleanliness and the portable pkgsrc system that it uses (pkgsrc runs on FreeBSD, LINUX, Solaris, ...) are also pluses, but not of much impact for most people.

OpenBSD supports a few ports, like the Motorola 88K (not to be confused with the 68K!) which no one else supports.

FreeBSD is the only BSD with mainline support for DRI. (But it fails on my AMD64 box, along with audio. I assume that they work more reliably on i386 hardware, but have not tried.) If you expect hardware accelerated OpenGL, and don't want to fool around with unsupported patches, FreeBSD is the only one that stands a chance for now.

If you just want to see what a BSD is like, probably the best thing to do is install all of them that you can.

(For the record: I mostly use NetBSD. I have installed FreeBSD/amd64, hoping to use it as a friendly alternative to GNU/LINUX for games and OpenGL, etc. Given that neither DRI nor audio work on this box for FreeBSD, I use NetBSD for audio and GNU/LINUX for games. I rarely boot FreeBSD.)

Re:All of them

[Anonymous Coward]

From a quality and architectural design aspect, NetBSD is quite a bit stronger. FreeBSD is not as good as it used to be. I dare say that FreeBSD is a wee bit over-hyped.

Re:All of them

[db74]

I work at Carnegie Mellon, and am one of the OpenAFS gatekeepers, we have gotten no contributions of NetBSD code for AFS ever from anyone at CMU, so I'd like to know who your liar is.

Re:All of them

[brilinux]

I do not remember his name, but from what I understood, OpenAFS was working toward getting NetBSD support in 1.3 for release in 1.4. He may have been referring to another project, or perhaps that they were trying to import from OpenBSD. I am sorry if I did not understand, but that is how it sounded.

Re:All of them

[db74]

Actually, OpenAFS supports servers only on NetBSD now, and there's no current work on clients for NetBSD in 1.3. All that said, I suspect the work I'm going to need to do for MacOS shortly will make NetBSD support much easier, but one thing at a time.

Re:All of them

[Anonymous Coward]

a) Security isn't something you get out of a box.

No, it is not. It is a process you follow from the beginning. A part of that process, would hopefully involve choosing a system which has a focus on security and a good track record when network services are enabled.

One of the best, proven systems out there, is OpenBSD. Whether network services are exposed or not. OpenBSD coming with few services enabled by default, is a testament to the philosiphy behind the project. It is not the one and only reason it has such a great name.

Microsoft systems typically get infected or exploited before a system installation is finished if it is connected to the internet. They are stupid to design their systems like this.

OpenBSD are smart to leave it up to you to decide what you do and do not want running. So many people read too much into OpenBSD's "X holes in the default install in the past Y years!" remark. OpenBSD's security does not ride on it's default install policy. That policy is merely a very small part of the overall security.

Would you expect a secure system to have truck loads of services remotely available, like Windows, from the default install? When any given user may not want those services running?

Re:All of them

[Anonymous Coward]

You raise an interesting point: By what measure is OpenBSD *really* "one of the best, proven systems"? Everyone's heard the hype, but I've never heard it substantiated or quantified. Agreed that "secure by default" is really not that big of a thing to accomplish---and really doesn't mean much in practice. We've also all heard the claim that OpenBSD has re-created security issues that in its BSD heritage were completely solved years before OpenBSD forked. Again, though, it is unquantified and unsubstantiated. If true, that's pretty frightful.

I strongly suspect that in reality, you'll find that all of the BSDs are about comparably secure, if you know what you're doing, and require about as much effort to keep secure. (And, likewise, if you don't, you'll probably blow your doors wide open.)

I think that it still comes down to the subject of this branch of the thread: Try *all* of them. Or pick one according to particular port requirements, application supports, or specific feature if those are really important to you.

Re:All of them

[mirabilos]

"All of them" is _really_ the way to go, we stress
this at exhibitions etc. for people like the one
who asked, too.

If you would not be coming from $otherOS to BSD,
I'd say you should really buy the hardware which
your OS (the one you want to use and which fits
your needs) supports, not choose the OS among the
selected few which work with your closed-firmware
closed-spec hardware.

May I suggest you have a look at MirOS (an OpenBSD
derivate) too? http://mirbsd.de/

Re:All of them

[brilinux]

Thanks; MirOS looks interesting; I might have to try it. As for the hardware - yes, I know, but I got the laptop with a 3.0GHz Proc and 1GB RAM for $2000 (I am a cheap fool). But, I will give MirOS a go, since I am a big BSD fan and an OS junky.

try darwin

[Hes Nikke]

I'd try darwin - that is just the 1st step towards Mac OS X ;)

(first post?)

Re:try darwin

[Atzanteol]

But once you've installed MacOS X, be sure to put Gentoo Portage on it to make it usable!

Hah! I counter your zealotry with my own!

portage also works on Free and Open BSD I believe...

Re:try darwin

[fm6]

So who, if anybody is using Darwin? We don't seem to hear anything from any Darwin users that aren't also MacOS users. It's intriguing to know that Darwin runs on x86, but this doesn't seem to have an consequences in the real world.

Re:try darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh Lord, it must be a troll. Darwin? OMG.

Darwin might be of interest to somebody looking for a senior project. But it is not newbie introductry material. You can boot it and watch the curor blink.

Re:try darwin

[andkaha]

But once you've installed MacOS X, be sure to put Gentoo Portage on it to make it usable!

For a BSD solution, try pkgsrc.

Re:try darwin

[bahamat]

I tried portage on my iBook and I found it to be cumbersom, inadequate and intrusive. Darwinports on the otherhand is quick and easy to use, installs nicely, has tons of packages available and doesn't try to take over my system.

Re:try darwin

[jdog1016]

FreeBSD and OpenBSD already have their own (superior) ports system and have no need for portage. In fact, it is my understanding that portage was modelled after this ports system.

Re:try darwin

[Atzanteol]

Portage *was* modelled after the ports system (as well as apt from Debian). I wasn't trying to insult the BSD stuff. I just get sick of the Mac OS X zealots in here ("Get a Mac!" - the solution to everything apparently).

However, I do disagree that ports is better than portage. I ran FBSD for some time, and I had more issues upgrading and updating ports than upgrading and updating any other system (up2date, apt, portage).

At first I *loved* ports. It was simple, elegant, and compiled from source. However, as time went on, whenever I ran "portupdate -ra" (or whatever the command was) I hit a slew of dependency problems (typically of the sort involving obscolete dependencies). It was a nightmare to maintain for me. I never found adequate documentation for how to deal with it (most seemed to assume I already knew what I was doing).

'course this is all personal experience, and not meant to be a diatribe against *BSD. I just think that ports had some serious usability issues from a standpoint of updating/upgrading (mebbe things have changed?). Portage, on the other hand, makes this rather easy. And has all the things about ports that I liked.

Re:try darwin

[ulib]

>I never found adequate documentation for how to deal with it (most seemed to assume I already knew what I was doing).

I would suggest this excellent trilogy of articles about FreeBSD ports:
Ports Tricks
portupgrade
Cleaning and Customizing Your Ports
Together with the ports chapter on the FreeBSD Handbook, they should pretty much cover anything you'd need to know to work with ports - they did for me.
And btw, as another poster already pointed out, the BSD section of Onlamp is a *great* source for BSD technical info.

I've also heard great things about NetBSD's pkgsrc system - I have to try it out some day.
--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

Re:try darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

whoever moded the parent as off topic should do their research... darwin is BASED on BSD.

FreeBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that you know Linux, you'll find FreeBSD to be the best one to try. I would recommend the 5.x series if you're feeling ambitious, or the 4.x series if you don't want to put in too much effort. I say this because of my own past experice with Linux and BSD. Have fun.

Re:FreeBSD

[Just Some Guy]

Besides being the easiest, FreeBSD has by far the largest collection of ported software. Although you can probably built almost all of the same programs by hand on Net- or OpenBSD, it's nice to be able to let someone else do the hard work for you, particularly if this is your first time to use the system.

BTW, I'd rewrite your instructions as:

Update your software collection:
cd /usr/ports; make update
portupgrade -ra

Install from source:
portinstall misc/screen

Install from binaries:
portinstall -PP misc/screen

Yes, I know that the first one is rarely that simple (although it can be, especially on relatively new machines). The second two are pretty representative, though.

Re:FreeBSD

[Lussarn]

I'm a long time Linux user who recently installed FreeBSD 5 on a development server, apart from the init scripts are a bit arcane to a Linux user my two problems have been.

Kernel crashes when using DMA. VIA chipset. A kernel recompile seems to have fixed that somehow. uptime on two weeks now with quite heavy disk use.

Because of a "bug/unimplemented feature" in Linux a FreeBSD 5 kernel can't lock files on a Linux NFS server (NLM cookie length > 8). Very recent Linux kernel have this issue sorted out (at least 2.6.10 works, 2.6.7 don't).

After sorting these two issues out it has been very nice to me. I usually run Gentoo Linux and so far I like portage better than ports, it feels a little more modern and easier to use but it could be what I'm used to.

Re:FreeBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

When we think about FreeBSD, it reminds us of
DeForest Kelley's great observation:

It's dead, Jim.

Re:FreeBSD

[dokebi]

I second FreeBSD, but for a different reason: DOCUMENTATION.

I think FreeBSD by far has the best centralized documentation anywhere (gentoo is good, too--I think they try hard to model after FBSD). Between the Handbook for general How-To's and the man pages for nitty-gritty, you can do almost everything without googling.

I keep trying to learn Debian, but every time I give up because it's hard to find good up-to-date information.

Re:FreeBSD

[necrognome]

Although you can probably built almost all of the same programs by hand on Net- or OpenBSD, it's nice to be able to let someone else do the hard work for you

NetBSD: *cough* pkgsrc *cough*

Re:FreeBSD

[Fweeky]

"Update your software collection:
cd /usr/ports; make update
portupgrade -ra"

I prefer:

portsnap fetch
portsnap update # use binary diffs to effeciently track small port deltas
portaudit # get a quick security audit of installed ports and base system
pkg_version -vL = # I alias this to pkg_chk; list updated port versions
portupgrade [whatever needs doing]

Re:FreeBSD

[molnarcs]

Yeah, documentation! Which reminds me of the community, which is just great. I came to FreeBSD from a mandrake background (mandrakusers.org and pclinuxonline forums) - so I was a bit afraid that freebsd users are probably too geekish for my taste or something. What a pleasant surprise! Even after the positive experience on mandrakusers, bsdforums seemed even more friendlier. Sure, you are expected to read the documentation, but even if you made zero effort to do so you are directed to the handbook in a polite manner (no rtfm). And bsdforums is a wealth of knowledge. I didn't feel the need to post for 3 months, found almost anything I wanted via the search feature.

Anyway, although this is not the most important factor in deciding which OS to choose, it can still matter. I am very grateful to the FreeBSD user community for their patience to help out a noob like I was back when I tried it out. There is also a linux section on freebsdforums.org - and contrary to what some troll would have you believe, most freebsd users either run linux as well or don't care about linux at all. And if you are looking for positive linux reviews, you can find many of them on - surprise surprise - bsdforums (I read raves about mandrake, gentoo, etc.). I just thought that I'd mention this if someone had the same apprehension I had 1.5 years ago.

Re:FreeBSD

[palfreman]

When you say FreeBSD 5, what do you mean? I.e 5.0-RELEASE? Remember that version of FreeBSD 5 before 5.3 (the latest version) were not -STABLE, and were certainly not intended for production use.

If you were using FreeBSD before 5.3 for a production system, you should have been using 4.x like it said so on the website.

Re:FreeBSD

[Lussarn]

It is FreeBSD 5.3 because from my understanding it is -STABLE now. The box wasn't a real production box (Not open on the internet), but a development server to see how things worked out.

Re:FreeBSD

[Just Some Guy]

I hadn't seen portsnap before, but that looks pretty interesting for the bandwidth-limited. BTW, have you used portversion? It's many times faster than pkg_version in my experience.

Re:FreeBSD

[archen]

Hey, this guy needs to ease into things from Linux, lets not blow his mind here. I'm sure his head will be spinning when he sees man pages that document things instead of saying "read the info page". Hell, he might even pass out when he finds out he can read man pages about configuration files.

Re:FreeBSD

[Just Some Guy]

From http://netbsd.org/Documentation/software/packages. html:

The NetBSD Packages Collection (pkgsrc) is a framework for building third-party software on NetBSD and other UNIX-like systems, currently containing nearly 5000 packages.

From http://www.freebsd.org/ports/growth/status.png:

[graph with a y-value of 12,000 at the current time]

Which brings us back to my statement:

Besides being the easiest, FreeBSD has by far the largest collection of ported software.

If you can make a FreeBSD port of a program, then you can probably also get it to run on NetBSD or OpenBSD. However, the odds of any particular program already being ported to FreeBSD are significantly higher.

Re:FreeBSD

[Brandybuck]

In the past you would have been right, but the 5.x branch is now stable with the release of 5.3. There's no more effort with it than there is with 4.11.

Of course, this doesn't mean that there's no reason for not using the 4.x branch. Heck, I know people running the 3.x branch...

Re:FreeBSD

[The Irish Jew]

You can also take a crack at converting the port to pkgsrc with this tool. I've had some decent luck with it myself.

Re:FreeBSD

[Just Some Guy]

Cool. I'm currently playing around with NetBSD 2.0 (via qemu) for the first time since I booted it on my Amiga in '97 or so. I might give that a try in the near future.

Re:FreeBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep trying to learn Debian, but every time I give up because it's hard to find good up-to-date information.

That's expected -- it's also hard to find good up-to-date Debian. :-)

Re:FreeBSD

[rainman_bc]

I actually found FreeBSD an easier way to get into *nix than Linux personally. FreeBSD made installing stuff so easy. No dependancy hell.

cd /usr/ports/whatever/whatever
make install clean

how much easier could it be?

Re:FreeBSD

[MrZaius]

>I'm sure his head will be spinning when he sees man pages that document things instead of saying "read the info page".

Aside from the gnuutils (GNU implementations of ls, mv, etc) and bash, is there any major package that says that? And isn't the latter of the two pretty common BSD systems?

>Hell, he might even pass out when he finds out he can read man pages about configuration files.

It's not that damned uncommon in linux.

Results from find /usr/man/*/*conf.*, just one of my three man page repositories (there's plenty more where this came from): /usr/man/man1/autoconf.1.gz /usr/man/man5/lilo.conf.5.gz /usr/man/man1/autoreconf.1.gz /usr/man/man5/mailer.conf.5.gz /usr/man/man1/dispatch-conf.1.gz /usr/man/man5/make.conf.5.gz /usr/man/man1/fetchmailconf.1.gz /usr/man/man5/man.conf.5.gz /usr/man/man1p/getconf.1p.gz /usr/man/man5/modprobe.conf.5.gz /usr/man/man3/fpathconf.3.gz /usr/man/man5/modules.conf.5.gz /usr/man/man3/pathconf.3.gz /usr/man/man5/nscd.conf.5.gz /usr/man/man3/sysconf.3.gz /usr/man/man5/nsswitch.conf.5.gz /usr/man/man3p/fpathconf.3p.gz /usr/man/man5/printers.conf.5.gz /usr/man/man3p/pathconf.3p.gz /usr/man/man5/resolv.conf.5.gz /usr/man/man3p/sysconf.3p.gz /usr/man/man5/rsyncd.conf.5.gz /usr/man/man5/chrony.conf.5.gz /usr/man/man5/scrollkeeper.conf.5.gz /usr/man/man5/classes.conf.5.gz /usr/man/man5/sysctl.conf.5.gz /usr/man/man5/cupsd.conf.5.gz /usr/man/man5/vsftpd.conf.5.gz /usr/man/man5/devfsd.conf.5.gz /usr/man/man5/xinetd.conf.5.gz /usr/man/man5/famd.conf.5.gz /usr/man/man5/xorg.conf.5x.gz /usr/man/man5/fonts-conf.5.gz /usr/man/man8/alsaconf.8.gz /usr/man/man5/host.conf.5.gz /usr/man/man8/pam.conf.8.gz /usr/man/man5/libao.conf.5.gz

Re:FreeBSD

[mrowlands]

hhhm given the generally sucky performance of 5.3 I'd stick with 4.11

Re:FreeBSD

[Fweeky]

It's not so much bandwidth as not scanning the entire ports tree every time you update; it's less work for the client and the server. cvsup isn't that fast even with a good 10+Mbit connection, since it's largely IO-limited.

portversion uses INDEX(.db), which isn't always up to date; pkg_version walks the list of installed packages and asks each port what the current version is using make. Of course portsnap keeps the INDEX up to date for you in a much more effecient manner than make fetch (which grabs a .bz2'd copy of the entire thing each time), so I guess I might as well switch my aliases :)

Re:FreeBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

This happens because the big corporations (IBM, HP, Sun, etc.) need the GPL'd Linux to knock off the Microsoft monopoly. We'll see if they will keep behaving like this once the Microsoft monopoly is gone... (as soon as possible, I hope)

Re:FreeBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

5.3-stable runs faster for me than 4.x.

do: man make.conf

after you study it, add your processor type to /etc/make.conf like this:

CPUTYPE=athlon-xp

then, update your world, and edit your kernel. get rid of all the drivers that you don't use, leaving just the ones you do use.

cd /usr/src; make buildworld kernel

(note that you got to add your KERNCONF=kernelname to /etc/make.conf to compile your kernel this way, otherwise its going to compile generic kernel)

after that, sit back and watch the thing fly

Re:FreeBSD

[dgrgich]

I came to FreeBSD from a mandrake background (mandrakusers.org and pclinuxonline forums) - so I was a bit afraid that freebsd users are probably too geekish for my taste

Uhm - too geekish for your taste? Look where you're posting - I think it is too late for you to judge someone's level of geek!

