Slashdot Mirror
Are the BSDs Dying? Some Security Researchers Think So (csoonline.com)
itwbennett writes: The BSDs have lost the battle for mindshare to Linux, and that may well bode ill for the future sustainability of the BSDs as viable, secure operating systems, writes CSO's JM Porup. The reason why is a familiar refrain: more eyeballs mean more secure code. Porup cites the work of Ilja von Sprundel, director of penetration testing at IOActive, who, noting the "small number of reported BSD kernel vulnerabilities compared to Linux," dug into BSD source code. His search 'easily' turned up about 115 kernel bugs. Porup looks at the relative security of OpenBSD, FreeBSD and NetBSD, the effect on Mac OS, and why, despite FreeBSD's relative popularity, OpenBSD may be the most likely to survive.
I won't believe it until Netcraft confirms it!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
While not an "official" BSD, OS X is based on NeXT which is based on BSD and it uses the MACH kernel.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
The authorities here on Slashdot have repeatedly said that right now was the golden age of BSD due to Debian's adoption systemd. There are no Linux users left. BSD is the only system that remains in widespread use.
After Heartbleed and the other issues affecting OpenSSL, and Shellsheck affecting bash, why the hell would anyone still be pushing this disproven "more eyeballs" narrative?!
The OpenBSD project proves that security doesn't come from "more eyeballs". It comes from having software developers who know what they're doing, and who take their work very seriously, and who show immense discipline, and who don't put up with bullshit, and who put security first and foremost.
You could have two million "eyeballs" of offshore "programmers" in India looking at some code, and it will likely still end up being much less secure than code doing the same work but written by a couple of OpenBSD's developers.
Code quality doesn't come from the quantity of people looking at it. Code quality comes from the quality of the people working on it.
"Some" researchers are saying the BSDs are dying so it must be true, huh? "Read it on the internet, hot damn, must be true then." Bullshit! The BSDs have a large community that is passionate about their choice of operating system. I have been using OpenBSD since 1998 and I will only stop using it once the community completely collapses, development ceases, and the foundation folds. The day that happens, I will have to find another hobby altogether and just keep a smartphone and tablet handy. Learning and using OpenBSD has made me far more knowledgeable about computers, operating systems, networks, and security than any other platform out there. If it weren't for my college roommate introducing me to OpenBSD, I believe I would just be another Microsoft wanker. OpenBSD taught me how the internet works and opened a wealth of knowledge. OpenBSD turned me from a computer power user into a true System Administrator. Ever since that day when I asked my roommate just what the heck OpenBSD was, my life would never be the same.
IMO:
BSDs have a superior architecture in many respects. This is especially true since the systemd takeover.
Administration on BSD servers just makes more sense. Linux seems to be all over the map. I think there are over 1000 Linux distros. Many distros want to change around the directory structure. Simple things, like starting services on bootup, and setting up static IP, become difficult with Linux because everybody wants to pull Linux in different direction - often for no good technical reason.
Linux certainly has advantages over BSD. But I think BSD gets a lot of stuff right.
Again: all JMHO.
First off, I submit that BSD is finding its home in appliances. FreeNAS and pfSense are both fairly popular, and both BSD based. Commercially, the Nintendo Switch is based on BSD, and Cisco, McAffee, and Juniper all have appliances using BSD at their core. Also, as others have pointed out, OSX.
That said, there are so many copy/paste tutorials for Debian and its derivatives like Ubuntu and Raspbian. With BSD lagging behind severely, for every person who prefers BSD and can successfully use it to do what they need, there are five more less-technical users who are able to fall into the pit of success with a Bitnami or Turnkey Linux distribution.
BSD may well be superior for certain tasks, especially networking, but the fact of the matter is that expecting BSD to simultaneously be competitive in the numbers game against Linux when Linux has an ecosystem which BSD lacks. That ecosystem encourages users looking to get something done to use that product, rather than adhere to principles which otherwise have little effect on them. I know systemd is hated in these parts, almost universally, but if I need to spin up a Wordpress instance, it takes me ten minutes to grab Turnkey Linux and start addding my content, rather than the half hour or more it would take to spin up BSD, manually install an AMP stack, figure out the BSD equivalent of /var/www, Google all the MySQL commands to create the database at the CLI since I don't have Adminer or phpMyAdmin to do it, and then add Wordpress. As a non-developer and non-distributor, the BSD vs. GPL vs. MIT license situation affects me very little, so the fact that both Debian and BSD are free-as-in-beer means that they compete on how much of my time they take to spin up.
This is why I use pfSense and FreeNAS. It's also why most of my appliances are Turnkey Linux based.
systemd was what pushed me into trying out FreeBSD seriously for the first time, three years ago, after 15+ years of Debian as a user and develop. So many stupid problems. FreeBSD was like a breath of fresh air, and I wish I'd tried it out years ago. Today, I'm using FreeBSD increasingly, contributing to the ports here and there, and finding it to be mostly pretty good. Not as polished as Debian in every respect, but the package manager is continually improving and it's on a par with apt at this point. And being able to install straight onto ZFS is huge; Debian and Ubuntu need to get this into their installers.
Systemd is the reason Linus is now running freebsd at home.
So that explains why my serial ports don't work any more!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII