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Which BSD?
Poodle Fang asks: "After using Linux for a few years, I am now interested in trying out the free x86 BSDs. I have been reading that OpenBSD is focused on security and FreeBSD on performance, but is there really much of a difference in security and performance among the BSDs? Do any of the BSDs have any features that sets it apart from the others (for example, does one work better on laptops than the others?) How well do the Linux emulation libraries work? I am more concerned in the performance, stability and security than packaging or an easy install process. Any insights would be appreciated! "
Each BSD has it's own goals - OpenBSD for example aims to be the "secure" BSD, and is designed package by package to make sure the l335 h4x0rs out there would rather pull their fingernails out than try to bypass the security safeguards on your box.
Sooooo... maybe it might be better if you told us what you're looking for- you've asked a really open-ended question!
--
My biggest complaint against OpenBSD is that there seems to be no community behind it. I was able to learn about Linux, and Unix in general, because of both the local User's Groups and the Linux Documentation Project. While not as far along as Linux, it appears to me that FreeBSD has the best support, both in an active user base and a growing documentation project. - Jay Beale
I'm not an expert on BSD, but here's your basic breakdown: /Free|Net/BSD. Very significant security features, though I'm not sure how they affect usability.
386BSD - was the original 'PC' unix
from that grew:
FreeBSD - continue a focus on i386
NetBSD - main focus being platform proliferation (they support everything, though I don't know about laptops)
OpenBSD - a fairly recent splinter form
As a general rule you'll find the BSD's more server focused than Linux (big generalization, but it holds up some). Drivers are always there weak point, but check the Slashdot BSD section for sites that help you locate what you need.
If I could give any advice, it would not to go with the commercial BSD, BSDi. It's a royal pain in the ass on whatever you want to compile, and even worse to setup with a network - if you don't know what your doing.
However, this can be argued for any distro, but still.. I believe BSDi to be the worst in that category - it's simply nasty.
Stick with FreeBSD, it's stable, nice, and don't forget free.
Peace,
Matthew
_____________________________________
sortakinda.ca | canadian paraphrasing.
Well, it's not really emulation. It works perfectly, and pretty much runs Linux binaries as native binaries. It runs them about as fast as (or in some cases faster than) a Linux system.
As for the differences, FreeBSD supports more x86 hardware generally, while NetBSD supports more architectures. OpenBSD has better out-of-the-box security, but all the BSDs are quite good in security with a bit of tweaking and configuring. It mostly seems to be a matter of personal preference, though most home desktop users tend to pick FreeBSD.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I have a confession to make.
I run Windows98.
I know, I know. But I feel this is the appropriate time to come out of the closet.
So, I ask: Is *BSD as easy/hard to learn as Linux? Can I/ Should I start with FreeBSD?
This isn't meant to start a flamewar, of course. I'm just curious.
p.s. If you'd like to help in the "Drive to get jawad off of Windows": EMail me at jawad@nycap.rr.com or bhattj@rpi.edu. Thank you.
i dont display scores, and my threshhold is -1. post accordingly.
Discuss
I don't know whether to moderate this as "funny" or "flamebait"!
I suppose s/FreeBSD/Microsoft and it becones funny.
Here's how I understand it.
;-)
;-)
OpenBSD has undergone a line-by-line professional security audit. It is focused entirely on security.
FreeBSD is the most mature of the BSDs on the i386 platform. It focuses mostly on that platform, although I believe that there is a sparc port as well now.
NetBSD's hook is that it is ported to everything including the kitchen sink. It ran well on the Vaxen and the Apollos that I came across not so long ago.
Based on user testimonial, the linux Binary emulation is extremely good for anything that isn't specifically tied to the kernel. i.e. you can't load kernel modules. I've seen somebody run StarOffice 5.0 on OpenBSD using the emulation.
I'm installing OpenBSD on a 486 tonite, so maybe I'll follow up with some more first-hand info soon.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
I have been using Linux (on and off) for a couple of years now and have been wondering the same thing. I decided to dive in and ordered FreeBSD from CheapBytes. I have to say that I was fairly impressed, but the fun wasn't over yet. After getting FreeBSD going on my desktop, and getting most of my Hardware going (haven't got my ppp up yet) i decided to check out openbsd and put on the Dell Inspiron 7000 that i'm using now. I downloaded OpenBSD yesterday and burnt a CD of it this afternoon. I was installing it up into a minute ago when I got lost on using openbsd's fdisk implementation. Well, I'm off to track down some OpenBSD install tips. Later, and Happy BSDing
Duh, that's s/FreeBSD/Microsoft/ of course.
I'm still looking for a "first post" which is ...
worth a point 5 rating
Any references?
Obviously.
....this sounds like someone compiled a guided flamer program on their OpenBSD system. :) If you replace FreeBSP in the above message with the name of your favourite politician, it's almost exactly the same as you'd find in your generic alt.rec.flamewars. Whoever moderated this up as informative should have read it first. Thanks, Rob. I'm liking M^2 more and more.
You'll eat it and you'll like it.
And how does this relate to the question???? FreeBSD - The Power to Serve -
FreeBSD provides greater stability, reliability, and it doesn't scale like shit as linux does. Need more?
What a load!
FreeBSD - optimized for X86 op-code processors
OpenBSD - The line by line security audit gives it a claim to security. Security, however is what one makes of it on thier box.
NetBSD - likes running on as many different platforms as possible. From x86 to toasters to dreamcasts. And, the NetBSD developers have been cast by others as as giving a damn about hacking an OS, not trying to peddle one.
FreeBSD is prob. the best bet for x86. Only because that was the original focus.
Linux emulation on FreeBSD has worked on every program I have tried...but that is hardly useful praise.
For stability, FreeBSD gets the nod, only because you can point to Yahoo and cdrom.com and go, yup, yup, lotsa uptime, lotsa traffic. (for most purposes almost any modern Unix-like OS will be stable enough for most people) I'm sure the defenders of the Net and OpenBSD will submit big net/open BSD sites. (just like if one said RedHat was used on the biggest, a swarm of SUSE would point out big SUSE sites)
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Wow. Have you ever seen anyone use so many words to say absolutely nothing?
The more I think about it (and go over your posting), the more it looks like to took somebodies speach and did a search and replace on it. If so, I guess you're trying to show that the speach can be applied to anything producing the same value (ie, none).
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
I know this guy. He's the type of person who likes to make himself seem much smarter than he really is. He will write twice as much as he needs to on assignments (I'm in college), and he will say things in class with a very thoughtful voice, and no depth of thought.
:) (not refering to anyone who has posted here)
So, one day I was talking with a friend about BSD, and how I wanted to try it out. This person I know just happenned to be sitting nearby and jumped in. He said that FreeBSD was the most secure and that OpenBSD was the most compatible. I asked him to elaborate on this compatibility thing, and he said "Well... I think... OpenBSD can run C++ programs." Instantly I lost all respect for him. I inquired further, and he said "yes, it can run Microsoft C++ programs, and the other BSD's can't."
Moral of the story: If you don't know, shut up already!
-------------
Linux, BSD, Aix, Irix, Solaris, HPUX, SCO are all unix. They're all the same in terms of learnability.
no
--
You're a cartoon of rebel! You're all like exaggerated version of yourself! - Gerard Jones
I had the opportunity on this thread, but I don't know anything about *BSD -pout-
KdL
Feeding the troll some bitter fruit:
Lets see, your 5 years as a computer professional and your natural desire to play with shiny things qualifys you to talk about Unix....like BSD or Linux?
Grow up to be a big troll and come back
Whoa, man. What did get high on? Dont you know crack can be dangerous to your health? Why dont you just sit down for a while while you calm down?
Not to long ago I was in much the same position as yourself. There has been quite a bit said already, personally I am using FBSD for my servers and OBSD for the firewall/router. I would use NetBSD if I had some (more) obscure hardware other than x86. Well nevertheless, here is a url that I have found to have good links, and some up to the minute BSD news. Daemon News. Now all will be great if slashdot keeps up with the BSD news as much as the Linux stuff.
Since you're looking for this to be a desktop OS, I'd put my vote on FreeBSD. It's ports system is very cool, it's rather easy to configure, and it's probably just as secure as OpenBSD once you turn everything off (have you ever seen a Linux box running no services and no extra kernel features get cracked? Same goes for any decent OS that doesn't put a HTTP server into it's kernel)
I've used FreeBSD (not too much though), and unfortunatley I couldn't get a DHCP client to work, and if it weren't for that I may be running it right now instead of Linux.
Your statement doesn't have a logical point. "Linux is free, so why would I want to bother..." implies the alternative is not free because you're using Linux's monetary cost as a point of contrast.
And why do people ask us to tell them what they think? I don't know, why would you use it?
Also, if you want credibility, be specific. You're as vague as the blabbermouth that posted a full page above.
The BSDs are great for servers, their perfromance is excellent, and they have alright high end hardware support.
However, if you are using this computer as your personal workstation i would highly recomend staying with Linux. Its overall environment seem better polished and more usable. It is not difficult to get around the problems of the BSD's, however they are annoying. The ports collection is invalualuable to almost anyone on all three of them.
Between the three BSD's, I have found openBSD to be the best. It not only is super secure, but it gets around many of the newsences of freeBSD. It's hardware support is excellent, i have found drivers for many devices that would not work under freeBSD or Linux. I also found the installation of openBSD was much nicer, however i have done many i386 unix installation, so i knew what i was doing.
In my network which is mixed commercial unix(mostly solaris), Win 95/NT, *BSD, linux, i use freebsd on intranet servers (excellent NFS), openBSD on the internet servers, and Linux on the rest.
If you have never used unix, i would highly recomend Linux, Redhat, SuSE, or any commercial package will work great.
Everyone will have a different opinion, and they are all right. I'm going to offer my FreeBSD-slanted opinion as one view.
NetBSDCoke, original formula. Hard to argue with that. NetBSD has a long and noble history. The NetBSD team does a great job of covering the hardware world. No, not the WinTel hardware world, that's Linux. They cover platforms. By running on so many platforms it is a great platform if you have a lot of different (and/or old :-) sorts of hardware. Unfortunately, it is this platform compatability that slows their progress.
I have nothing bad to say about NetBSD. unfortunately, I have nothing good (feature wise) to say about it when it comes to getting real work done. Anything you buy these days has "better" choices that run on it. I will continue to be a big NetBSD supporter though, as it's the only choices for some of my older machines that still deserve a real operating system.
OpenBSDI'd tell you about it, but then I would have to kill you. :-) Actually, it's not that bad. OpenBSD is security focused, and so they do go a few extra steps in that direction. About 60% of what they do can be done on NetBSD simply by intelligently securing the box. The other 40% is good security add on work.
Most of the good stuff the OpenBSD folks come up with make it into the other BSD's and Linux shortly afterwards, although not all. I'm not sure on security alone OpenBSD is "better", assuming you have a clueful admin who understands the issues.
IMHO the best thing for the BSD community is if the OpenBSD guys and the NetBSD guys could get together. Unfortunately, the inability to do that is the very reason they are apart.
FreeBSDThe FreeBSD folks want to get real work done. Early on, that resulted in an Intel focus, as that was the only affordable platform available. Now the Alpha is included, and hopefully more soon. When they day is done though they are interested in bang-for-the buck, not on RC5 or quake, but applications like web, ftp, and news. Bread and butter network stuff, rooted deep in the Unix world.
This shows in several places. The VM subsystem they implemented several years back was one of the first of it's kind in the free OS world. The port subsystem is an efficient way to distribute and build tools that may still have compile-time dependancies and configuration without creating a packaging nightmare. The installer is simple, clean, fast, and good for the novice and the expert.
Put simply, FreeBSD makes the admin and the machine the most productive when trying to do Internet application "stuff".
LinuxI'll offer my Linux opinion, to complete my perspective. Linux wants to be everything to everybody. As such, it supports more "options" to everything. There are more device drivers, more supported file systems, and more "applications" than any other free unix. In many cases, this is good, but when it comes to getting real work done, it is questionable at best.
The quality of both some of the "supported" hardware and the drivers are to be questioned, but how are you to know what is good, and what is bad? The releases are more frequent, both to fix bugs, and introduce features. There are often all sorts of new things added you don't need that may affect what you're trying to do.
SummaryAny of them will probably do what you want. All of the BSD's have a very different structure than Linux, not only in code, but in how they are designed, built, and released. They all have core teams, rigid code review and testing procedures, and an emphasis on being correct rather than being first, best, or fastest. For the most part, if there is a feature in a released version, it works, reliably. Linux emulation on FreeBSD works like a dream. If RealPlayer G2 and acroread will run fine under it, anything will. The penality for this stability and reliability is that you're doing to have to pick from the "approved" hardware list, and do without some of the wizbang stuff.
Finally, I have one recommendation. Learn the way each OS wants you to do things. Unix is Unix, unless you're an admin or a programmer. The worst thing anyone switching OS's can do is try to impose one OS's / designers view on another. It's usually a poor fit. Just because one OS does something completely different than another does not automatically make it better or worse, what matters is what you are able to do with it at the end of the day.
Good luck with whatever you try.
"FreeBSD confuses demagoguery with leadership and undocumented conspiracism with serious research"
;-)
Surely, you mean "conspiritorialism"?
As deep and from the soul this sounds, I can't sem to find anything than 'FreeBSD needs to grow up.' Sure, I agree that for a long time FreeBSD was considerd the underdog, and now that people are treating it more like an operating system rather than an annoyance to 'linux world domination,' there's some lag in changing attitude. This isn't by the leaders, but by some followers. Linux advocates had to grow up some, and maybe a few BSD ones do too... who knows.. maybe this is bs too..
But, where is your examples? How is FreeBSD being evil to other BSDs? How is it robbing the poor and giving to the rich, or anything else one could hold ethical and important where FreeBSD breaks community trust. I'm willing to listen, just not accept statements blindly. I like the FreeBSD people I've met, though never met other BSD people since I'm all x86, and used the BSD a system administrator told me to try. I've got an HP Apollo, but no luck yet with the NetBSD port (used to chat a bit with the guy), and just got another HP... might get it working...
So, where's FreeBSD hurt us? I can forgive some evils, because FreeBSD has helped user choice a great deal in knocking the linux zealots over and over again with the fact that there are other, and at times substatually superior, open source operating systems out there. That doesn't make everything ok.. but then what am I to despise FreeBSD for? I don't see them breaking my, or the communities, trust.