OPENBSD!!!

[strikehosting]

I say OpenBSD because I live in the same city as Theo and I work right near him! He was one of the people that started NetBSD too!

OpenBSD is also one of the most secure OS's in the world with a unmodified install!

Re:OPENBSD!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Security != Least Exploited

Re:OPENBSD!!!

[nocomment]

I'd say OpenBSD too, but not for reasons so lame as "I live near them". I live near microsoft but it would be a cold cold cold cold day in hell if I recomended that.

Re:OPENBSD!!!

[Sancho]

It's also one of the most useless OS's in the world with an unmodified install!
Seriously, the "all services off by default" is why OpenBSD can make the claim you made. Once you start making the box more useful, you start making it less secure.

Re:OPENBSD!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

dor de côto é fodido

Re:OPENBSD!!!

[RevDobbs]

Uhm, no. Everything in a base install, even if not turned on, has undergone a code audit... I'm fairly certain that the OpenBSD versions of sendmail, bind, and "the webserver formerly known as Apache" have all had many security-related patches applied, not all of which were accepted back into their respective main code branches.

Anyway, for a Cluefull User I highly recommend OpenBSD - the documentation kicks ass, and the user community is great at helping those that help themselves (i.e. as long as you've done your homework, they've always been quick to help).

Re:OPENBSD!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a clue: the stuff that's not yet enabled on a default install is still more secure. Why? Two reasons:
- ongoing code audit of all parts of the system. bugs get fixed. security holes are considered bugs.
- insecure buggy shit is either never allowed into obsd, or tossed into /dev/null when found. example: ethereal is no longer in the ports

Re:OPENBSD!!!

[dohcvtec]

It's also one of the most useless OS's in the world with an unmodified install!
Not really... have you ever run NetBSD? NetBSD doesn't even configure your network interfaces by default - so it's actually more secure by default than OpenBSD, because it has no network connectivity.
Seriously, the "all services off by default" is why OpenBSD can make the claim you made.
Actually, a default install of OpenBSD does have a few daemons running through inetd - but they are so thoroughly audited that they no longer pose an ominous threat. Besides all that, OpenBSD is really one of the easisest OSs to turn into a full (and secure) web/mail/file server - just change a few lines in /etc/rc.conf and you're there.

Re:OPENBSD!!!

[strikehosting]

Another thing I find is that the install is the easyist of all the BSD's if

• you read the install guide

(Even easyer than most linux distros!)

Re:OPENBSD!!!

[Homology]

Uhm, no. Everything in a base install, even if not turned on, has undergone a code audit... I'm fairly certain that the OpenBSD versions of sendmail, bind, and "the webserver formerly known as Apache" have all had many security-related patches applied, not all of which were accepted back into their respective main code branches.

The Apache httpd diff is about 4000 lines. After the fork the diff is even larger as they are removing the unneeded apr layer.

Re:OPENBSD!!!

[c1one]

I have rarely read something so true: "Security != Least Exploited" quoted from Anonymous Coward.

Re:OPENBSD!!!

[afroborg]

Oh fuck off

Re:OPENBSD!!!

[setagllib]

Everything there is true, but NetBSD WILL give you the option of saving network configuration if you give it at any point during install (e.g. networked install, or just asking it to).

The BSDs really are conscious about security though, especially Open. I've heard a lot of FUD to the contrary (wideopenbsd.org?) but the hard truth is OpenBSD is just amazing. A nice contrast to those GNU/Linux machines in which a code audit is looking to see if typing random crap in telnet crashes a machine or not (seriously, this is how some camps do it).

Re:OPENBSD!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

A nice contrast to those GNU/Linux machines in which a code audit is looking to see if typing random crap in telnet crashes a machine or not (seriously, this is how some camps do it).

Err, no it isn't.... but maybe in your camp.

No I'll give you the benefit of the doubt; which GNU/Linux "camps" perform a code audit in the above manner? And how can you back up your claims?

Re:OPENBSD!!!

[setagllib]

By watching the exploit tickers on distribution/etc sites. No way can a well-audited system have even an exploit per month, let alone a few per week like I've seen (don't believe me? watch the exploit ticker on forums.gentoo.org)

You may say "but you can run that software under bsd too!", but that's not the point: the target platform is invariably GNU/Linux, making it a GNU/Linux camp.

Say what you will, it's insecure. Move on.

Re:OPENBSD!!!

[Carik]

Yes, but an unmodified install doesn't let you do anything, because there's nothing installed and no services running.

Add to that their severely broken DHCP server, and I'm less then thrilled with the newest version of OpenBSD. (The dhcpd isn't technically broken, I suppose; they just removed basically all of the flags and options from it, including the "test my config" option which made it simple to see if your re-written dhcpd.conf would work WITHOUT killing the server.)

That said, I'm seriously considing moving my web/mail server to OpenBSD from gentoo, since the portage system seems to be getting further and further from simple and stable...

Re:OPENBSD!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a fucking stupid loser though. http://www.openbsd.org/security.html#36

Re:If you're so fucking experienced....

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, i like gentoo just because it works well ( when i get it running that is :P )

I don't have much linux experience, and i have a MAC experience (although back from the Color Classic 2).

Im still tied to windows by my gaming habits. As soon as i grow out of them, i can grow out of windows for good.

FreeBSD

[numbski]

Hands down the easiest to pick up, and arguably the most common.

Install software from source?

cvsup -g -L2 stable-supfile
cd /usr/ports/misc/screen
make
make install
make clean

Install the binary version?

pkg_add -r screen

next?

i tried freebsd and liked it

[davez0r]

try one and see if you like it. a live cd won't expose you to the fun aspects of it, but i guess you know that.

after having used linux (debian mostly) for quite a while, i tried freebsd a while ago, and it was very nice to me. the ports collection reminded me a lot of apt, and the documentation was quite good. and they made a release today!

that being said, i haven't used it in some time. but with my new mac mini, i can relive my bsd glory days with additional drop shadows and window animations! i don't know if that really counts as a bsd, though.

Experiment

[Turmio]

So you're willing to experiment with a new system. Then why not install all of the free BSD's and use each for a few weeks and after that decide which one to keep, if any.

Re:Experiment

[kiore]

Yes, I agree with you.

Before posting the query I felt that I would probably be trying more than one of the different BSD OSes.

What I was hoping for, and seem to have got, was reasoned explanations as to why I should try a particular version first.

Cheers

Bruce

Re:Experiment

[Anonymous Coward]

For the time being, go with FreeBSD5. It's stable, agile, and the ports system is everything people are saying about it. In fact, portupgrade takes care of many of the weaknesses that the ports system has. Just be aware that NetBSD is every bit as good as FreeBSD, if not better, only with fewer packages available for it (most of the missing packages will be niche programs, too, that would probably require no changes at all to build perfectly, except that there's been zero demand for that package).

Also be aware that DragonFlyBSD is making quick strides. The versions tagged as DragonFly_Stable are every bit as stable as FreeBSD4, and any bugs that do pop up are fixed within a week or so, usually; DFly is still developing, after all. In six months to a year, it won't be possible to post a valid BSD/Linux benchmark without including DragonFly, so definitely don't forget that it exists, although right now, it's not ready for a newbie to mess with (and that's only because a newbie isn't able to tell the difference between an error he has made, and an error in the OS easily).

So, my final recommendation is to install FreeBSD5. The first thing you'll want to do is edit /etc/make.conf. As root, copy /usr/share/examples/etc/make.conf to /etc/make.conf. There are a lot of things commented out in there, and it's quite confusing. Here's some of the options I have enabled:

CPUTYPE?=athlon-xp
CFLAGS= -O -pipe
COPTFLAGS= -O -pipe
WITH_BIND_LIBS= true # Install the BIND libs and include files
MAKE_IDEA= YES # IDEA (128 bit symmetric encryption)
COMPAT4X= yes
NO_SUID_XSERVER=yes
X_WINDOW_SYSTEM=xorg

This optimizes all of my ports builds for my system. If I had wanted, this is where I would've added Gentooesque options. Do this first, because they affect ports builds, and you're about to install many, many ports. I have 312.

Now you should start installing ports. I'd start with portupgrade, so:

cd /usr/ports/sysutils/portupgrade
make fetch-recurisve
make install

This fetches portupgrade and all of its dependencies, then installs them. If you left out the ``make fetch-upgrade,'' ``make install'' implies it, so it would've worked anyway. I prefer using fetch-recursive simply because I like doing all the downloads at once. After this completes, use portupgrade to install all the other ports, because for a long time, you'll be doing installs that have lots of dependencies, and many of those dependencies have important options you should set. Portupgrade allows you to do this with one command; otherwise, you'd have to install the ports individually to set them all, or mess with some makefile, which one it is I forget.

Next, you'll want to install cvsup. You might want to do this from a binary package, because cvsup is written in Modula-3 (it's apparently the only program ever written in Modula-3, and ezm3 takes forever to compile (although not as long as kde, xorg, or others)). cd /usr/ports/net/cvsup-without-gui; make install will end with you having cvsup. That's what I did, although I understand many use the binary package.

Now you use cvsup to update your sources and ports tree. I keep a local mirror of the cvs tree, which many would say is a waste of time and bandwidth. You can find example cvsup files in /usr/share/example/cvsup, including one that'll work for what you want, out of the box.

That's basically it. Just use portupgrade to install stuff you need from the ports tree. You can have KDE in two commands: ``portupgrade -NR x11/xorg; portupgrade -NR x11/kdebase3''. Have fun.

What do you want?

[twilight30]

A quick rule of thumb is generally ...

OpenBSD for security, NetBSD for portability and FreeBSD for diffusion in the wider world (ie, comparable to Linux).

I have no need for portability, and FreeBSD didn't appeal to me, so OpenBSD it was -- five years ago. I don't think you'll go wrong with any of them, though. If I did it again to experiment I'd probably try FreeBSD out this time.

BSDs do generally have more thorough online and internal documentation than Linux for the core basics, so you won't miss with any of them.

Re:What do you want?

[andkaha]

OpenBSD for security, NetBSD for portability and FreeBSD for diffusion in the wider world (ie, comparable to Linux).

Bollocks!

If your playground is i386-type systems, like it is in the case of the OP, and if he has some common sense, then the three operating systems are more or less the same in terms of security and software availability. He should just pick the one he finds most fun/simple to administrate.

Re:What do you want?

[Cecil]

I agree that he'll be fine whichever he chooses, but your statement that they are all more or less the same in terms of security is very wrong. OpenBSD is not the same as the other BSD's in terms of security. It really, really isn't. If you think so, you're naive. The entire development process revolves around security; code is audited, settings and defaults are carefully crafted. OpenBSD did not start simply because they wanted to include one piece of software and FreeBSD wanted to include another. The whole purpose of OpenBSD is to be the most secure OS on the planet.

To suggest there is no difference is not only untrue, but vaguely insulting to the project.

Re:What do you want?

[Anonymous Coward]

Beg to differ. At one time FreeBSD might have had something special to offer, but no more. NetBSD has gained on it and NetBSD is now considered by many to be the BSD of choice. Even Slashdot can come to realize the advantages of NetBSD, which are illustrated in this story.

Re:What do you want?

[ComputerSlicer23]

And if you believe what you just said makes any difference, you are being just as naive.

OpenBSD, as in the kernel itself, is fairly well auditted (I'm not sure about the coverage, but they do examine things closely from what I remember).

However, Apache isn't auditted. DHCP isn't auditted. The FTP server, I'm fairly sure isn't auditted. Nothing they don't actually write themselves. If you install an OpenBSD machine on the internet and actually turn on services, you'll have just as many security problems as anyone running Linux. OpenSSH has it's fair share of security problems (written by pretty much the same people who wrote OpenBSD). Although with priveledge separation it should have even fewer problems that are actually exploitable to become root.

While Apache does have some security patches applied to it that the stock Apache doesn't, that doesn't make it "Auditted". That means a handful of exploits have been found. I believe the Apache people just don't agree that there is a problem (I'm not clever enough to see who has the more reasonable point of view).

As soon as you start actually using OpenBSD to do anything that allows remote services, you are pretty much into the areas where you could have security problems just like anyone else.

OpenBSD does have some nifty patches to help mitigate certain types of attacks (The memory protection schemes that implement NoExecute on the stack, and some other ways you can mark a page in the VM system as no-execute or no-write).

However, that doesn't mean "OpenBSD is auditted and therefore secure". I'm absolutely confident that if I had shipped Linux for the last 8 years with as little configured to run out of the box as OpenBSD does, Linux could claim no remote root exploits too (the same is probably true of FreeBSD, NetBSD, OS X, Windows, and any other number of Operating systems). (Okay, the Windows claim might be a streach, because I believe there are certain ports that a very difficult to close, but the rest I'm fairly sure are true). The lack of any open ports at all makes it fairly trivial to not have any remote attacks. All you have to do is ensure that your network stacks don't do something stupid with a packet they are routing. Not terribly difficult. The fact that it ships with no services configured is very good. While it probably has a more secure kernel, most exploits out there in the world involve exploiting a user process that is running as root. As which point, you can own an OpenBSD machine as quickly and as easily as a FreeBSD, Linux, or NetBSD machine.

Kirby

Re:What do you want?

[Mr.Ned]

There was a thread on netbsd-advocacy a few weeks ago about NetBSD having image problems, and it pointed to this "rule of thumb" as a major example of the misperception of the BSDs. Many people do exactly what you did - "I have no need for portability, and FreeBSD didn't appeal to me, so OpenBSD it was" - or some variation - without actually evaluating reality.

(I'm not as familiar with FreeBSD as I am the others, and I'm happy with NetBSD right now)

Portability: OpenBSD lists 15 different platforms. [0] FreeBSD lists 9. [1] NetBSD boasts some rediculous number, whether you are counting processor types or variations. (For comparison, Debian supports 11 [2]) All of the BSDs are portable.

Security: OpenBSD has a deserved reputation for focus on security. However, don't think they're the be-all-end-all - I would consider several of the 'reliability fixes' in the 3.5 errata [3] to be security issues, particularly #16 and #27. Weaknesses is the encrypted volume support have been discussed on the misc@ list, and it has been suggested that the cgd found in FreeBSD and NetBSD is much stronger; there are no current plans to port that to OpenBSD. NetBSD 2.0 has a new feature, Verified Exec [4] that looks like a very strong tool to counter rootkits; I don't have any experience with it.

Performance: Although more than a year old, take a look at fefe's scalability benchmarks. [5] FreeBSD and Linux 2.6 came out on top by quite a margin. I believe there was work on all fronts after the benchmarks were published, but NetBSD's catches the eye most - in two weeks they pushed scalability beyond FreeBSD. A more recent series of microbenchmarks between FreeBSD 5.3 and NetBSD 2.0 [6] compare the two and are relatively close. When reading those benchmarks, you should keep in mind that it was a uniprocessor system, and there's been a lot of talk about FreeBSD's SMPng.

One thing you didn't mention were packages and ports; OpenBSD's are more limited in number than FreeBSD or NetBSD's. OpenBSD ports follow releases; FreeBSD's don't; NetBSD's have quarterly stable branches independent of the operating system.

