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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?"
And find one that's right for you.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
I'd try darwin - that is just the 1st step towards Mac OS X ;)
(first post?)
Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
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.
Hands down the easiest to pick up, and arguably the most common.
/usr/ports/misc/screen
Install software from source?
cvsup -g -L2 stable-supfile
cd
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).
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.
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.
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Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
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!)
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.
In an average living room there are 1,242 objects Vin Diesel could use to kill you, including the room itself.
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.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
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.
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.
/usr/ports/net/whatever ; make all install clean ; rehash' for almost anything) and it's a really, really nice way to work.
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
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
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.
"The world only exists in your eyes. You can make it as big or as small as you want." - F Scott Fitzgerald
Security != Least Exploited
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.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
Which one? I would recommend you try all of them, but in the following order:
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. :)
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.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
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.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
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.
/etc/pf.conf file. (Yes. I've got a life otherwise :)
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
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.
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.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
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.
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).
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.
It's also one of the most useless OS's in the world with an unmodified install! /etc/rc.conf and you're there.
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
-- Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
The Apache httpd diff is about 4000 lines. After the fork the diff is even larger as they are removing the unneeded apr layer.
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:
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)
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."
--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.
I honestly don't think Slashcode will be able to cope with 1e16 'Insightful' mods.