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
it work! no? screw you. it is offtopic anyway
--
You're a cartoon of rebel! You're all like exaggerated version of yourself! - Gerard Jones
I don't know whether to rate this Funny, Flamebait, Troll, or What the Hell Are You Talking About?
It doesn't seem to have anything to do with any of the BSD's. I have no experience with any of the BSD stuff, but I doubt it could possibly be that bad. Actually, it sounds more like a rant that would be targeted at Microsoft than one targeted at the BSD's.
.There are some serious differences between the different flavors of BSD, but for general purpose use one would almost never notice them.
/etc for example, the BSD's seem much better organized. The man system is but one small example, for primary documentation (just read Design and Implementation of the BSD Operating System for a great example of amazing kernel documentation) I've simply found nothing better among free software.
OpenBSD ships with heavy cryptography in the distribution, allowing one to choose Blowfish generated passwords instead of MD5 for example. They're allowed to do this because they code, integrate the distribution, and ship from Canada, where Draconian laws on exporting Open Source cryptography are non-existent. Taking advantage of this the OpenBSD project is also striving to update ssh-1.2.12, the last completely free version of ssh, to remove well known security problems, which will be known as OpenSSH.
The other two projects, NetBSD and FreeBSD each have separate slants, though neither offers direct strong cryptography in their distributions because both ship from within the United States. FreeBSD is tailored for use with x86 and now Alpha CPUs, while NetBSD is tailored for wide portability. This is why the NetBSD project states "Of course it runs NetBSD."
I've only slightly used FreeBSD, and many years back. However, my NAT box connected to a cablemodem runs OpenBSD, and I have several old Sun workstations which run NetBSD... I have to say I'm very pleased with both of these Operating Systems and would strongly recommend them to anyone with need of an OS for some specific purpose (like NAT service on a firewall, or to run old oddball hardware like my Sun3s, old VAXes, and the like). And they're very strong distributions with heavy development cycles... just recently the NetBSD project integrated in UVM, a completely new memory manager with distinct advantages from the stock VM described in the BSD Design and implementation Red Book.
Hell, they all make for excellent alternatives to Linux as well... though I personally prefer Linux on my desktop workstation, after having my previous IP-MASQ Linux system, also connected to the cablemodem, cracked using a well known named buffer overflow (yes it was my fault) I'm now convinced I don't want a Linux box sitting out on the open net. I feel much safer with OpenBSD for many reasons... not just because they include the cryptography but because they code audit, they by default run critical daemons without root privileges in chroot() jails, and the authors take great pains to distribute their system by default with the fewest services started as possible, unlike most Linux distributions.
And one last thing, not meant to inflame Linux Proponents since I gleefully run both systems in my house, the documentation in all the BSD distributions seems far superior to Linux DOCS. Linux may have more HOWTO's, and other informal documentation, but when it comes to finding canonical documentation, like in man5 for
I've been very pleased with the results
I almost had trouble reading it. I just kept thinking, "what the hell is he/she talking about?" But then i decided, to just think "huH?"
Although I haven't tried it personally*, everything I've seen and heard points to FreeBSD being the smallest leap from Linux. Once you get past the shallow stability/scalability/performance claims, the two aren't appreciably different.
As for the "emulation", I understand it is pretty good. A coworker of mine used to request Linux builds of a particular piece of software I maintained at work, because he was using it on a FreeBSD box, and I had a Linux box. It all worked without a hitch.
As for claims that some software runs faster, I'm sure it does. In general, software will run slightly differently, which includes some operations running faster and others running slower. FreeBSD and Linux are optimized differently -- this is an artifact of the fact that they're completely different implementations of the same basic POSIX and Unix APIs. I'm sure there's a class of problems that each is better at. Making a broad statement that X is faster than Y is pretty much pointless. (Even if Y is a Microsoft product. ;-) )
In the end, you really need to try out different flavors and find the one you're happiest with. If it seems like too much of a hassle, then perhaps that's a hint that the change won't do you much good.
--Joe(* Note: I did try to install FreeBSD once, but a bug in the Adaptec 7800 driver caused it to trash memory and crash before it even mounted the / partition. (This was a long time ago and I'm sure it's fixed by now. Linux and FreeBSD have been sharing their AIC7xxx code for awhile now.) Since I needed the machine for some hardcore simulation work, and since I already had a working Linux install, I didn't take the time to debug it then, and haven't gotten back around to it since. This isn't a black-mark against FreeBSD in my mind at all relative to Linux: Not only were the FreeBSD developers willing to help, but also my first Linux installs required similar sorts of hand-holding. The two worlds aren't that different. I've just been too lazy to try another Unix when I have something that works well enough for me.)
--
Program Intellivision!
Just pointing out that there IS a way to set immutable files on Linux with the ext2 filesystem. I forget the exact command (it's in the ext2 tools though) but it IS there.
So if you expect to utilize your dual-processor machine, you should consider Solaris x86, Unixware, or Linux, instead of the *BSD's.