One other note of mention is the RIPOFF file [7] maintained by Hubert Feyrer of NetBSD. It's not really about performance, scalability, security, or ports, but it's an interesting read. I haven't verified its accuracy nor do I know if other people keep similar accounts.

[0] http://www.openbsd.org/plat.html
[1] http://www.freebsd.org/platforms/index.html
[2] http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
[3] http://www.openbsd.org/errata35.html
[4] http://www.netbsd.org/guide/en/chap-whatsnew.html# chap-whatsnew-2-0-veriexec
[5] http://bulk.fefe.de/scalability/
[6] http://www.feyrer.de/NetBSD/gmcgarry/
[7] http://www.feyrer.de/NetBSD/RIPOFF.txt

Re:What do you want?

[andkaha]

To suggest there is no difference is not only untrue, but vaguely insulting to the project.

That would be insulting myself since I'd like to see myself as a contributor to it.

I think that you misunderstand me. Security is, in the end, in the hands of the administrator, no matter what the operating system might be. If security is your main issue, then by all means choose OpenBSD if you think it'll save your day. Personally, I picked OpenBSD because it was small, fully featured, quick to install and easy to maintain. If you say it'll save me from evil, hey, that's even better.

Code and bug-fixes are shared between the BSD projects, and none of them takes security lightly. Any security-related bug found in a project will be fixed in the others, where applicable. The OpenBSD code audits does find and fix bugs, not all security-related, and that all good.

You are right that OpenBSD provides sane defaults, and I hope the other BSDs do the same. I just don't like the "NetBSD is for portability, OpenBSD is for security"-thing. They're both portable and secure. In the wrong hands, they are both as secure as an unboiled egg.

(By the way, OpenBSD did not come from FreeBSD, Theo started it in '95 when he got kicked out of the NetBSD core team after a fallout with some of its members.)

Re:What do you want?

[mellon]

I can say for sure that the DHCP server *has* been audited, by several different groups. Chances are the other utilities have been as well. So really your question should be, "is FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD running the version that's got the fixes from the audit."

Personally, I've always run NetBSD, I like the pkgsrc collection, use it on MacOS X as well as NetBSD, and would rather fight than switch. Whether it's actually better is something that in all likelihood none of us can answer, because we all have our favorite, and that's the one we use, and the reason it's our favorite is probably that it's what we're used to.

The reason NetBSD is my favorite is mostly that I like my fellow NetBSD geeks and would rather discuss issues that come up with them than with the Free- or OpenBSD guys, again not because the FreeBSD guys are less fun to talk to in theory, but simply because I don't know them very well.

Having said that, what drew me to NetBSD in the first place, many years ago, _was_ the focus on portability.

Re:What do you want?

[ComputerSlicer23]

Touche. If DHCP is auditted (I should have thought about that ISC would have it auditted along with BIND), that's great. However, my guess is that OpenBSD didn't do special audits, that didn't get pushed upstream (I know they have some for Apache that they can't pushed upstream, which I alluded to in my post).

Thus OpenBSD isn't inheriently more secure then Linux, NetBSD, or FreeBSD due to the particular audit you are discussing.

Even the OpenBSD guys are pretty clear on the fact that they have limited time and scope for auditting, and that their claim of no remote root exploits in X years (or 1 in 2 * X years or whatever it is they are up to now), doesn't mean an OpenBSD box can't be broken into. If all you are using it for is a straight up packet router, that's wonderful, nearly any OS should be capable of doing that incredibly securely. If you are using it for something that offers remote services. Those remote services are the crux of the problem. Those services more then likely haven't received a full on, all out audit by OpenBSD and Co. That was the main thrust of my point. I mean, OpenBSD finds bugs in auditted code on a fairly regular basis, so auditting isn't the end all be all that the post I was responding too seemed to believe it might be.

Kirby

Re:What do you want?

[molnarcs]

However, Apache isn't auditted.

Do you know what you are talking about? It seems more and more likely you don't. OpenBSD devs had a number of problems with the apache project. One was licencing issues, so they don't have apache2 included in the base system (you are still free to install it via ports). The other gripe was (and this is quite well known for it was publicized a few times even here on ./) that apache.org was slow/reluctant to include all the security fixes the openbsd project submitted - after auditing the code. The apache 1.3.x version is a security enchanched version of the normal 1.3-release.

And that was just one example of your ignorance. Now, would you be so kind as to stop posting crap please? There is a difference between the security of say linux (or even FreeBSD) and OpenBSD. OpenBSD isn't completely secure, no one claims that. It is more secure by default even if you allow services. Not to mention the fact that pf eats iptables for breakfast (now also part of FreeBSD's base system).

Re:What do you want?

[Anonymous Coward]

Auditing is extremely important. You seem to believe that because bugs are still being found, obsd must have the same level of security of other Unix. That's false. The other Unix aren't doing this kind of code audit, and aren't decreasing the number of possible exploits at a comparable rate.
That doesn't mean the audit is foolproof. But don't think in terms of black & white. The more the code is audited, the better it becomes.
There are also other things going on at the same time. For one, many services (like named) get chown'd and chroot'd by default. I believe this is still not the default behavior for quite a few Linux distros (I know debian doesn't do this, and they're one of the larges installed server base). Many other daemons have their own dedicated uid/gid. Check the /etc/passwd and /etc/group files and see...
There is also lots of stuff going on at the kernel level to deal with buffer overflows, etc. Now of course Linux has stuff like this too, but unless it's managed by the distro, the user has to patch his kernel himeself and configure the grsecurity (or whatever patch) correctly. Whereas in obsd, it's already part of the kernel and there's no need to deal with it (unless you want to use the systrace ACL system, but that goes without saying). Incidentally, the fact that the kernel is highly audited makes a huge difference here. It minimizes the chances of exploiting a kernel bug and bypassing all these security mechanisms.

Re:What do you want?

[ComputerSlicer23]

Well, yes and no. I can go track down the documentation I've read about OpenBSD. That they find security flaws isn't shocking. They are quite good at that.

I've never followed the Apache debate further then to realize it exists (I snicker at the fact that you act like I don't know that OpenBSD doesn't ship with the stock Apache). However, there's a difference between a full on audit, and having patches (I got the impression OpenBSD examines critical portions of Apache, but not the complete line by line audit they do of their kernel). I have always been under the impression that some of the larger non-kernel pieces get looked at, but don't get the full on audit that the kernel does (I might just be dated on my knowledge of that, I'm fairly sure that was true at one point in time). I've followed a lot of the people in the Apache projects while I was active in the Subversion project. They are fairly serious about their security, and they are pretty knowledgeable. I couldn't sort out who was right in that argument.

However, most all of the fixes get pushed back to the Apache base source tree. I'd venture to guess that if it really was an exploitable problem, we'd have seen an actual honest to goodness exploit for it. There are still plenty of 1.3 Apache servers around, it's not like a blackhat or web-defacer wouldn't use it. So I have a tendencey to say that OpenBSD is being a bit over the top, but that's their perogative (and their well mandated stance, I'm sure the Apache people have a reasonable reason not to apply the patch. I've had personal interaction with a number of them, all highly intelligent, rational people). If there we real security problems, the Apache people would have no option but to fix the supposed problems. I'd always been under the impression that the OpenBSD guys wrote a completely non-portable fix (it's not like they don't do that on a fairly regular basis, look at OpenSSH, by default the source tree doesn't work on any other OS, you have to go hunt down the "ports" page to get the version that works on other Operating Systems).

Naturally I can't find the quote in context, but essentially it boils down to: "OpenBSD can only audit so much code, and we pick and choose what we audit". Now, it might be that I'm out of the loop enough on OpenBSD that they secure more code then I believe. I'm fairly sure they don't bother auditting their ports tree.

If you took a stock FreeBSD, OpenBSD and Linux install, and installed the minimal amounts of userspace that OpenBSD does, there's a negligable difference in the security differences. OpenBSD's biggest security advantage is that they are "secure by default". Not installing software you don't need. Not installing software that isn't well written is a very good security stance. It's really too bad RedHat doesn't do that more often, but my guess is that there's still a negligble difference in terms of practical risk. (All that said OpenBSD does the best job of any major Operating system I know of shipping secure defaults with a minimalistic, but still usable operating system).

There are a few things that OpenBSD does that are very security conscious but have nothing to do with the code audits. The stack protection. The NoExecute stuff. The crypto built in. They are very leading edge in that. However, from a practical perspective my guess is that there are few attacks on Apache/named/dhcp/ftpd/OpenSSH and whatnot that work on Linux that fail to work on OpenBSD, because OpenBSD modified Apache in a way the Apache project wouldn't accept patches back.

Oh, and give me the link to why pf is vastly superior to IP tables (call it academic interest. I know how to configure iptables and fail to see the inherient failings of it that pf overcomes).

Kirby

Re:What do you want?

[Warped1]

"OpenBSD finds bugs in auditted code on a fairly regular basis, so auditting isn't the end all be all that the post I was responding too seemed to believe it might be."

Software will have bugs - unless you're Donald Knuth, maybe. You can either actively look for them, or just wait for the user reports. Which is better?

Your point about services is very true. Open can't audit all of the software in the world. However, they take pride in making the core OS as secure as they can. Sure they won't catch everything. Sure other OS distributions care about security as well. But Open makes it their top priority ... you gotta agree that counts for something.

Re:What do you want?

[Anonymous Coward]

However, Apache isn't auditted. DHCP isn't auditted. The FTP server, I'm fairly sure isn't auditted.

Apache is practically forked because of all the security patches that have been applied to the OpenBSD version. henning@ cleaned, audited and rewrote much of dhcpd and ftpd has been audited and privilege separated. But, don't let easily discovered facts get in the way of your uninformed rant...

Re:What do you want?

[OttoM]

However, from a practical perspective my guess is that there are few attacks on Apache/named/dhcp/ftpd/OpenSSH and whatnot that work on Linux that fail to work on OpenBSD, because OpenBSD modified Apache in a way the Apache project wouldn't accept patches back.

This clearly shows how uninformed you are. OpenBSD ships its own version of these tools in the base install, and the differences between the stock version and the OpenBSD version are sometimes big. named and dhcp use privilege separation for example, httpd is chrooted by default, etc. etc.

Your assumption that userland code isn't audited is also false. A large effort has gone into userland, and since auditing is a continuous process, it will go on.

Some examples: sometimes new classses of attacks are found, and a complete scan of the tree is done for the specific error. Some time ago the whole base tree has been cleaned wrt to strcpy, strcat and sprintf. No more unbounded string operations remain in the tree.

Re:What do you want?

[Homology]

However, Apache isn't auditted. DHCP isn't auditted. The FTP server, I'm fairly sure isn't auditted. Nothing they don't actually write themselves. If you install an OpenBSD machine on the internet and actually turn on services, you'll have just as many security problems as anyone running Linux. OpenSSH has it's fair share of security problems (written by pretty much the same people who wrote OpenBSD). Although with priveledge separation it should have even fewer problems that are actually exploitable to become root.

You entire post shows that you know very little about OpenBSD. Everything that is part of the base install is audited, and that includes programs like Apache httpd, BIND, Sendmail, DHCP and SSH. For the 3.6 release, the DHCP server and client underwent a major cleanup to improve security. In addition there are security enhancments as well (like privilege separation, chroot).

While it probably has a more secure kernel, most exploits out there in the world involve exploiting a user process that is running as root.

Very few deamons are running as root on OpenBSD. Most are running under their own unique, chrooted and privilege separated if possible.

The OpenBSD team has done alot to lessen the impact of exploits. Yes, even programs running on OpenBSD can be exploited, but there is a difference. An attempt to exploit a buffer overflow on OpenBSD is likely to just induce a crash, and thus not work.

Re:What do you want?

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad OpenBSD lags mainline Apache. That keeps a lot of us from using it. Not my decision, but higher ups dicate what is allowed. And OpenBSD Apache is not on the list.

Re:What do you want?

[Anonymous Coward]

BIND, Sendmail, DHCP and SSH. For the 3.6 release, the DHCP server and client underwent a major cleanup to improve security. In addition there are security enhancments.

Re:What do you want?

[Anonymous Coward]

b.t.w. slashdot does support links [0]

Re:What do you want?

[Anonymous Coward]

Something else being forgotten here is the use of ProPolice for everything that's part of the base install. So even if there are cases of buffer overflows, it won't make one bit of difference when that's caught by ProPolice.

Re:What do you want?

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenBSD, as in the kernel itself

Unlike Linux, none of the BSD's, including OpenBSD, can be summed up to "just a kernel". The BSD's are developed as complete systems. Kernel, userland utilities, default configuration files, file structure and installation scripts.

Linux is developed as a kernel and then distribution companies or groups wrap the rest of the system around that kernel as THEY see fit. Which may well go against some of the intentions of the Linux developers and often goes against the intentions of each other!

This does not tend to happen with the BSD's, since, as they are developed as complete systems, they have a complete vision of a complete system and as such, develop from the outset with the whole system in mind. There are few bandaids with any of the BSD's.

If you install an OpenBSD machine on the internet and actually turn on services, you'll have just as many security problems as anyone running Linux.

Not true. Problems that will cause a remote root on a typical Linux system, will typically cause a DoS on an OpenBSD system, due to all the proactive mechanisms in place which detect and kill exploited processes.

OpenBSD does have some nifty patches

Nifty patches? Many active mechanisms, like those you mention, have been in the releases for a while.

However, that doesn't mean "OpenBSD is auditted and therefore secure".

Nothing is "secure". There are only various levels of "secure" which don't make it all the way up to absolutely "secure", as long as we are talking about networked operating systems.

While it probably has a more secure kernel, most exploits out there in the world involve exploiting a user process that is running as root. As which point, you can own an OpenBSD machine as quickly and as easily as a FreeBSD, Linux, or NetBSD machine.

I am really surprised that you say this, after showing knowledge of privsep. Much fewer processes run as root under OpenBSD and when they do, they only do it in areas where they actually need root to complete the small task at hand. OpenBSD most certainly is more secure than any other system, while running any given process. But it is not absolutely secure.

Re:What do you want?

[hugo_pt]

Really, don't try to argue about OpenBSD's security. It is indeed the most secure OS known to man. Very polished code, frequent audits, non-executable stack, and I think nobody mentioned this yet-- systrace. Combine all these and you get THE operating system for a secure environment. Personally, I think OpenBSD is still a lot slower (performance-wise) than FreeBSD or NetBSD. As NetBSD has systrace and non executable stack (on archs that support it), I'd say NetBSD is the combined choice of security and performance. I am a FreeBSD user (now this starts to sound like a BSD orgy lol), and it's still my favourite *BSD, but NetBSD 2.0 has grown a lot since the latest version and with the verified exec & systrace facilities, it's a very good security/performance combo.

OpenBSD

[skinfitz]

Go with OpenBSD - one remotely exploitable hole in how many years? 5?

Besides that it's so much of a bastard to install that it's a fun challenge. (Not many people can say they have installed OpenBSD!)

Re:OpenBSD

[0racle]

Lots of people can say that, and its not that hard if you read the documentation.

Re:OpenBSD

[Just Some Guy]

I disagree. OpenBSD was a bear to install when I first tried several years ago. I gave it another shot last year after getting quite a bit of FreeBSD experience under my belt, and it was a breeze.

It defines "minimal", but if you can get used to the fact that the installer won't hold your hand in any way, then it's actually about the easiest you'll find. Seriously. It's just not that bad for an experienced user.

Re:OpenBSD

[erlenic]

What other OSs have only had one remote hole in the default install, in 8 years? I can't think of any, but if there is one I'd like to know.

Re:OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenBSD is easy to install. The hardest part is the disk configuration. OpenBSD doesn't hold your hand through the process. BUT, it's all spelled out in the FAQ. Once you've done it, you'll realize it's not that bad. I can install a base OpenBSD system from CD in about 10 minutes. Not much longer on a broadband connection booting from a floppy. Combine that with the power of the ports and packages, I can usually have the system I want in an hour or two depending on download times.

Re:OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Redhat FC3 and EL3 both start with a solid firewall by default. I'm not aware of any remote holes in them. Of course, once you turn a service on and open a whole in the firewall, I agree OpenBSD is better, but you're the one who said, "default install".

Re:OpenBSD

[SunFan]

I found OpenBSD easier to install than Red Hat. I'm not sure what that means about me, though.

Re:OpenBSD

[stonezone]

openbsd is one of the easiest distros to install. except you cant "click on pictures". If you know how to read, and to code/run *nix you do, Obsd install would be cakework...

