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Which BSD for an Experienced Linux User?

Posted by Cliff on from the a-change-of-flavour dept.

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?"

5 of 290 comments (clear)

  1. FreeBSD by numbski · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

    --

    Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).

  2. What do you want? by twilight30 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    ========================================
    Death will come, and will have your eyes
    -- Pavese
    1. Re:What do you want? by Mr.Ned · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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

  3. typical boring slashdot post by epine · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  4. All of them, but in a particular order by Anonymous+Cowherd+X · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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. :)