Kris
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
Kriston
Suck on fdisk, just wait till you get to disklabel. Then you will show signs of true confusion.
*gripe* I hate it when rpms that install into /usr/local reset my SGID bits and groups.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
I've been tinkering with FreeBSD for nearly a year now and compared to the Linuxen I've experimented with (SuSE, Caldera, Debian, and Slackware), it's easier to keep FreeBSD up to date via the ports tree and CVSup.
But when it comes to the *BSD family, FreeBSD has more merchandise available. Just check out http://www.freebsdmall.com for stickers, hats, shirts, mouse pads, plushies, etc. OpenBSD does have the cool Blowfish shirt, with the C code on the back.
Don't forget that some of the Open Source OS's also design programs that do things easily for you. Other ones, no one does any of the "quick fix/setup" programs, and in that case, it is harder. Redhat Linux is my choice for a first time.
from the author of The Complete FreeBSD:
if you peers are using bsd, use bsd. have no freinds? use linux instead
--
You're a cartoon of rebel! You're all like exaggerated version of yourself! - Gerard Jones
Got a 7000. Be careful about the video! Mines an ATI-Media-P (they upgraded it behind my back.. would be good if xfree worked). Ok, so xfree does work, just is a pain. Check out the linux laptop pages for info on the i7000 to make sure xfree is setup correctly. I've kept putting off spending another hour or two tryingto get the config to work (kept doing something wrong)... hoping to get a desktop soon enough....
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
Not mine, but obviously...it's a joke. I don't know what's funnier...the joke, or the people who responded seriously to it. :-)
Jeremy
Looking for a Python IRC bot?
-Dorsey
www.pobox.com/~dorsey
But he may be referring to freebsds views on outside developers. Outside of you know what. I think some ppl sort of know where he is going with this. Overstated though, sounds like the stuff I write drunk...
Well I have played with the install on all three BSD and I will give you a quick warning off the bat. OpenBSD's install is definitly not for the beginner. I found the install process for NetBSD and FreeBSD both to be much easier, with FreeBSD being the most automated. OpenBSD has a very odd way of setting up partitions. NetBSD has some similarities to OpenBSD as far as partioning goes but somehow NetBSD seemed easier. Those nice text menus I guess. Neither NetBSD nor OpenBSD are going to do a lot of post installation setup for you, running XF86Setup automatically for example. For that you need FreeBSD. FreeBSD takes up two floppies to boot instead of one floppy like the others. All three have ftp install processes which is what I was using, but only OpenBSD and FreeBSD include DHCP support during the FTP install. I find the BSD bootloader nicer than LILO and easier for the newbie at least. NetBSD however has a way to set which partitions are on the menu and label each one. FreeBSD uses the partition type as the label but I wasn't sure how to modify the boot menu. NetBSD seems to boot the fastest. NetBSD and OpenBSD put their base dist in a single file and the kernel in a single file and the X stuff all in one file, with the option of getting small split files. FreeBSD only offers them the small split file way. FreeBSD's ports collection is impressive and generally will stay ahead of the other with some interesting exceptions. For example FreeBSD has ported KDE as of 1.1.1 but NetBSD is up to 1.1.2. Those are just a few of my general impressions of the BSD's but I would suggest trying them out and see which one you like. FreeBSD and NetBSD get my vote over OpenBSD because security is not as critical and I find the install and setup easier. Also NetBSD and FreeBSD both can be downloaded from ftp.cdrom.com and OpenBSD was oddly absent Hmmm?
Several years ago I first installed FreeBSD on a spare 486 at Miami University. We were running a Linux server and Linux just wasn't cutting it. We had a lot of problems with reboots and lost filesystems.
:) Have fun and let us know which one you choose.
So after the first installation of FreeBSD 2.2.2, this thing stayed up and was more responsive that a P166 running Linux. If you just want to play with a UNIX or clone, Linux will get you through your day, but if you are doing real work, FreeBSD is it.
As for the other BSDs, I installed NetBSD on a Mac68k and a MacPPC. In both cases, I was astounded by it. NetBSD is also an incredible system. I have not had much experience with OpenBSD, but the code itself is a direct off-shoot of NetBSD with security tweaks, so I expect the same experience.
But in general, I am sure you will be pleased with any BSD. They are fast, small, and easy systems. They are each present a clean, consistent interface without bogging down the system with unused "features" and bloat as GNU code tends to. The ports system also makes it a snap to install anything from Java to Apache to KDE without anything more than "make install". And without a doubt, my favorite feature of FreeBSD (and the others permit this as well) is the simple upgrade procedure: "make world". Never again will I have to deal with RPMs or dependencies, or precompiled binaries optimzed for a 386sx.
Forgive the French, but...Who the fuck is this AC? Hey..If you want to make a point, make it. Don't screw around with the "loquacious" prose rather than making your point. Thanks
The chattr command allows changing file attributes on an ext2 partition. Here's an excerpt from the man-page:
CHATTR(1) CHATTR(1)
NAME
chattr -changefileattributeson aLinuxsecondextended
file system
SYNOPSIS
chattr [-RV] [-vversion ][mode]files...