Re:OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

I would not recommend OpenBSD for the novice BSD user. There are too many difficult points where the novice will become frustrated. Installation is more difficult than most systems I have used. OpenBSD makes a great firewall, but you have to budget your time and not try to hurry through the install or you will end up back at square one.

Re:OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

how many years has fc3 been available again?

Re:OpenBSD

[machacker]

I was fed up with solaris on my sun ultra 2, so i decided to try out openbsd. i have to say, it was the FASTEST and EASIEST OS install i have ever done, period.

Re:OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that minimal, considering obsd includes Apache, Perl, SSH, CVS, and other goodies in the base system. Pretty much everything expected in a typical Unix system is present, with sane defaults.
The installer is not what most Linux users are accustomed to. Personally, I prefer it to all the others I've seen (slackware, debian, redhat, and freebsd). I like the "no bullshit" approach, and the inherent flexibility it offers (the siteXX.tgz file, the serial support, the ability to select "whole disk" at the fdisk prompt or input your own geometry, etc.)
It can also make a good desktop system (I use it as such, and so do many others), since most of the window managers, kde/gnome stuff, and common X apps (xpdf, firefox, mplayer, xv, xmms, etc.) run fine on it. Unless of course one needs Linux-specific stuff that's only available in binary format, but even there there's a possibility they may run in emulated mode, though some stuff may not (eg, VMware).
And yes, it's ideal for a firewall, and makes for a nice, reasonably secure server too. :)

Re:OpenBSD

[gstoddart]

I found OpenBSD easier to install than Red Hat. I'm not sure what that means about me, though.

Your BSD-fu is indeed strong, Grasshopper. Your training here is complete.

Re:OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

wtf is cakework?

Re:OpenBSD

[peacefinder]

Bah. OpenBSD is not hard to install. My first three *nix OS installs ever were OpenBSD. Twice on old salvaged PCs, and then on a headless Soekris 4801. It's not like I'm some superbrain guru either... I had nearly zero experience with any *nix flavor at the time. All that was requred was to read the online manpages. Never mind the FUD, it's just not that hard.

Buy the CD, and it's a snap. It's slightly harder with the floppy/ftp install, but not much.

Re:OpenBSD

[Noodlenose]

Besides that it's so much of a bastard to install that it's a fun challenge. (Not many people can say they have installed OpenBSD!)

Utter rubbish. Me, being a complete *nix idiot then (and still pretty clueless now) was able to install OpenBSD without a hitch, found drivers for my exotic hardware and had the best community support you could wish for. .

In addition to being a great, functional and secure OS, it also has a outspoken, intelligent leader who is not afraid to stir up controversy for his political or technical beliefs.

Go Theo!

Re:OpenBSD

[Just Some Guy]

It's not that minimal, considering obsd includes Apache, Perl, SSH, CVS, and other goodies in the base system.

In my post, "minimal" referred to "the installer".

It can also make a good desktop system (I use it as such, and so do many others), since most of the window managers, kde/gnome stuff, and common X apps (xpdf, firefox, mplayer, xv, xmms, etc.) run fine on it.

Sure, although the list of available software seems pretty slim after being used to FreeBSD's ports. The main strike against it as a desktop, for me, is that OpenBSD feels much slower on given hardware than does FreeBSD. I haven't done any benchmarks to see how they really stack up on live servers, but all of that cryptographic goodness certainly comes with an overhead. You need to weigh raw performance against paranoid security; there are places for both, but I prefer FreeBSD's speed on the desktop.

Re:OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Desktop speed isn't terribly important to me. The stuff I run is very lightweight: fluxbox, gkrellm, rdesktop, lots of rxvt's open running vim, mutt, slrn, lynx/links, mc, ksh, etc... I rarely use firefox unless a site won't let me in with my fav browsers.
About the only gfx intensive programs I run regularly are xpdf and "links -g", and they're snappy enough for me. BTW, this is on an 800 MHz Duron box with 512 megs ram. Not exactly top of the line these days...

Re:OpenBSD

[Just Some Guy]

That would definitely make a difference. I'm a big KDE fan, so I typically have a lot of short-lived processes running around - that's not exactly OpenBSD's strong point. On our servers, though, where big processes run for ages, it works great.

Re:OpenBSD

[m50d]

I could never understand how to partition my disk though. I tried it 3 times, tried to read the manual, created a bsd partition, tried to make a disklabel but it kept seeming to want to take over the whole disk, which I didn't want.

OSX

[FLAGGR]

OSX, and better way then to go and buy a mac mini.

Re:OSX

[Flamerule]

OSX, and better way then to go and buy a mac mini.

Before you get any more insightful mods, I think you should give some details as to how the OP can get OS X to run on his 1.2 GHz Celeron.

Also, does anyone know what "better way then to go" means?

Re:OSX

[Atzanteol]

I find it amazing that an Ask Slashdot could ask "Does anybody know how to grow carrots" and a moron posting "Install MacOS X" or "Get a Mac" gets modded up...

Yes, that's right disciples of Jobs. I'm talking about *you*.

Re:OSX

[vrai]

I'm waiting for someone to find a way of combining Mac and Nintendo zealotry with insulting Sony, Real, Microsoft, SCO, Sun, the whole concept of big iron computing over generic boxes, .NET, C++, Qt's windows license, and any form of DRM.

I honestly don't think Slashcode will be able to cope with 1e16 'Insightful' mods.

OpenBSD strengths.

[far_star]

Here are some reasons you should consider OpenBSD's strengths.

Easy Install (and perhaps one of the quickest I've ever seen)
Very Secure OS. (You mihgt just find the OS all of your future servers run)
Ports System. - Like other BSDs, the ports system is truly a marvel. Software installation could not be easier.
Good license standpoint - OpenBSD has a rather purist stance on the licenses for software they ship. It might seem extreme at first, but there is some good reasoning behind it.
Documentation - OpenBSD's offical FAQ is very helpfull and answered 99.9% of the questions I had as a beginner.

Re:OpenBSD strengths.

[SuperBeaker]

I would also add firewalls, routing, and packet queueing. I haven't found anything that compares with the power and ease of OpenBSD's pf firewall ruleset. It provides all of the features that you could possibly need in a firewall including stateful packet filtering, packet normalization, and packet shaping - all with and extremely easy-to-understand interface. For routing, you can support RIP, OSPF, and BGP. BGP is supported with the new OpenBGP server. I have a few OpenBSD boxes set up in my home lab that are linked with various Cisco routers running OSPF. But which one is actually cheaper . . . ? :) Finally, the OpenBSD dev team is militant on the security front. All servers are chrooted by default. Stuff just works out of the box securely. I can't tell you how easy and quick it is to set up a secure, chrooted web server with OpenBSD.

Re:OpenBSD strengths.

[anthony_philipp]

freebsd now has support for openbsd's pf firewall. i use freebsd, openbsd, and gentoo linux. i still like freebsd the most, but portage is nicer than ports. my annecdotal evidence for desktop usage of gentoo and freebsd puts freebsd in the lead. anthony

Re:OpenBSD strengths.

[jaseuk]

The bridging support (with Spanning tree I believe), vlans and carp all make OpenBSD a rather wonderful bit of network glue. Its all polished, complete and and works out of the box (no kernel recompiles or add-on tools).

This is where OpenBSD really shines.

Jason.

Re:OpenBSD strengths.

[Anonymous Coward]

But which one is actually cheaper . . . ? :)

Which one actually routes >5Gbit data/second? I'm pretty sure it's not the stuff you run OpenBSD on.

Re:OpenBSD strengths.

[m50d]

I wouldn't say the install was easy. As a slackware user I'm used to partitioning my disk myself, and managed it fine before I knew what ls was, but I couldn't see how to partition for openbsd.

Re:OpenBSD strengths.

[skelley]

I would suggest OpenBSD too, because it's strengths and weaknesses are nicely complemented by Linux better than the other BSD's. Taking them together you get more good open way to solve problems.

pretty much need to try them all

[ArbitraryConstant]

I've tried them all and they're so different from each other that one won't really give you a very good idea of what the others are like.

OpenBSD is probably the easiest. Most things are in a working configuration by default, they just need to be switched on. FreeBSD has more software and better performance, but it's never been worth it for me because you have to mess around with the kernel and stuff (We're not on Linux, after all). I had to manually enable modules to get things like sound and set all sorts of environment variables to get some of the ports to work right. On OpenBSD it pretty much works the first time you boot it if it's going to work at all. The security is a bonus, but mostly I like how little work it takes to maintain.

FreeBSD is a bit more up to date, and has more powerful features (I love jails). I usually fall back on it if I need one of the features.

I don't really see much point in NetBSD, but given the number of people that use it and like it it's probably worthwhile to take a look.

DragonFly is still close enough to FreeBSD in terms of user experience that you might be able to skip it if you don't like FreeBSD.

They're all pretty easy to install. Give 'em a shot.

Re:pretty much need to try them all

[Anonymous Coward]

In the final analysis only one fact remains:

*BSD is dead

Re:pretty much need to try them all

[Just Some Guy]

FreeBSD has more software and better performance, but it's never been worth it for me because you have to mess around with the kernel and stuff (We're not on Linux, after all). I had to manually enable modules to get things like sound and set all sorts of environment variables to get some of the ports to work right.

I'm honestly not sure what you're talking about. There are quite a few ports that accept environmental variables to decide with optional dependencies to compile in. For example, if you set "WITHOUT_X11='YES'", then ports will avoid requiring xorg (or xf86 on 4.x) whenever possible. Ports are pretty good about letting you know which options you can select, and you can put all of those definitions in a single file so that you don't have to remember them each time.

To enabling the drivers for my SB Live! card, I added this to /boot/loader.conf:

snd_emu10k1_load="YES"

which would be analogous to adding an entry to /etc/modules on a Linux system.

FreeBSD is a bit more up to date, and has more powerful features (I love jails).

That is such an understatement. :-) I host a few webservers, a Freenet/Gnutella/IRC server, and my ISP's newsserver inside their own jails on my server at home with almost zero CPU overhead. The only downside is that you can only assign one IPv4 address to each jail right now, although that's being worked on.

Re:pretty much need to try them all

[TheRaven64]

Apparently the functionality of Free jails can be implemented in Net and Open environments using systrace functionality. I wish someone would provide them as preconfigured options though...

The main selling point for FreeBSD when I first tried it was nVidia drivers. I'd tend to agree though - they all have their strengths, and I'd recommend you try them all (including OS X). They are sufficiently similar that you can relatively easily move between them (far easier than Linux distros that can't make up their mind if they are SysV, BSD, or MyFirstOS).

Re:pretty much need to try them all

[ArbitraryConstant]

"I'm honestly not sure what you're talking about. There are quite a few ports that accept environmental variables to decide with optional dependencies to compile in. For example, if you set "WITHOUT_X11='YES'", then ports will avoid requiring xorg (or xf86 on 4.x) whenever possible. Ports are pretty good about letting you know which options you can select, and you can put all of those definitions in a single file so that you don't have to remember them each time."

The only case I specifically remember was kuickshow not being part of kdegraphics (to avoid adding a dependency) unless a certain variable was set. I guess I just didn't have enough experience with FreeBSD to know where to look, but it was pretty annoying. And even then, it would be annoying to have to read a bunch of docs to find out what optional stuff I need to do, when I don't necessarily know what I want (eg I haven't used the software before).

"To enabling the drivers for my SB Live! card, I added this to /boot/loader.conf:

snd_emu10k1_load="YES"

which would be analogous to adding an entry to /etc/modules on a Linux system."

I didn't have to mess with anything to get sound working on the same machine with OpenBSD or Linux. Besides, "same as Linux" is not a particularly lofty standard.

"That is such an understatement. :-) I host a few webservers, a Freenet/Gnutella/IRC server, and my ISP's newsserver inside their own jails on my server at home with almost zero CPU overhead. The only downside is that you can only assign one IPv4 address to each jail right now, although that's being worked on"

Can't you do NAT for the various jails? The firewall is global to all jails.

Theo says jails aren't the way to go, but it keeps OpenBSD out a lot of areas that FreeBSD is currently popular. Same goes for the lack of jails on Linux.

Re:pretty much need to try them all

[Just Some Guy]

I didn't have to mess with anything to get sound working on the same machine with OpenBSD or Linux. Besides, "same as Linux" is not a particularly lofty standard.

Those drivers are compiled into OpenBSD's GENERIC kernel, and any given Linux distro may also have them compiled in (or autodetect them). FreeBSD tends to leave such decisions to the user, and isn't as cautious about providing modules as OpenBSD.

Can't you do NAT for the various jails? The firewall is global to all jails.

Sure (although that won't help for IPv6). It's kind of an extra annoyance for LAN-only services, though, if you don't want to maintain multiple machines running distinct NAT setups. For example, I have NAT on my standalone firewall server, and I use that to point multiple addresses to the same jail (for SSLed websites, say). Now, I have to configure another NAT on the jail host itself to redirect addr1:443, addr2:443, and addr3:443 to different ports on the same jail. Sure, it can be done, but it's not exactly the cleanest or most easily maintained setup in that case.

Theo says jails aren't the way to go, but it keeps OpenBSD out a lot of areas that FreeBSD is currently popular.

I have a lot of respect for Theo, but I think he's dead wrong on this one. I keep an identical copy of my company's main webserver setup running inside a jail on the same machine. Whenever I want to test something, like upgrading a particular piece of software, I can do it with complete impunity. The alternative would be to have an identically-configured spare box sitting next to the main server. Since my company isn't in the webhosting business and unplanned downtime isn't a business-killer for us, I don't get the luxury of asking for redundant hardware. That jail still lets me do my testing as though I do.

Re:pretty much need to try them all

[ArbitraryConstant]

"FreeBSD tends to leave such decisions to the user, and isn't as cautious about providing modules as OpenBSD."

Yeah. That's why it's annoying. If the driver causes problems, fix it. If it doesn't cause problems, why not load the module automatically when the relevant hardware is present? Give users the option of opting out, fine, but all it does is make life difficult for users at the moment.

When I refferred to OpenBSD being easier to use, this is the sort of thing I meant.

"Sure (although that won't help for IPv6)."

Doesn't PF support IPv6?

Re:pretty much need to try them all

[Just Some Guy]

If the driver causes problems, fix it. If it doesn't cause problems, why not load the module automatically when the relevant hardware is present?

I can see both sides. Everything you're saying makes perfect sense, but I can also imagine an influx of new users on the mailing lists complaining that some freak glitch in their ISA sound card won't let them install FreeBSD. They don't have the installation base of Linux (and the huge number of fault-finding eyes that goes with it), or the "if you don't like it, fix it and send a patch" attitude of some of the OpenBSD support forums.

If I were in charge of release engineering, I'd have a hard time deciding.

Doesn't PF support IPv6?

Sure, but that still means I can't run IPv6-native apps in a jail.

I love jails and use 'em all the time, but they still have a few limitations that make them a little more complicated than the ideal.

Re:pretty much need to try them all

[ArbitraryConstant]

"I can see both sides. Everything you're saying makes perfect sense, but I can also imagine an influx of new users on the mailing lists complaining that some freak glitch in their ISA sound card won't let them install FreeBSD."

That's why you have a "safe mode" or something functionally equivilant. Problem drivers can be disabled in the one case in ten thousand where they misbehave.

"They don't have the installation base of Linux (and the huge number of fault-finding eyes that goes with it), or the "if you don't like it, fix it and send a patch" attitude of some of the OpenBSD support forums."

bah. I think that's a red herring. Linux 2.6 still breaks something new with every release (libata is a disaster), while OpenBSD works very nearly perfectly with all supported hardware. Granted OpenBSD doesn't support as much hardware, but FreeBSD has vastly more resources in terms of developers, funds, and users for testing. Particularly desktop users.

The "if you don't like it fix it" attitude is mostly for features or design issues. For things like driver bugs, the developers really don't like them existing at all. I've had developers get so annoyed that a bug even exists that they hounded me to get details past what I was originally willing to provide.

However, I don't agree with all the attitudes of OpenBSD developers so please don't respond as though I'm unconditionally supporting their conduct because I'm not.

typical boring slashdot post

[epine]

I started on OpenBSD 2.6 and I liked it. Just text mode as a firewall. The initial install was a little bumpy but then the man pages were excellent.

I've since used FreeBSD a fair amount. I'm becoming comfortable there, but I still feel more at home with OpenBSD.

FreeBSD 5 is not the best place to start. Some important things have changed and there isn't much support for these changes on the web yet. You'll find lots of older "howto" articles that won't work as written. I managed to bootstrap my FreeBSD server using PXEboot, but I had to liberally adapt the approaches I found because of the many changes in 5.x

There's a lot of negativity floating around about FreeBSD 5.x lately. It seems they've put a lot of energy in breaking hard ground over the past two years. It remains to be seen whether lush vegetation will spout in future versions as they tune these improvements. I think in any project with sufficient ambition, there are times when things have to go sideways for a period of time.

Recall how Tiger Woods decided to tune his golf swing when he was on top of the world. I sure hope it works out better for FreeBSD.

Re:typical boring slashdot post

[Anonymous Coward]

epine says:

"FreeBSD 5 is not the best place to start. Some important things have changed and there isn't much support for these changes on the web yet. You'll find lots of older "howto" articles that won't work as written."

This is definitely the case. And it is worse if you are looking for kernel documentation. Almost everything you can find is no longer applicable. Something as seemingly as simple a scheduler has turned out to be a lot of trouble for FreeBSD. As a stable general purpose BSD, it would be better to start with NetBSD because it is rock solid. Someone learning shouldn't have to face a ton of errata, and that is why NetBSD is a better choice.

Re:typical boring slashdot post

[mrowlands]

> There's a lot of negativity floating around about FreeBSD 5.x lately.

perhaps because it runs like a dog compared with 4.x on the same smp hardware and anyone who points this out just gets flamed on -current

Re:typical boring slashdot post

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess it's fair to say FreeBSD is dead, but that's a sort of odd thing to say. It stems from the obvious popularity of Linux as _the_ Unix free OS, but the FreeBSD project has only gotten more fractious and hateful in recent memory. FreeBSD is pathologically sick in this respect. Granted the lack of development in the BSD standard is gonna hurt, and right now things are looking poorly for FreeBSD. Yes FreeBSD dying.

Pop vs. Soda

[elmegil]

SODA!!

Re:Pop vs. Soda

[Anonymous Coward]

Coke!

Re:Pop vs. Soda

[BrookHarty]

How about.

ps -ef vs. ps -xa

Re:Pop vs. Soda

[Anonymous Coward]

ps -ef vs. ps -xa

Pffft.. it's ps -ax

You know.. when you're shoulder surfing your geeky cohort and you scream

"just do a piss axe, you idiot!"...

Re:Pop vs. Soda

[tepples]

Vanilla Crack.

But which BSD can be cracked most easily?

Try all

[andkaha]

It's really not at all that hard to install all the BSDs, one after the other, and try them out. There's not that many of them... and what better way to get to learn the systems?

All the BSD projects have excellent documentation, easily accessible from their respective web sites. They all have good mailing lists for users who can both RTFM and RTFFAQ but who still gets stuck with problems.

Honestly, if you rely on other people's opinions on what operating system to choose for personal use, you will get a system that you think you'd like, instead of a system that you feel comfortable with.

FreeBSD for Documentation

[ManDude]

I have worked with FreeBSD and OpenBSD. In comparison the documentation for FreeBSD is very good and complete. OpenBSD has ok documentation which you can get by with.

Currently I am moving towards OpenBSD becuase I am sick of having to compile a new kernel for every little thing that I want to do in FreeBSD (It takes a while on my P2 300). With OpenBSD you are much less likely to have to recompile the kernel.

In your case, with a lot of other Unix experience, you probably will have little trouble using any BSD, but I wouldn't stray into the experimentals or recent forks - stick with Net, Free or Open.

The Dude

although

[davez0r]

seeing as you've:

• taken the time to download, burn, and boot three different live cds
• submitted an article to slashdot soliciting advice
• and probably asked the opinion of a bunch of people IRL

just in order to "experiment" with a bsd, then perhaps openbsd's somewhat anal devotion to security is for you.

openbsd: catering to the risk-averse for over 8 years!

Re:although

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to get huffy about it. OpenBSD is the most secure BSD, and some people appreciate the fact.

Re:although

[davez0r]

my apologies for coming off as huffy. i was merely suggesting that, seeing as the author seems to err on the side of caution, he might be one of those some that you mention.

Re:although

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, no it isn't. My 286 with dos 3.3 is much more secure, mostly as it hasn't been turned on in over a decade.

FreeBSD, definitely.

[nuxx]

I say without a doubt they should try FreeBSD first. It'll run almost any application they are used to either natively or through the Linux compatibility layer.

Also, reading through the FreeBSD Handbook will answer almost any question that one could have regarding getting the system up and going.

Combine all of this with the extremely expansive collection of ported applications (it's often as easy as 'cd /usr/ports/net/whatever ; make all install clean ; rehash' for almost anything) and it's a really, really nice way to work.

Re:FreeBSD, definitely.

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say that now is not the best time to experiment with FreeBSD because it is in a transition period. There are a lot of problems with the most recent release. Maybe start out with 4.10 if you must use FreeBSD. Otherwise someone might get an unfair impression of the weak points.

Re:FreeBSD, definitely.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumbass. Why would you start out with 4.10 when 4.11 has been out for so long now?

*BSD is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

It is now official. Netcraft has confirmed: *BSD is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

Fact: *BSD is dying

Re:*BSD is dying

[mollog]

I don't get it. Is this a troll?

FreeBSD will probably be your best choice

[sirket]

At least initially. It's easy to install, fast, simple to configure and has a plethora of software available. It also has some of the best documentation of any OS out there in the form of the FreeBSD handbook. While I agree you should give all the BSD's a try- you should probably start with FreeBSD.

The difference between the BSD variants are small and tend more towards implementation details and installation than general system maintenance. If you log in to a running BSD system and were asked to administer it- chances are it would not matter what BSD it was. It is nothing like trying to switch between slackware and debian or debian and redhat.

-sirket

Re:FreeBSD will probably be your best choice

[Anonymous Coward]

NetBSD is a better choice for the beginner because everything is more orderly. FreeBSD is in a state of upheaval now, and not a good choice for someone starting out.

Re:FreeBSD will probably be your best choice

[thule]

Easy to install? Compared to what?

I did find FreeBSD fairly easy to install, but not as easy as Fedora/RedHat. The Anaconda installer truely is easy.

Re:PC competition for the I-Mini MAC?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, the word is "Mac" or "Macintosh", not "MAC". Additionally, the new computer is called "Mac Mini", not "I-Mini", and the company is called "Apple" not "MAC".

I like...

[virid]

OpenBSD. If you're a networking guy Packet Filter (PF) is a cool toy to play with. But if you're looking for a more BSD-style Linux you might want to consider Slackware.

Re:I like...

[Tet]

If you're a networking guy Packet Filter (PF) is a cool toy to play with.

Calling it a cool toy is underselling it somewhat. It wipes the floor with any other networking tool I've ever come across. Quite simply, it's awesome. Back in the day, I used to be quite impressed with ipf. But pf just takes things to a whole new level, and combined with CARP and pfsync, it's pretty untouchable. After using it for a while, you'll never want to touch IOS again :-)

Re:I like...

[andkaha]

[...] and combined with CARP and pfsync, it's pretty untouchable.

Don't forget bgpd. Together, they make the guys that bought Cisco boxes look pretty dumb.

Re:I like...

[archen]

Pf is supported by Free,Net,and Dragonfly BSD as well.

All of them, but in a particular order

[Anonymous Cowherd X]

Which one? I would recommend you try all of them, but in the following order:

1. FreeBSD 4.11 - because it will ease you gently into the world of BSD with its easy setup, wonderful documentation and a myriad of great ports that build right out of the box.
2. NetBSD - because it will introduce you to the world of quality device drivers for a very wide selection of hardware.
3. DragonFlyBSD - because it will show you the speed and the potential of change on BSD platforms. It's still in the early stages of development, so do not expect to be able to build additional software out of the box.
4. OpenBSD - because it will expand your view of what security is regardless of what your current experience might be. With the experience gained using other BSD systems you should have no trouble installing OpenBSD, but don't install OpenBSD before other systems because you will most likely regret it, it's the least user-friendly BSD system to set up.

After you're finished you may want to try FreeBSD 5.3, especially if you are interested in comparing its GBDE (Geom Based Disk Encryption) to NetBSD's CGD (CryptoGraphic Disk) facility.

Welcome to the world of BSD, I hope your ride will be a smooth one. Let us know if we can help. :)

Re:All of them, but in a particular order

[TheRaven64]

While I still run 4.11 on my server, I have put 5-STABLE on my ThinkPad (Project Evil had a few bugs with my 802.11g card in 5.3-RELEASE, but they are fixed in 5-STABLE), and I find myself really liking it (it's far more modular, for one thing). I am not convinced that the 5 series is mature enough to run on a production environment (although if Linux is your benchmark then it probably is), but it makes a very nice workstation system.

Re:If you're

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee, man! Relax. He says he wants to *try* it, not that he plans to switch.
So, tell us: why are you so angry? ;)

(just kidding, I don't want to be mean. Oh wait, yes I do.)

--
Requiem for the FUD

Requiem for the FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

// Please *don't* mod this up. It has already been done! Thx

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
W hat's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (30 Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

FreeBSD is the most popular with ISPs.

[Futurepower(R)]

I have no experience with any of the BSDs, but it seems to me that FreeBSD is the most popular with ISPs. That means that any programs you write will run on the web host computer. For example, Powweb. (I'm a customer, but have no other connection with them.)

What do you Like About Linux?

[nuintari]

If you like Linux for tons of packages, and ease of use as a desktop system, go with FreeBSD.

If you hate Linux for its complexity, bloat, unclean filesystem, and long for something cleaner, go with Open or Net, I prefer Open myself.

If you hate linux for all those things, but don't want to make any large steps, then again, FreeBSD, its the closest thing to a baby step you'll make.

All the BSD's rock, all of them are much cleaner, and more consistent than your average linux distro, which is, in my humble opinion, the best reason to move over to them.

Re:What do you Like About Linux?

[twilight30]

Man, I should have posted something like this! I would have avoided starting a flame war ...

I agree with you 100% on your assessments.

Trouble is, I still prefer Debian. Silly me :)

Re:What do you Like About Linux?

[super_carrot]

I quite agree. I am just moving over from Linux. And I still like it. I would never of consider BSD without my Linux experiences. I think that a lot of people will now be trying out *BSD because of the work Linux. It opened up people thinking and to Open Source OS's. But thing that I like about FreeBSD (This is my first week -> I came over from Gentoo, tried Mandrake for 3 days (Buggy!)) Is the clean coheasive feel. This could be a very interesting adventure for me too.

Re:What do you Like About Linux?

[Bravo_Two_Zero]

This is the best one I could find to ditto that most accurately displays my thoughts since I use (Open|Free)BSD.

FreeBSD is fun on a desktop where I want to try lots of packages. OpenBSD has a home on my laptop because minimalism seems to agree with my idea of portability (plus, OpenBSD supports most of the hardware on my Compaq Evo N620c... FreeBSD doesn't like the pcmcia stuff on my Evo... but I'm sure it's fixable all the same).

The OpenBSD install process is simple, once you accept the simplicity of it. I'd wager NetBSD is in the same category, since they're closely related.

Hey mods...

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, this isn't redundant. It's trivial, agreed, but it doesn't deserve to be modded down IMHO. Plus, in its triviality it's quite a good advice.

Re:PC competition for the I-Mini MAC?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahaha! Hook, line and sinker.

Same old Linux FUD...

[Anonymous Coward]

Same old GNU/Linux FUD, that has been disproved countless times...
In short: the MIT research is *11 years old*, and that Rice study on the TCP/IP stack uses FreeBSD *2.2.6*

Same old Linux FUD...

[Anonymous Coward]

Same old GNU/Linux FUD, that has been disproved countless times...
In short: the MIT research is *11 years old*, and that Rice study on the TCP/IP stack uses FreeBSD *2.2.6*

The BSD's

[Anonymous Coward]

FreeBSD - My preference. Very powerful, lots of add-ons (ports), lots of support, works *great* for servers. Up until Linux 2.6 I wouldn't even touch Linux on server.

OpenBSD - supposedly more secure. I don't use this except in specialized installs (running on RAM disk or something).

NetBSD - offers nothing

Dragonfly - keep an eye on it, but at the moment not worth the trouble. unproven. experimental.

Darwin (Mac OS X) - awesome on the desktop. decent as a server. uses FreeBSD userland. However it is highly complex since it is running on a microkernel, sorta. I feel more comfortable with straight FreeBSD on a server, though the Xserve hardware is wonderful.

I personally use Mac OS X on my laptop and FreeBSD on the server.

For a first-time user, I think FreeBSD will be the easiest to learn. I also recommend Gentoo on Linux 2.6 kernel in some situations (the threading is the best in the open source world IMO).

Don't expect to be blown away though. On the surface, Linux and BSD don't look that much different. But it's good to learn it.

Re:The BSD's

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the Xserves suck. Really, they do. There are lots of good reasons that Apple "enterprise-grade" hardware costs 1/2 of what HP, Sun and IBM are selling: No support for ECC ram, no hotswap pci, no hotswap power supplies, low quality cooling fans, low performance due to a very slow fsb, the list goes on. Apple does not really know what they are doing in that industry. I have had experience with over 280 of the things; installing, hardware and firmware modding, benchmarking and troubleshooting. The Xserves are junk.

It depends

[mnmn]

BSDs in their most basic are all the same. NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD are like different distros. The only difference will be felt when compiling the kernel or system, in which NetBSD will feel different.

It really depends on what the BSD is destined to do. For learning any one of those three will do really. The effective differences between their CLI, commands, toolbox, kernel interface and compilations, networking etc are negligible. In networking, well, OpenBSD has the excellent pf instead of the ipf, but for learning will feel the same nevertheless.

If used for anything beside learning, well, FreeBSD is featureful, and can make excellent use of your hardware, OpenBSD is extremely secure and simple, and makes for great firewalls and VPN servers, NetBSD is also real simple, and porting it around is easier than Linux, easiest among all OSes.

But even those differences are negligible. FreeBSD and NetBSD are also very secure, FreeBSD and OpenBSD are also portable etc. FreeBSD has the largest base and some apps will run natively on it but not the other BSDs. I think FreeBSD alone has nVidia drivers available for it among all BSDs. If you plan to encrypt the filesystem, encrypt data structures in the ram, keep code and data seperate in the ram enforced by the OS, use encryptions of many more bits, do fancy VPNNing, use OpenBSD. I personally have difficulty in choosing a BSD for any specific task because they are so similar despite what the developers say. So I just use OpenBSD because I'm Canadian.

Choosing a Linux distro is usually a better conversation with more reasons to choose one over the other. Please dont bring up Linux vs BSD, just search that term on google and read for the rest of your days.

Re:It depends

[Anonymous Coward]

If security is very important to you, then your only choice should be OpenBSD. That is what folks in-the-know bank on when you need the finest security of all. While I would not presume to term FreeBSD as insecure, I can honestly say that OpenBSD is at least a decimal order of magnitude more secure than FreeBSD.

I always liked OpenBSD

[MerlynEmrys67]

However FreeBSD has a much better maintained ports tree.

Oh yeah - if you are going to go into BSD, learn the ports update mechanisms. This is the way FOSS should be handled - I love ports - my understanding is it is much like Gentoo (Never used it, but I like the idea of compiling the whole distribution from scratch - takes a while, but many things are much easier that way)

Re:I always liked OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say that OpenBSD is much more secure than FreeBSD. So if security matters a lot, it would be better to go with OpenBSD.

Re:I always liked OpenBSD

[cpghost]

I love ports - my understanding is it is much like Gentoo

Actually, Gentoo borrowed the ports system from BSD. We've already had ports since FreeBSD 2.0 (perhaps even earlier). Gentoo didn't even exist back then :)

(Never used it, but I like the idea of compiling the whole distribution from scratch - takes a while, but many things are much easier that way)

One other reason is that it is always a good idea to have the sources to the system AND ports handy, just in case you want to security-audit something, or play around a bit. Using ports, you will always be sure that your sources and the binaries are in sync.

Re:I always liked OpenBSD

[MerlynEmrys67]

Actually, Gentoo borrowed the ports system from BSD. We've already had ports since FreeBSD 2.0 (perhaps even earlier). Gentoo didn't even exist back then :)

I know - I was giving a Linux reference for the unwashed masses that don't realize that BSD has been around for a little more than a decade more than Linux. I have never successfully been able to upgrade a significant subsystem with RPM (as in update X) without reinstalling the next RH distro... With ports - VERY easy... all though I must admit I have only done a make world ONCE.