DESCRIPTION
chattr changesthefile attributesona Linuxsecond
extendedfilesystem.
The lsattr command allows showing these attributes.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
If I were you I would go down to CompUSA and buy a copy of System Commander from them. Also be prepared to lose all your data when you repartition your hard drive. But when it's all said and done you'll be very happy with your setup. I recently just got through with my setup for dual boot and I'm very happy. Just remember to install win98 first and then install whatever flavor of linux / unix you want to use afterwards. Also put your LILO in the boot partition where you installed linux. Or you won't be able to boot win98.
and most in the ports tree too. This has enhanced their security greatly and adds a lot more security than say locking down a few services. It helps unix in general because the fixes usually get applied to others eventually. No root exploits in 2.5 years is pretty impressive.
You sound almost as bad as the dialogue on the #freebsd channel of efnet ;-)
I had FreeBSD installed on my Alpha for a couple of weeks. I was very disapointed. There appears to be little or no Alpha-specific documentation for FreeBSD, however there are many Alpha-specific issues.
I currently have OpenBSD on that box. Much better, but there are still some problems (no X11 on vga).
Linux seems to be moving faster these days. AFAIK none of the BSD's have decent SMP support yet. NetBSD runs on lots of hardware, but Linux seems to be better optimized on more platforms.
Just my $0.02.
Greg
I have used NetBSD, OpenBSD, and FreeBSD. My judgement is that FreeBSD is the most supported in terms of hardware drivers and software (over 2700 ports compared to roughly 1000 NetBSD and maybe 300 OpenBSD). NetBSD's biggest advantage is the fact that it can run on so many architectures. I do in face use OpenBSD as my main desktop operating system. I use it for the security yes. But it goes beyond that. OpenBSD has many features compiled into the kernel (for security reasons and for drivers) that are not standard on FreeBSD's default kernel (as of 3.2). I know of many people who still dislike recompiling a kernel when they have many boxes to administer so recompiling is a big deal to them. Personally, I enjoy recompiling and getting the most out of the OS. FreeBSD gets most of the attention and it deserves the spotlight. It is a quality operating system with trust and reliability built in. NetBSD I don't see as many people running on x86 with NetBSD). OpenBSD, after the first install, ran all of my hardware perfectly from the first moment. I buy my x86 hardware with Linux and BSD in mind by checking the hardware howto's and seeing what works the best (P2-350, v330, voodoo2, sb16, zoomtel 2919 modem) and they all should work on any UNIX-like OS. The BSDs in general have more centralized information about the OS and programming for it but I believe that linux has more volume in terms of number of articles but not necessarily in terms of quality. Certainly OpenBSD is an operating system that you hack with...no not in that sense :) but you just have to hack it up to get things to work (i.e. the current ports mess right now). But it is a lot of fun and I wouldn't change it for the world. You must have patience with OpenBSD because the only official documentation are the man pages and the openbsd FAQ (which is available in PDF finally). For speed, FreeBSD is still the king and also for the number of applications that run for it. I see more and more applications that are made for Linux and FreeBSD specificially. FreeBSD is great from the install onward. There is a GUI install that allows you to choose all of your packages, plus the ports & packages collection is outstanding. It is worth the 4 CDs for all of the information and applications they give you. It helped me the first time I used BSD by being a previous linux user (redhat, slack, debian) and knowing the general unix setup. Some things to get used to are the BSD sytle setup (unless you are familiar with slack which is not too much different). FreeBSD is a server and/or desktop OS. It rocks at both. OpenBSD is a router and/or firewall OS that some people use in a desktop environment. NetBSD is a server OS that runs on darn near anything except the toaster (future versions might :) My experience with BSD has been a delightful one and I have not run into really any problems. I know the online community and I have friends who also run BSD. There certainly are not as many BSD users as there are linux users (or try and find another OpenBSD user as they are even more scarce). But BSD is not for hand holding. All of the free BSD's in general are tough OS's that take everything that you throw at it and you have to be willing to RTFM and find the FM before you FR it. The BSD's are here to stay and that's also one reason why I run OpenBSD. I enjoy all of the BSDs and I want to continue on that tradition and *not* let it die. There are far more linux programmers so some of us must step up and take the challenge and program for BSD. There is a thing between linux & bsd users (some on either side). I wouldn't pay any attention to all of that. I run BSD but I love the GPL and the BSD license when used in the proper situation. I use g++ and gcc all the time so I am very greatful to the free software foundation. Unix users (commercial and free) must unite together and stick together through out the next century. Unix is a great OS and has had it's share of hardships and quarrels. Let's make sure these are kept to a minimum. Now On with the coding! I prefer to use this "*N?X" instead of "*NIX" since this includes not only UNIX and Berkely UNIX but also LINUX. Long live free software :)
Go to http://www-csag.cs.uiuc.edu/individual/pakin/compl aint and generate your own complaints in the privacy of your own home, but dont bother posting them here. Its a waste of time and it only shows how much of a doofus you are.