Ports is the coolest part of BSD, and if you aren't going to take advantage of it - you might as well run RedHat and use RPM. I will only use a Linux box where I can install it and leave it - continuously updating - forget about it.

What Flavor of Mt. Dew?

[perrin5]

Recently I have started drinking Mt Dew. This is a new experience for me, and I am largely curious as to which one I will like better. Do you have any advice for me?

Seriously, this is like asking everyone in the pentagon "What's the best kind of bomb?"

Re:What Flavor of Mt. Dew?

[maskedbishounen]

Seriously, this is like asking [...] "What's the best kind of bomb?"

The one where you drop on your boss, stating you no longer need to pay the licensing fee to you-know-who because you can do it better, for free, using you-know-what? ;)

Mac OS/X, of course.

[Mordant]

More details here.

Re:Mac OS/X, of course.

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest problem with Mac OS X is that it is not about deciding which ISO to download. Can't do that. The biggest problem with Mac OS X is that you have to buy new hardware. That puts it out of reach of someone who wants to experiment with a new operating system in his leisure time. Then again if someone is contemplating a hardware purchase, it might be worth looking at a Mac also.

Re:Mac OS/X, of course.

[kayen_telva]

I didnt see the link to the version that will run on his celeron. Can you point that out ? Thanks dawg !

Re:Mac OS/X, of course.

[georgewad]

didn't have time to get the link but from the FAQ:
Q. I heard that Darwin runs on Intel processor-based PCs. Is that true?

A. Yes, and we're partnering with the Darwin developer community to enhance support for this platform.

Re:Mac OS/X, of course.

[Guy Harris]

Q. I heard that Darwin runs on Intel processor-based PCs. Is that true?

And which component of Darwin includes, for example, the Finder?

Don't confuse "Darwin" with "OS X". The latter includes the former, but the former doesn't contain all of the latter.

Re:Mac OS/X, of course.

[kiore]

What is 386 Darwin like? Does it have many advantages over the *BSD it was forked from?

Re:Mac OS/X, of course.

[Anonymous Coward]

When will Apple release a gui for Darwin? Darwin is very rudimentary when compared to OS X.

Re:Mac OS/X, of course.

[Guy Harris]

When will Apple release a gui for Darwin?

A GUI, or the Mac OS X GUI?

A GUI is, as far as I know, already available, although not from Apple. X.org's X server is available for Darwin, and XFree86 probably is as well, and KDE, GNOME, etc. and their corresponding toolkits probably work.

That's not the OS X GUI, however. That might not be released soon, if ever; only if Apple would be willing to act as a vendor of core GUI software for other people's hardware would that happen (and, even if that happens, that doesn't necessarily mean it'd be released as free software, as Apple might not be willing to act as a supplier of free-as-in-beer core GUI software for other people's hardware, although there might be ways of making it free-as-in-speech without being completely free-as-in-beer, e.g. releasing it under a dual license, GPL plus a license that lets non-GPLed software use the GUI libraries, with a version licensed under the second license requiring a license fee - that's a bit similar to the way Qt is licensed, although it's not the same, and I don't know whether it'd work).

Darwin is very rudimentary when compared to OS X.

Umm, yeah, that was sort of my point in the message to which you responded....

Re:Mac OS/X, of course.

[demon]

Yes, and Darwin runs on very few systems. It has to have an Intel PIIX IDE controller - it's the only one it supports. I think it supports one, maybe 2, SCSI controllers. I don't think you're going to have a lot of general success running Darwin on i386... unless you're lucky.

Dragonfly is where it's at

[Anonymous Coward]

Please give DragonFly your attention. You won't be sorry. In fact, it may be the last OS you ever need. You are going to really love it.

Dragonfly is based on advanced concepts, concepts which although well proved, where historically trampled by the corporate power of Microsoft and Apple. Of course I'm talking about the power of the advanced capabilities found in the Amiga before it went away. Fast multitasking, blazing multimedia, and awesome SMP capabilities are found in DragonFly.

Truthfully there are still a couple of minor rough spots (what OS doesn't have a couple?). Remember it is a work in progress. But all in all, the DragonFly experience is a cut above the crowd. After using DragonFly, you will find its ancestor FreeBSD to be seemingly slow and unresponsive in comparison. The next generation of BSD is with DragonFly. Please give it a try.

Stopp trolling, this is the macintosch way

[Anonymous Coward]

When Mini-Me announced their new "Eye-Apple", it caught mye eye. Waning to buy/build a small computer for my already cramped breakfast bar, I started priceing out similar hardware. The results startled me. Most of the configurations I found were more than a humble US$499 of the "Eye-Apple". To match price I had to configure with much bigger shuttle-style case.

My question is this. What PCs are currently on the market to compete with this? When my wife asks for the "cute little Eye-Apple MAC RiSC Opener", what real computer can I buy instead?

Well, I like FreeBSD

[tommyServ0]

I haven't tried them all, that's my disclaimer. But I did come to FreeBSD after 5 years with Linux (mostly Mandrake and RedHat). I'll never go back to Linux. The ports system alone rocks my face off.

Some early gotchas for me: I hated the default shell, I was used to Mandrake setting up bash with colorized ls commands and vim being installed with syntax coloring. I had to learn to do all that from scratch. But once you get it going it's as easy as installing the ports and then modifying your .cshrc and .vimrc files.

The other gotcha was the whole system startup area. FreeBSD has you enable the script (chmod 755, rename) *AND* put a variable in /etc/rc.conf. That sometimes messes me up. There are no runlevels in FreeBSD.

Installation isn't as slick as with the Linuxes, but once you get used to /stand/sysinstall you can handle it.

So, take the plunge. My recommendation is FreeBSD. It's rock-solid. But you couldn't go wrong with the others.

Also, visit Onlamp's BSD Devcenter. It has a ton of great articles for BSD novices and experts. There's an article on there right now called FreeBSD for Linux Users which covers many of the core issues for someone like yourself.

Re:Well, I like FreeBSD

[noackjr]

The other gotcha was the whole system startup area. FreeBSD has you enable the script (chmod 755, rename) *AND* put a variable in /etc/rc.conf. That sometimes messes me up. There are no runlevels in FreeBSD.

I think you're confusing the old and new. Ports are rapidly switching over to rcNG, which only requires setting example_enable="YES" in /etc/rc.conf to enable. Prior to this, you usually had to copy example.sh.sample to example.sh in /usr/local/etc/rc.d/ and make sure it was executable (chmod 755) to enable.

Easy? Free*; Education? Open*; Experiment? Net*

[QuietRiot]

I'd suggest *starting* with OpenBSD (or NetBSD though I've got no personal experience myself) and later trying a FreeBSD install. If you've been on Linux for 6 years and have run HP/UX I'd have to say you're qualified to run one of the less candy coated BSD's to get yourself integrated into the "whole BSD 'thang." DragonFly will be cool (someday) but I can't suggest it for someone new to BSD. Same with Darwin.

OpenBSD would be great to learn on as it will definately push you into the documentation and get you used to some of the conventions used (slices v. partitions, startup scripts, etc.). I'd suggest you use an older or spare computer if you've got extra or can pick one up cheap. You could also just set aside space on those 80 gigs you've got. READ UP ON PARTITIONING, USE OF LARGE DRIVES, ETC. BEFORE YOU START ANYTHING!

Once you get some OpenBSD under your belt, put a box in service at your network connection (right behind you cable/DSL connection?) and learn to setup pf (packet filter - built in). Experiment with AltQ and get yourself a good firewall/NAT in place (junk the Linksys). Not too much trouble and the docs at OpenBSD - pf are quite good. Here you could experiment with adding a web server or MTA (if you don't have tons of boxen to keep your "real" services in some kind of dedicated DMZ). My home OpenBSD box forwards BitTorrent, Freenet, VNC and SSH to a variety of machines in my house. I also prioitize packets in the following order: 1st to tcp_ack_out, Vonage telephone, ssh_interactive, everything else, freenet, and finally ssh_bulk. Keeps my phone line crisp and prevents freenet from destroying my ssh sessions' latency. You can do this with other products but I've had a good time (and have learned quite a bit) constructing my /etc/pf.conf file. (Yes. I've got a life otherwise :)

Then build youself a FreeBSD box. This should be cake. 5.x should install without a problem for you and you've got access to all the ports you could ever imagine. Your experience with OpenBSD will help you understand some of the differences you'll encounter. Makes a great desktop. OpenBSD will work fine as a desktop machine but I've never done it. Same for NetBSD I suppose. Give it a whirl. I'm sure you'll learn a ton and be quite happy with whatever you decide.

Don't short yourself on learning OpenBSD. It is awesome, security aware and has some wonderful features (need encrypted swap case the feds might knock down your door at any minute? check.). It may just serve all your needs and knowing it is surely going to be useful to either yourself or others in the future. Use it for utility and the ability to sleep at night with your data behind it. (still better go with RSA keys on sshd though). Check out http://undeadly.org/

Don't short yourself either on checking out FreeBSD. I moved from Linux to "the beast" some 5 years ago and haven't looked back since. The 4.10 machine I use everyday has been up 168 days as of today. I had at shutdown the machine previous to that due to a scheduled power outage. It sits fully exposed on an unprotected IP and runs user apps, a web server and mail. Not a single problem in years. FreeBSD has certainly served me (and some clients of mine) well.

If you're a system developer or like playing with things at the driver level or experimenting with new code, new systems or want to put your toaster on the network, don't deny yourself a NetBSD 2.x install. Wonderful features at the leading edge. Very capable and I hope to get some more experience with it myself one day.

Learn OpenBSD. You won't regret it.

hardware is usally the deciding factor for me

[josepha48]

NetBSD usually has pretty good hardware support. It usualy recgonizes most network cards. Especially wireless support in NetBSD is better IMHO. FreeBSD used to lock up my laptop with my netgear ma301 wifi nic, while NetBSD runs pretty nicely.

Configuring things to start up on the BSD's is all done in the /etc/rc.conf file, so once they are installed they are all very similar. Kernel is in /usr/src/sys and they have no GUI kernel config like Linux does (AFAIK). So if you have ever manually edited a .config for Linux you'll be right at home.

FreeBSD seems to have more software in the ports than netbsd does. I'm not sure about OpenBSD. OpenBSD never like my hardware. NetBSD actually recgonized my sound card better than Linux or FreeBSD on my laptop so that makes is more desirable.

If you need to use framebuffer programs that use svgalib or want to use them, and not run X windows, then FreeBSD is the choice. FreeBSD has a framebuffer that does graphics, fairly easily, while NetBSD does not.

NetBSD's SMP support is newer than FreeBSD, but it did no sound like that was an issue.

My suggestion is number them 1(NetBSD), 2(FreeBSD), 3(OpenBSD) and create a random number generator that picks it for you. Pretty much once you install one of them, the others are pretty close and easy to learn where things are.

Re:hardware is usally the deciding factor for me

[TheRaven64]

NetBSD usually has pretty good hardware support. It usualy recgonizes most network cards. Especially wireless support in NetBSD is better IMHO.

In the absence or real drivers, FreeBSD's Project Evil is quite good. It lets you use Windows NDIS drivers for your WiFi card. This was the only way I could get support for mine (there is a FreeBSD driver under development, but it's not ready).

Mac OS X doesn't count as *BSD???

[parvenu74]

but with my new mac mini, i can relive [sic] my bsd glory days with additional drop shadows and window animations! i don't know if that really counts as a bsd, though...

Are you saying that if the interface is too pretty or intuitive it doesn't count as being a real *BSD experience? If/when linux grows an interface as functional, beautiful, and elegant as Mac OS X, will it no longer qualify as being a "real linux experience?" If a rose by any other name is still a rose, then a *BSD variant with any other GUI -- like say, the Macintosh variety -- should still be *BSD... especially since most *BSD users seem rather indifferent to graphical user interfaces from what I gather.

Re:Mac OS X doesn't count as *BSD???

[davez0r]

i was just using the author's metric. he didn't seem to include osx in his list of possible choices. also, it would be tricky for him to run it on a celeron. perhaps i should have said that it wouldn't count for him.

on a side note, when you [sic] someone, please make sure you're not the one making the mistake.

Re:Mac OS X doesn't count as *BSD???

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't count as BSD. Mach forked from BSD many moons ago.

OS X inherits much in userland from BSD, but at it's heart it's still a cute little Mach microkernel.

Re:Mac OS X doesn't count as *BSD???

[Anonymous Coward]

"If/when linux grows an interface as functional, beautiful, and elegant as Mac OS X"

no danger of that happening any time soon

Go Free

[bsdbigot]

I notice that you consider yourself an old-time HP/UX user. If that was a preference of yours, you will probably get adjusted to the BSD's very easily: IIRC, HP/UX up until and including 10.x was very heavily BSD. I still get a kick out of firing up my Apollo 710 and seeing how different that environment is from Solaris.

Net/Open/Free all have great install programs, though Free is a little more in-depth about everything that you can do during the install process. Net and Open make it very easy to floppy- or netboot and install the entire OS over FTP. This is also an option with Free, but the mirrors get slogged down. So, I recommend you download the ISO; you only really need disc 1.

Also, I would recommend the 5.3-RELEASE of Free over the 4.11-RELEASE. The 5 series releases have been pretty great and very stable for the vast majority of uses. 5 series Free represents what is apparently a new (or just highly-refined) philosophy on the older hierarchy and RC architecture, and from that perspective is far easier to administer. Also, devfs is very handy (not sure if any of this stuff made it into the 4.x series, as I jumped ship when 5.0 released).

FreeBSD, by far

[amigan940]

If you're new to the world of BSD-based OSes, I suggest FreeBSD. I've been using it for over a year on my server, and just last month sucked it up and blasted linux in to oblivion on my workstation. Suffice it to say, I will never put that trash back on: FreeBSD more than amply handles my desktop needs. I find I use my workstation a lot more in FreeBSD than I did in linux (I usually was booted in to windows) because it's not a chore to do anything. Just remember to read the handbook, for god's sake, before going into any support community (IRC, mailing lists, etc). It should answer most of your questions anyway. Don't let the naysayers get to you: FreeBSD is very much alive.

Re:FreeBSD, by far

[Anonymous Coward]

In order for us to understand the big picture,
we have to realize one simple fundamental fact:

FreeBSD is dying

Come to terms with these facts, and you're home free.

Plan 9

[sleepingsquirrel]

If you're mostly looking for new experiences, you might also give something like Plan 9 a try. And if you're really looking for adventure, there is alway the Hurd.

Don't Switch...

[zwendell]

If you're just trying to get a feel for how BSD works, go with Slackware, as it's almost BSD, but with a nice, familiar, LINUX kernel. or, go gentoo because it's nice to have a fast machine with an easy package system and custom compiled apps... but, if you're stuck on going with a BSD distro: try them all, as the first guy said - that's the only way to know which is best for YOU.

My personal experience in the FreeBSD world

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been an avid follower of the developments in FreeBSD for around 5 years now, so my overview of the entire history of "glue that binds" FreeBSD together isn't complete. That said, I've come to be a bit disappointed at how events in the last 18 months or so seem to be pushing the project in a direction that has made things more difficult, instead of more successful, that has shown distain for experience and quality and made FreeBSD a platform for large ego's to push their personal projects down everyone's throat.

The statistics sample from 2001 over a year was a cheap attempt to minimize Matt's contribution to the project. The reason why he has been mostly silent is probably one of the most prominent signs of his superior maturity. The fact that the official defense (mostly fronted by Greg, atm) he wasn't such a substantial committer is crap, for the most part. If one wanted to go by the stats, Jeff Robertson (sorry if I munged the spelling) would be one of the key committers, and his UMA system isn't even entirely ripe yet, it's just been committed within the sample timeframe. That suddenly phk is at the top of the list, is simple a result of his newest attempt to add another large chunk of bit rot to the project that he can later claim not to have time to maintain "unless someone is willing to pay for my time" (like the atm bits, the half-finished devd monster, et.al.) One can hardly get him to look at his malloc bits, that put his name in lights at some point in the long past.

Matt didn't contribute because he was convinced that that the smp development direction that was chosen (my impression at least from the archives and my fading memory) was overly complex, too complex for the number and talent level of the contributers involved, and that it would delay a release from the -current branch significantly. So he was right. I'll almost bet that that was a constant sore for John, who still hasn't gotten his long-promised, but little delivered re-entrant work done, but he always had time enough to object to any other commits that might help along the way. Strangely Julian and Matt could work together. One might attribute certain commits to both Matt and Julian (if that would matter anyway, since -core is interested in proving the opposite statistically).

If the issue here had anything to do with IPFW, then you all better get out your C-coder hats and take a little more time to fix that rotting pile of muck that has been the standard broken packet filter interface for FreeBSD long past its possible usefulness. A packet filter with no central maintainer which is subject to once yearly random feature bloat through some wild university project from Luigi. The brokenness that Luigi introduced (and the repository bloat through backing out and recommitting, ad absurdum) was probably no less a threat to security than anything Matt did. If the security officer was to be blatantly honest with himself, ipfw would be marked broken for either a full audit or full removal (just port obsd's pf or something that someone actually actively _cares_ about).

You've alienated Jordan, Mike, Bill Paul (for all I can see), Greenman, you constantly rag on Terry, even though he's seen and done more with FreeBSD than most of you, O'Brien is on the verge of quitting (since he, like I, am not convinced that GEOM is anything more than an ego trip that will never be completely maintained or usefully documented). There are certainly others, too, that have attempted to make technically correct contributions, but didn't fit into the sort of paranoid "glee club" that core would like to have around them. You guys lack the talent to steer the positive from Matt into the project and let the crap fall by the wayside. I'm not saying Matt's rants are the most intelligent thing he's done, but he's sat by the wayside and watch the superstars beat up the code to a point where it's less stable, slower, and more bloated than it ever was. I, for one, can understand his frustration (as I can with Mike's, Jordan's, and a few others), alth

FreeBSD

[blate]

All of FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD are good distributions, IMHO, based around a solid kernel. However, the best bang for your buck (in this case, your time) is FreeBSD, I think.

FreeBSD is pretty easy to install and comes with an extensive collection of "ports" -- packages that you can download and install or build for your system. I think it supports a larger range of applications than the other BSD's which are targeted more towards server and headless situations.

Check our the FreeBSD website for lots of great documentation on installing and configuring your new system. I think you'll be fine with the hardware you're running (I've run it on very wimpy pentium and 486 boxes in the past).

If you're going to grab a distro, get either the last 4.x-STABLE build or one of 5.2 or 5.3-RELEASE. While it's fun to run the bleeding-edge last night's build stuff, it's probably not right for a BSD beginner.

You'll likely feel like a fish out of water for a few days using BSD, coming from a Linux background. Config files are in different places, the boot process is a little different, and so forth. However, I think you'll learn to appreciate its design, just as I'm sure you appreciate the way Linux works. It's a great OS for servers -- I use it for my email server at home.

Good luck!

Umm why ask?

[nurb432]

Try all of them, they are free.. what do you have to loose?

A lot depends on your needs too:

FreeBSD = Most common, most ports, most support..
OpenBSD = Most secure.. fewest ports..
NetBSD = Most universal runs anywhere.. lots of ports.. most rustic

Re:Umm why ask?

[cpghost]

NetBSD = Most universal runs anywhere..

Hmmm... I tried to boot NetBSD 2.0 on my EPIA 5000 (Eden) mini-ITX board, to no avail (FreeBSD 5.3 ran just fine). But in general terms it's absolutely true. NetBSD is the most portable OS in the world.

FreeBSD

[Mike O'Hara]

I installed FreeBSD when 4.2 was released and haven't felt any desire to try the others. Friends of mine ran Free already so it was easy to get help at the time.

Probably OT....

[karnat10]

...but did you consider buying a Mac?

in a word

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenBSD

You gotta ask yourself why you're interested.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want a BSD that is more feature driven, has a well-designed and convenient userland, and is popular (better maintained ported applications,etc), go with FreeBSD. If you're interested in security, getting away from the GPL, and code correctness, go with OpenBSD. If you want to have BSD on every imaginable architecture along with a ports system that you can use with your Linux boxes, go with NetBSD. If you want microkernels, innovation, experimentation, etc. on a FreeBSD4.x substrate, go with Dragonfly. If you like the ports system and the ability to easily upgrade from the source code, choose just about any *BSD.

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just use slackware or OpenBSD in a firewall/routing scenario. I've had to run everything over the years and slack is the one.

Re:PC competition for the I-Mini MAC?

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Do the Apple monitors not pay out if someone gets the name wrong? The sheer amount of astroturfing that Apple does on Slashdot alone is enough to make it so that I'll never buy any of their products.

FreeBSD for sure

[patrick42]

I have quite a bit of experience with FreeBSD since I switched away from Linux, and a good chunk of OpenBSD under my belt, too.

The nice thing about OpenBSD is that it is amazingly clean. Bare to the bones, etc. It seems to work well on a lot of hardware, and is super-secure. The big downside that I found when I was first getting into it is that the OpenBSD community is very -- how shall we put this delicately -- impatient with newbies. RTFM is a popular response to most questions. I always did my best to search through the mailing list archives (they have the worst searching engine I've ever seen!), but so long as you can show that you've made a concerted effort in understanding and solving the problem, there should be at least one person who will help you. The OpenBSD documentation is quite thorough, though I have found it lacking in the example department, which for me, is a really important thing in helping me understand something. Oh yeah, and Theo de Raadt is kinda nasty and abusive, but you gotta love him anyway.

FreeBSD, on the other hand, is really easy to figure out without needing support from the community. The Handbook is an amazing resource, and has answers to pretty much all of the questions I've ever had. I've always found FreeBSD to be particularly stable, and to handle high server loads much better than Linux. Updating the system is easy, and the ports system is to die for. With Linux, I was always having to stay on top of security updates and hope that my server wouldn't get hacked through yet another exploit; while FreeBSD is occasionally subject to the same exploits (eg. BIND, Sendmail), the overall maintenance is much less demanding.

My own server cluster has three FreeBSD machines and a little OpenBSD companion. I generally find FreeBSD to be friendlier and less-frustrating, but OpenBSD has some definite advantages and uses.

Patrick

may I suggest

[bikerguy99]

MacOS X... ... but since you are looking for really manly pain of configuring everyting on your own... read the rest of these posts

Re:may I suggest

[Chreo]

That's fine, however, IF one already has a x86-machine then your answer is completely and utterly inadequate.

Re:may I suggest

[bikerguy99]

http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/ - you are welcome to contribute to the project if you are not "completely and utterly inadequate"...

Re:may I suggest

[Chreo]

Yeah that's right emulation. Now that's a way to run a BSD... NOT! That completly nullifies every advatage of running Mac OS X at all since you are already running another system that you use PearPC on. While Mac OS X is nice in itself. It is not a simple and clean system the way the other "pure" BSDs are.

FreeBSD5.3

[ayche]

Assuming "experienced linux user" doesn't mean you want security above all else, or the most 'underground os'- I would give FreeBSD5.3 the first shot. You can have it up in running in a kde or gnome environment (or whatever desktop environment you like) in less the fifteen minutes by simply following the standard installation. A couple more tips though-- Make sure that you also install cvsup(net), portupgrade(sysutils), bash (not the default shell), and the editor of your choice Afterwards edit the supfile, i.e add the lines ports-all tag=. docs-all tag=. $ cvsup supfile then upgrade the ports $ portsdb -uU then portsupgrade -arR Edit the kernel ( the easiest/powerful kernel edit i know of!) adding support for sound and vesa among others. Buts all thats covered in great detail at freebsd.org This os has by far the most documentation and support of the BSD kidz and that is whats most important when learning BSD of course. Besides that no ones going to think your "inexperienced" if your using FreeBSD. :) Then, like others suggested, move to mac and join the revolution! viva la *BSD!

NetBSD

[hubertf]

In contrast to the common myth, NetBSD's fine on common hardware like the one posted, and it doesn't add lots of complexity to appear user friendly, but also doesn't leave out things to be too small. It's a fairly small & robust OS that you can tune to your wants by adding random applications from the pkgsrc collection, and get whatever you want - desktop system with GNOME/KDE/XFce/whatever, database server, DNS, firewall, etc.

In the end it's probably best if you install all of them and make your personal pick.

- Hubert

Re:NetBSD

[hson]

NetBSD also has exellent documentation and a nice community.

Of course depends on the reason.

[aliquis]

FreeBSD would probably give you no problems at all. However if you just want something more innovative and it doesn't matter that much if some things might be broken go with DragonFly, but it will probably be a more enjoyable ride when they are closer to their goals.

If you have any intrest in the actually code in any way and/or don't need nvidias own binary drivers go with NetBSD.

Stay of OpenBSD. OpenBSD might have it's place in some cases but not on your desktop or even a server if it isn't for some special reason.

I personally would go with NetBSD and wait for DragonFly to evolve.

(I could have written a more detailed answer but it's 02:33 and i must go to bed.)

FreeBSD!

[Money for Nothin']

I haven't tried OpenBSD or NetBSD yet, but I've run FreeBSD and am thoroughly a fan. It remains my favorite open-source OS overall.

The only reason I don't run it on my laptop is because my university uses a closed-source VPN client from Cisco, with binaries available only for Win9x/NT/2k/XP, OSX, x86 Linux (no ARM binary for my Zaurus, sadly :( ), and PocketPC -- no FBSD. That, and I remember getting Linux-binary Flash and Java plugins to work in Firefox under FBSD is a PITA. And native builds of Firefox ran slower on FBSD than Linux too, IME (this was a bit over a year ago though).

Otherwise, I actually prefer FBSD's ports system to Gentoo's portage, in part because I have yet to find a tool comparable to FBSD's "portsclean" to remove old distfiles from portage's local cache... I've tried various Bourne and Perl scripts posted to the Gentoo forums, and none check whether the existing tarballs are required for the latest versions of the given software (so, tarballs which shouldn't be deleted, are, and those which should be deleted, aren't)... There's no reason such a script couldn't be written for portage, it's just that I haven't seen one yet.

Really, FBSD makes a better server than desktop; for serving, however, it *rules*. Rock solid stable, although, the 5.x branch's performance has been surpassed by Linux 2.6 and NetBSD, unfortunately...

(Licensing is another small point. The BSD license is as close to a truly free-as-in-freedom OSS license as I've seen, whereas the GPL locks you into making available the source for 3 years if you distribute binaries of modified software. Not that it bothers me for noncommercial software, but I just don't like the feeling of being forced to behave a certain way.)

Try NetBSD first.

[Jeff Rizzo]

The developers on NetBSD are a great bunch (not that the other BSDs don't have great developers), and for any sort of a server or desktop it's my first choice - for embedded platforms it's my only choice. 2.0 has some really great features that have, in typical NetBSD fashion, been a long time coming, but now that they're here, they're REALLY well designed.

FreeBSD is also a good one to try. I don't like it as much, but that's mostly just personal preference. DragonFly looks interesting, but I haven't bothered with it yet. OpenBSD is, well, rudimentary at best - I've only ever encountered one thing it does that the others don't do (yet), and that's RFC2385 support, which I highly doubt you will care about. Other than that, it's crude, problematic, and mostly hype - NetBSD and FreeBSD are every bit as secure, possibly moreso.

OS X

[Sentry21]

I would suggest OS X. It's UNIX, it's BSD, and it's lickably-good. You get an operating system that can run all your POSIX-compliant goodies, X server, the whole two bits, but you also get an easy, modern, flexible operating system as well.

Of course, it won't run on your Celeron, so it doesn't really matter, but if you ever have $500 sitting around and want to learn another BSD and get a machine for the wife/kids/pets/sheep/plants, then there you go.

Re:OS X

[Nirbo]

Not to troll (But I probably will), but,

OSX is not UNIX. BSD is not UNIX. Linux is not UNIX. All of these are 'UNIX-like', because of an asinine little technicality :p.

Secondly, OSX is not a BSD. It's core contains BSD code, which keeps the trains running on time. There is also a bit of the core built from the guts of NeXTSTEP and it's Mach Microkernel. Everything above is either Apple, or is owned by Apple. While that particular layer of the OS can pretend to be BSD, and do many of the things that BSD can do, it's really not the same thing.

I can't comment on it bewing lickably-good. I licked my computer once... I still cannot taste sour... at the time I descided to hold off for a while.

By all means, if it floats your boat, get a Mac, they're fine machines. But if you're going to run a BSD, run a full, undiluted BSD. Personally, I'm running FreeBSD right now, and would reccomend it quite highly. But NetBSD and OpenBSD also have their perks. Heck, you'll probably find that you prefer Linux, just because you're so used to the way it does things, and the ways BSD does things are unholy and wrong :p.

I know Linux systems can confuse the hell out of me, but I applaud your willingness to give BSD a try. Because they are so much alike, it can be worse than running an OS that's very much different, because you expect it to do something, and end up getting kicked in the "WTF!?" :p.

documentation

[Anonymous Coward]

check out onlamp.com for some documentation. its sure helped me out w/ my FreeBSD boxes. that and the FreeBSD handbook are great for setting up a system.

Best BSD for SMP?

[srjames]

I'm also thinking about switching to a BSD. I'd like to try OpenBSD for the great security. Which of the BSDs works the *best* with SMP? I have a dual PIV Xeon 2.0GHz machine, and pretty common hardware (from two years ago).

Re:Best BSD for SMP?

[kl76]

In theory, FreeBSD 5 should have the best (highest-performance) SMP support (SMPng) but I haven't seen any benchmarks comparing it with {Net,Open}BSD's on SMP systems.

Re:Best BSD for SMP?

[SteveK1979]

I've not used it personally, but OpenBSD has only just released an SMP kernel with it's most recent (v3.6) stable release, so it's still somewhat of an unknown.... http://www.openbsd.org/i386.html#hardware

Re:Best BSD for SMP?

[Anonymous Coward]

FWIW, I setup an i386 SMP box a few months ago, as a production web server. It's still running without a hitch. Since they're using a Big Kernel Lock methodology, it's unlikely the SMP code will be problematic. I'd be more concerned about the stability of the new fbsd SMP, since it's supposedly quite complex.

NetBSD 2.0.1

[Anonymous Coward]

bash-3.00$ uname -a
NetBSD matrix 2.0.1 NetBSD 2.0.1 (MYKERNEL) #1: Tue Jan 25 15:47:35 NZDT 2005

Very nice OS!

Migration

[biophysics]

I have been using linux (many flavours) for the last 8 years.

What is single best feature available in *BSD that is not available in Linux?

Re:Migration

[ulib]

The single best feature?
Choosing the "best" is quite subjective. To me, it's definitely the ports system.
The closest thing you get in the Linux world is Gentoo's portage (which is modeled after *BSD ports). I've never tried it, but those who did found it quite different.
--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

Re:Migration

[Anonymous Coward]

An intelligent userbase.

My view of the BSD's

[br00tus]

The three major BSD's are FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD. OpenBSD is known as the secure BSD, NetBSD is known as the architecture portable BSD, and FreeBSD is known for many things. I've run servers using FreeBSD that I've been happy with.

A lot of people I know are impressed with OpenBSD's security and architecture. OpenBSD is also a major force behind some security things that Linux borrows, for example, my "apt-get install ssh" installed an SSH written by OpenSSH, which is associated with OpenBSD. If I was concerned with security, or wanted to get involved in kernel development, I might look at OpenBSD. Be that as it may, it seems like a niche, and is not as widely used as FreeBSD or necessarily aimed for a wide market.

NetBSD I am not very high on. It's thing is portability, and it has always been ahead of FreeBSD and OpenBSD, but sometimes even that has stalled, and it's one benefit hasn't been that impressive in comparison. Currently that is not true, but it seems cyclical. Unless you're interested in architecture portability, I'd avoid it. IMHO the best coders went to OpenBSD in the NetBSD/OpenBSD split. But if you need artchitecture portability above all, from time to time NetBSD shines in that area.

FreeBSD to me is the "Linux" of the BSD's. If I wanted security or to hack on the OS, I'd get OpenBSD, but otherwise, I'd get FreeBSD. I've been using FreeBSD and Linux since the mid 1990s, and although I'm more of a Linux person, I've always liked things about FreeBSD. One thing that I feel helps it propogate is I feel the install is easier than a lot of the big Linux distributions. In the mid 1990s, it used to support my crappy NE2000 compatible cards when Slackware Linux didn't, so I wound up installing FreeBSD for servers I originally was going to run Linux. In 2002 or so, I needed a UNIX on my Intel box which only had a 56K modem to do a network install - I got the floppies for FreeBSD, Red Hat and some other Linux distro I forget. Only FreeBSD was able to do the install. I've always thought their installation process was superb. I've also used FreeBSD as a desktop and a server and have been happy with it as both. I prefer Linux, but FreeBSD is a nice competitor to Linux, and some things, like installation, it seems to do better in.