I'm gearing up for some undergraduate research in clustering. I've used Linux for a few years now, and I'm very comfortable with it. However, I'm interested if anyone has done any direct comparisons between the performance of *BSD's and Linux as far as clusters are concerned.
BTW, I know that the implementations of MPI/PVM are the same for each platform, but I'm wondering if there are any differences in the TCP/IP performance which is a definite limitation in Beowulf-type clustering.
Also, if anyone has used PAPERS clusters based on BSD I'd be interested in any results.
-- Zurion
I'm not going to reinvent the wheel; the distinction between the 31 flavors has been made abundantly clear. I think it's wise to point out, though, that you shouldn't choose OpenBSD just for security, just because of its vaunted line-by-line audit. I mean, that's a really laudable thing to do (not sure if I know of another OS available to day that can claim that), but a lot of what's been done to OpenBSD can be easily implemented in other operating systems (Unix, anyways). I'm sure OpenBSD users might suffer a few less buffer exploits or TCP/IP attacks in the years to come, but I think most the reasons why OpenBSD is "secure" can be implemented by competent sysadmin in the other BSDs. Thus, if you need compatibility or HW support, but also security, don't be too hesitant to try Net/FreeBSD.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
I am a linux user. I have used WINNT in depth, Win9x, and linux. I have become very interested in FreeBSD and OpenBSD for doing proxying/masquerading. I am not certain if masquerading is available on either of the BSDs, but I intend to investigate. It is good that the BSDs are around. BSD code can be used in closed-source commercial products. One of my friends has followed the history of unix extensively and told me that the tcp/ip stack in most commercial unixes comes from the BSDs. Even M$ uses the BSD tcp/ip stack. Who knows what other parts of the code they use. That might explain why commercial software hasn't flopped yet. At the heart, they are using open-sourced code for the parts of their oses that make the whole product work. Ironic, isn't it? I have heard that FreeBSD is the best choice for a BSD beginner. I don't believe that Linux is necessarily any easier. It may be easier to install (depending on distro) than BSD (I can't confirm that either until I try it), but sooner or later, you have to learn the unix model. My $.02.
Did you actually take my post seriously, or were you just playing along? If that was the case, hehe. :)
I think that "Anonymous Coward" should be changed to "Knee-Jerk Fool who Will Buy Anything" or maybe "I Don't Care What It Is, I Don't Like It"!
Mom: "Billy, stop pulling the cat's tail!"
Billy: "But Mom, I'm NOT pulling! I'm just holding on, the CAT is doing all the pulling!!"
Oh well, that's what I get for trying sublety on a crowd that's into shiny baubles and insincere flattery...
Mr. Natural -- Cat Herder
Playing along, wondering it you actually were going anywhere.. if you were, I'd be interested.. but amusing otherwise. And of course, got enough karma to play around with. :^)
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
I've got to complain here, being a paid Unix guru (well I can dream about the guru bit, but I do admin work) and I'd like to think that you should at least listen to the opinion of the local Guru. He might not be entirely right, but he might be of some use.
It's not really called "emulation" because it's not an emulator. FreeBSD (and others, I'm sure) runs Linux binaries. You can install Linux libraries, even as low-level as the various C libraries floating around for Linux. Technically it's called, in FreeBSD, "Linux mode."
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
I've heard this before from a lot of FreeBSD advocates: "The FreeBSD TCP stack is lightning fast", which of course goes with the implication that the Linux stack is not all it could be.
For the dozens of times I've heard this, I haven't seen any recent benchmark or anything to back up the claim. It should be very simple to compare the two -- you can use exactly the same apps very easily.
I know that the original TCP stack for Linux was not so hot, but I know it was rewritten sometime in 2.0.x (get me if I'm wrong). I'm sure there have been other improvements through 2.1 developement.
I've never used Linux in a high enough bandwidth environment to be able to see the stack at all. On my old k6-200 serving ftp on 10baseT, processor utilization to fill the pipe (perhaps 30 users, so the ftp daemon wasn't costing much) was about 3%.
Anyone have any reports on the two in a 100baseT or gigabit environment?
OK, so it's similar to FreeBSD, but hey, it runs great on PowerPC hardware. Either that or NetBSD's new (as of 1.4) PowerPC port.
Mind you, that assumes the machine(s) in question contain a PowerPC to begin with.
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
I once used fbsd for a week, and then switched to obsd. I have been using that for about two months now. I also once tried to use nbsd, but it didn't support dhcp in the install, and I couldn't force an IP.
I believe there isn't a significant driver difference between the two. The vidio drivers are part of xfree. They both have limited sound driver support. If you care about sound, you should probably use oss with both. The only significant hardware support difference is fbsd can use smp. If that isn't a factor, then obsd's security features and increased stability defenetly make it a better choice.