Re:My view of the BSD's

[Anonymous Coward]

"IMHO the best coders went to OpenBSD in the NetBSD/OpenBSD split."

Who would that be?

FreeBSD or NetBSD, because of UBC

[Anonymous Coward]

I recommend to use FreeBSD or NetBSD, because both BSDs
have implemented UBC - unified buffer cache - already.
If you choose OpenBSD, most of your RAM will be just wasted,
because OpenBSD haven't implemented it yet.

Requiem for the FUD

[ulib]

I know this stuff has been posted before.
But since I've seen that a 3-year-old post spreading FUD over BSD was modded up from "-1 Troll" to "+1 Funny", I thought that - at the risk of burning my karma - it was right to make available to the +1 readers an even funnier collection of *facts*. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (30 Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

FreeBSD for starters

[discogravy]

disclaimer: I write for a FreeBSD wiki (see link below).

That said, I still think FreeBSD is a better choice for starting out on he BSDs -- a larger community base is available to you, which for a newbie to a particular OS is not something to be lightly discounted. Larger support for the OS (hardware as well as software,) is generally available to FreeBSD users than other BSD users, although the other BSDs aren't without their merits (you'll likely hear about them in other posts, so I won't even bother.) Linux has it's place, and so do OpenBSD and NetBSD. I'd say it really depends on what you're going to be using the system for. If it's a development machine, FreeBSD or maybe NetBSD (Net's portability might be a plus, but unless you're planning on actually putting the OS on a machine that won't take anything else, I wouldn't go through the trouble.) If it's going to be a public box of some sort, I'd say check out Open first; certainly Free and Net can be secured but there is something to be said about the single-mindedness that OpenBSD has vis-a-vis security. If you need a mix of these things -- a development machine that's public but secure for e.g. -- I'd recommend FreeBSD. They seem to strike a fair balance.

Re:*BSD is growing

[ulib]

>I don't get it. Is this a troll?
Pretty much. ;)
Requiem for the FUD

FreeBSD / Dragonfly audio software

[DrunkenPenguin]

Hi! I'm doing professional audio related tasks with my workstation and low latency is essential. On Linux I use my M-Audio Delta 66 audiocard and my MIDI -keyboard through ALSA. Is Linux ALSA (or similar) ported to FreeBSD / Dragonfly? Can I run Jack on FreeBSD? What about Ardour (digital audio workstation software) and LADSPA audio plugins?

Anybody out there who knows FreeBSD / Dragonfly audio and could answer my questions? Thanks!

Re:FreeBSD / Dragonfly audio software

[Anonymous Coward]

Been awhile since i messed with MIDI on FreeBSD. there was something called "The Polypaudio sound server" - althogh never tried it. JACK is in the ports.

maybe have a deeper look through freebsd's mail archives??

for ardour, maybe use FreeBSD's Linux emulation: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/h andbook/linuxemu.html

Re:PC competition for the I-Mini MAC?

[dna_(c)(tm)(r)]

Surely, an Ethernet card in a Mac has a MAC ?

DragonFlyBSD

[chrysalis]

I wouldn't recommended DragonFlyBSD for beginners. Although the installer is easy to use, things can be a bit more complicated once the beast has been installed. Using cvsup and ports, while straightforward for experienced Unix users, is difficult for newbies, even with good documentation.

But since you're already familiar with Linux, you won't get lost with DragonFlyBSD. And the mailing-lists are very cool. People can really help you instead of just trolling like on other *BSD lists.

Re:Easy? Free*; Education? Open*; Experiment? Net*

[Brandybuck]

I've not used OpenBSD, but from everything I hear it's very similar to NetBSD. NetBSD is very much a lean system, with no fat. That doesn't mean it's stripped down to the barely usable essentials though.

I'm still a FreeBSD fan though. Mostly this is because it's the BSD I fell in love with first. But a little bit of the reason is because it has a larger community. This results in more available ports, more forums and mailing lists to find answers, more developers to speed up development, etc. FreeBSD has DRI, which I don't think Net/Open have quite yet (correct me if I'm wrong).

All of the BSDs borrow liberally from each other. When OpenBSD audits some code, Net and Free get the fixes. When NetBSD revamped and modernized the BSD init, FreeBSD adopted it with blinking.

I hate to make gross generalizations, but here's one anyway. NetBSD is more "vanilla" than the other BSDs, while FreeBSD is more "mainstream" than the others.

Slackware?

[PONA-Boy]

Seriously...Slackware is the most BSD-like Linux there is. I _highly_ recommend it. Otherwise, give OpenBSD a try. For all the stick-in-the-mud that people say it is (no bleeding edge like Linux), it is very stable and very secure.

-PONA-

Completely untrue.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is nothing easier about freebsd at all, and installing ports and packages are just as simple and easy on open and net (although named pkgsrc instead of ports on net).

You have no clue what you are talking about.

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenBSD's auditing is much more important than you think it is, but there's alot more than that. Tons of apps that are setuid root on free/net/linux are not on openbsd, things like tcpdump, dhcpd, syslog, etc are privilege seperated to limit root code, and there is propolice, W^X, and randomized loading of libraries to make exploiting the holes that are found nearly impossible. If you are stupid enough to think that simply turning off services on a linux box would achieve the same security, then you need help.

And openbsd runs plenty by default, its netbsd that simply turns everything off and calls it security. If you haven't even tried openbsd, maybe you shouldn't be talking about what it does and doesn't do?

For a dual CPU machine it doesn't matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

The discussions of what OS does "better" on SMP is about scalability, running on a 16 way machine it matters what OS you use, running on a little dual CPU machine, it doesn't matter. So, just pick whichever one you like.

Having an OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

With linux, you get a kernel, and a mess of random software thrown together. With the BSDs you get an OS. That's probably the "best" feature.

Re:Darwin

[xtermin8]

Darwin works on x86. I wouldn't recommend it unless you want to experiment. "better way then to go" might be transliterated Japanese- All your base belong to us!

My opinion...

[Anonymous Coward]

just to add my two cents...

I personally use NetBSD on just about all my boxes (except the windows box I need for the damn Nortel VPN client for work)...

One of the biggest 'misnomers' I hear all the time is that NetBSD is 'only for portability'. For me, it has been rock solid on every box I've ever installed it on, and it runs great on your standard x86 box. What I like about it is that the code is very clean... 'portability' lends itself to keeping things consistent across platforms, the 'bus abstraction' interface so PCI cards in a Mac should run just as well as in a PC, with the same driver...

Also, running on older hardware (Vax, Decstation, etc) can also be a boon to performance, since code changes that might add a barely noticable 0.01 second time on a fast modern PC, may be horribly slow on an old Vax... if your code runs well on an old VaxStation, chances are its gonna be blindingly fast on a 2GHz PC.

The NetBSD boards have always been friendly, and I love watching the great technical discussions about the VM system, etc... watching problems get hashed out before changes are made, in essence they spend the time talking and *designing* the idea before it ever makes it into the OS. Problems are discussed as "whats the *right* way to fix it", not "how to we patch some ugly code to make it work".

Being a Sysadmin for a job, I manage a ton of RedHat boxes... I'd give an arm and a leg for a VM system in RedHat that isn't full of bugs and performs anywhere near how my NetBSD boxes do at home. I'm always amazed when my 8GB production server, running 4GB of java JVM's, start swapping out running programs under RedHat.. to buffer disk reads (because 3+GB of buffer obviously isn't enough I guess)... just very poor VM design.

They've done an excellent job on SMP with 2.0. Yes, it was a long time coming, but they stuck to the NetBSD philosophy "we won't release it until its ready". Mind you, I'm still hesitant of ".0" (20+ years in IT, for a production box I'd wait for 2.0.1 -- "never go with a '.0' release" :-P), but so far I am running SMP just fine on a couple of boxes, and most of my issues have been with pkgsrc apps that updates have fixed.

For a new user, unless you are trying to sell security to management at work, I'd go with Free or Net. Open tends to innovate some nice features (like "pf"), I'll admit, but in terms of general performance I've found its usually behind Free & Net. I chose Net a long time ago, back then more because I had some old 68k mac's (still have, actually) and some Decstations, and only Net ran on them. The consistent platform across all the boxes is very nice. But, I've stuck with it because... well, it just *works*.

to utilize free memory...

[Anonymous Coward]

It is better to avoid OpenBSD.

If you use Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, or Dragonfly BSD, the memory which isn't used for applications can be used as file cache.
But it isn't on OpenBSD.
So, I guess certain amount of the 768MB memory will be wasted with OpenBSD.

If you want to learn a BSD first...

[Anonymous Coward]

I would suggest OpenBSD. I've been using it for more than 10 releases now and I recently tried NetBSD, having used FreeBSD in the past.

The reason I suggest OpenBSD, is because the man pages are absolutely fantastic. Very well written and complete. I am using NetBSD for some things at the moment due its very impressive Unified Buffer Cache performance and looking at the man pages, I am finding that there are often no examples and sometimes there are pages which don't go into the detail I need to figure something out. I find myself looking at the online OpenBSD pages for hints. OpenBSD also has some fantastic books and FAQ's. I have been much less impressed with the documentation available for NetBSD.

OpenBSD is also an excellent BSD to settle on for lots of other reasons. It's light weight, having little installed or enabled by default and things tend to just work. I have never come across a port which didn't work first go. For a long while I used to set up X under OpenBSD but one day recently I found that after a fresh install (with X installed but not manually configured), I just typed startx and X came up without any problems!

I love OpenBSD and think it is the best to learn BSD with, however at the moment it seems NetBSD is incredibly fast. I recently tried OpenBSD 3.6, NetBSD 2.0, Fedora Core 3 and SuSE 9.2 for a very disk heavy task. OpenBSD and Fedora were very slow, SuSE would not complete without a command within the script running out of memory, but NetBSD flied and completed the task with the whole data set cached.

I am particular to FreeBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

I learned more about Hard Drive Geometry and partitioning setting Up my FreeBSD 2.2.7 machine way back, than I did in any other time. You will definitely learn a lot about your machines, even if you already think you do.

and the other side?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use FreeBSD4, what dist. should I try?

NetBSD

[typ15t]

...I too wondered which one should it be.
finally choosing NetBSD
I am not paranoid about security
and i386 performance isnt what it used to be

...seriously though, I find no reason to move away from NetBSD...also, I used Slackware before to switching over to NetBSD.

I CAN

[Anonymous Coward]

Edit /etc/rc.conf.local and add:
httpd_flags=""

You're done with a chrooted apache!

Portage in FreeBSD.. Riiiight..

[Anonymous Coward]

Who would use portage in FreeBSD when one has the much better and more complete Ports collection?

Funeral Notice

[Anonymous Coward]

*BSD Obituary

*BSD, 27, of Berkeley, CA died Monday, Jan 29, 2005. Born July 3, 1976, it was the creation of a cluster of pot-smoking hippies who went to Illinois and came home with a reel of tape. Rather than smoke the tape, they uploaded it and hacked on it a little.

*BSD was known for its C shell and early TCP/IP implementation. After being banished from UC Berkeley, it was ported to the x86 platform, where it fell into the hands of heavier pot-smokers who liked to argue. Soon, the project had splintered into 12 different Balkanized projects. Until its death, there was almost constant fighting in and amongst these groups, sometimes degenerating into out-and-out fistfights.

*BSD is survived by its superior, Linux, as well as several commercial unix implementations. It may be missed by some who knew it, although most of them are said to be mere OS dilettante dabblers.

A funeral will be held at 2 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 9, at the Berkeley Chapel on the UC campus, with interment to follow via the burning of the original *BSD tapes and scattering of the ashes over the San Francisco Bay. The Rev. Lou "Buddy" Stubbs will officiate.

The family will receive friends from 7 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 8, at the funeral home.

Re:Funeral Notice

[Anonymous Coward]

*BSD, 27, of Berkeley, CA died Monday, Jan 29, 2005.

In futhur news, it has been determined that the "BSD Obituaturary" poster obviously has serious central processing unit (brain) issues, and nothing they say should be taken seriously... since they can't even figure out how to use a calendar. Or perhaps they are using linux to keep time, and it can no longer tell time since it has been up for 300 days. BSD is very much alive, thank you.

FYI, Jan 29th 2005 was Saturday, and for all those who feel like attending the "funeral at 2 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 9", please note that this schedule has been modified to be burial for the brain of the Obituary poster, to be held at 2PM on Thursday, Feb. 10th, since it has obviously failed at basic its functions and should be put to rest. They will be buried with their beloved Linux operating system, which more than like caused their lack of brain power by swapping out running brain function in order to cache an additional 27GB of useless disk data, due to the lack of a properly designed VM system.

Re:Funeral Notice

[Anonymous Coward]

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

Btw, part of the troll is to get the dates wrong just to see if some anal-retentive process slave checks to see if they're correct. Thanks for falling for that; you're the first.

Re:Funeral Notice

[Anonymous Coward]

Thankfully, being an "anal-retentive process slave", with a good memory for past problems (which lets me fix current issues quickly) has earned me an excellent reputation at work as the "guy who can fix anything", and earns me $85K+/year + bonuses.

So, thank you. Yes I am, and I'd far rather be correct than be some idiot with nothing better to do than to try and trash an OS thats been around probably since before he was born.

FreeBSD, maybe not

[Anonymous Coward]

Then again, on the other hand, support for Linux in the traditionally conservative world of financial services has more than doubled in the last year according to the latest market intelligence.

Support for open source technologies from mainstream suppliers such as IBM and Sun has boosted the number of financial institutions using Linux from 27 percent last year to 58 percent in 2005, according to a report from financial technology researchers Finextra.

Re:PC competition for the I-Mini MAC?

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt it's astroturfing, or that companies like Apple and Microsoft would pay someone to post to a website like slashdot. A lot of Mac users just happen to be fanatical about Macs, in the same way that a lot of Linux users are fanatical about Linux.

I try to be neutral towards all these systems (I'm not emotionally attached to operating systems), and I've been accused of astroturfing for various organisations/companies by zealots who disliked what I had to say, but couldn't refute it.

NetBSD

[jbltgz]

I would say NetBSD 2.0. I have been running it for a while on some production systems and desktops and it is indeed very stable.

OpenBSD

[m_pahlevanzadeh]

Dear Bruce; I tested OpenBSD.It hasn't problem. Yours,Mohsen

Triple Boot? ... But FreeBSD for Java.

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

Heh. Don't try triple boot right off. It'll drive you crazy.

You'll really want to get familiar with each one before you try crazy things like triple boot. (It can be done, BTW. Just avoid mixing MSWxxx into a triple boot if you can. That's not good for your ulcer.)

However, as several have said, try them all. I concur with the guy who said start with openBSD, then find an old box in the junk bin to install openBSD on for your perimeter stuff. While you're in the junk bin, find some really exotic old architecture and have fun with netBSD. But while you're waiting for things to compile bring up freeBSD for productivity type stuff.

Hmm. That's a little overly simplistic advice, but do try them all.

One thing, Java is much tamer on FreeBSD. It can be done on openBSD and netBSD, from what I've heard, but if you want/need to run Java on BSD and haven't done that before, start on freeBSD.

(If you really _need_ productivity on your home project, spring for the Mac Mini. That goes double if you need productivity with Java. I assume, however, that's not the point of your project.)

Re:PC competition for the I-Mini MAC?

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of Mac users just happen to be fanatical about Macs, in the same way that a lot of Linux users are fanatical about Linux.

What I'm talking about goes beyond that. Whole articles have been posted recently that are just begging to have the answer of ``Apple'' given. Threads are twisted around so that the topic is Apple, and all the moderations are positive ones.

I really believe there's a concerted effort to keep Slashdot talking about Apple

Well. Speaking of conspiracy theories...

[Anonymous Coward]

It goes beyond even that. It is hard to credit that a centralized organization like Apple has the resources or interest to try to "herd" a public forum like this.

Given that this started off as a "Linux user wants to try BSD" thread, that the Mac started being mentioned, and now it is being bashed on the theory that Apple controls the thread...*my* theory is that it's a herd of Penguins! Think about it: Only the penguins have enough fanatics to do something like this.

And, once the Penguins have crushed Apple in this devious marketing scheme, they can go back to saying that "Linux is the most popular, common UNIX-like OS". ...just don't look too closely at how widely the "distros" vary, or the penguins will send around "Vinny the Galoot", a hulking 8' penguin with a baseball bat.

Yes...it's all so clear now!

No, that's netbsd.

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenBSD does have stuff running by default, and its also got tons of security features built in to make it more secure when you turn on whatever you want. Go read the website before spouting FUD.