This one in the AIBO article. Only got a +4 but it's a decent first post.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
thanks
What nonsense! There is a thriving community behind OpenBSD. Subscribe to the misc@openbsd.org mailing list for a few days and you'll see lots of information, much of it very useful. The S/N ratio of the OpenBSD mailing lists is pretty high and there is definitely a community there.
The community seems to be growing in size, too.
After running tests I have found that Linux SMP is about equal to FreeBSD SMP. None of them are up too it compared to Unixen thou. Remember Linux vs NT? SMP problems are being adressed both in Linux and FreeBSD so improvements are comming.
NetBSD - Seems to be aimed at supporting the most architectures possible, very impressive list of systems it runs on.
OpenBSD - It really is a secure OS. I like secure servers. Second best number of architectures supported.
FreeBSD and Linux - Primarily x86 (yes I know they support others, but in my view they're still primarily x86). As a result of thier HEAVY x86 background they've go the best user apps. They're the two platforms that apps are most likely to run on, as a result I classify them as the best Workstation OS's.
Obviously the OS's I've relegated to servers and workstations can do the other job easily.
Zane
All the M$ OS's overwrite the mbr during install. Best to have them installed first, then install linux second.
:)
NT Workstation is best for duel-booting. I take a sick pleasure in knowing that NTLDR boots Debian GNU/Linux on my workstation at work
I'm love Free and OpenBSD, but I have to say, Open may be easy to configure, but I'm not sure how it's easier than FreeBSD. Installation is very simple if you want to use a whole hard drive, but a pain in the ass if you want to put it on a seperate partition. FreeBSD has /stand/sysinstall, which is great for installation and configuration, especially for beginning users. And the Linux emulation, although much better than 2.3 days, still has a ways to go to catch up to Free.
Like I say, I love them both, but I would have to vote for FreeBSD for ease of use and configuration. Of course, it depends what you started on, much of the time...
-lx
Too drunk to not say something about this:
Man pages. Learn perl from the man pages. Perl has the nicest man pages of anything I've ever used, and you should leart perl this way. Start out by manning perlsyn, then take a look at perldata and perlop, perlre is very nice, perlfunc is a must have reference work. After this basic tutorial, perlref and perllol are mind blowingly amazing, and then go and read every singe man page in the toc (man perl).
Screw the camel/lama, whatever, it's all the same stuff written by the same people.
After that I suppose you have to read the source code to all the modules, and then perl itself, and then you can have intelligent conversations with Tom Christiansen et al.
There was a short PC Mag article that was quite good back in Feb or March; I think, maybe older. The writer took a Dell PII 400 and installed NT, Linux and FreeBSD. He then ran Apache and some benchmark that measured the number of pages served per second. It wasn't a extremly scientific test, nor were the machines tuned much. Both Linux and BSD crushed NT. Linux was ahead of FreeBSD under light load, but when the number of connections increased, FreeBSD started to pull ahead. If I remember correctly FreeBSD was about 2x as fast as NT and maybe 10-15% faster then Linux under heavey load. It was a really good one page article. I wish I still had it.
Hi, I am a partner of Nightfall Security Group, a San Diego based computer security thinktank which favors BSD over the other varieties of UNIX based operating systems. For security, OpenBSD wins hand down. OpenBSD has a very spartan feeling about it, the installation is text based and it requires some previous knowledge of tcp/ip, filesystems and various UNIX things. Theo, who heads the OpenBSD project is very proud that OpenBSD has had only a couple vulnerabilities found in it, since it's tenure, and most, if not all of them dealt with third-party applications. On the other hand, FreeBSD is Nightfall Security Group's choice for our servers, while OpenBSD is for our firewalls. FreeBSD in our experience is the most efficient and stable operating system that we have encountered regularly. You can bang FreeBSD with all that you got and chances are it will take it and bounce it right back. FreeBSD's security is also very good, like all BSDs, but because there primary focus is performance the FreeBSD core team does not review the source code with such scrutiny for vulnerabilities as the OpenBSD team does. FreeBSD's installation is very GUI and FreeBSD comes with a pretty complete set of drivers. Overall, FreeBSD is the most useable BSD out there. NetBSD is one of the most portable operating systems in existence. If you go to the NetBSD website, at www.netbsd.org, you will find a link to a list of hardware architectures that it can run on. The list is absolutely astounding. NetBSD lacks in our opinion true stability and their scrutiny of code for vulnerabilties needs improving. But, if you need an operating system to run on a very outdated or unique piece of hardware chances are it already has been ported to it, or it will soon. For more information you can always visit NFSG's website at www.nfsg.org - skalore@nfsg.org
skalore@nfsg.org
Chairman of TooRcon (www.toorcon.com)
skalore@nfsg.org
Founder of ToorCon (www.toorcon.com)
CTO of Nightfall Security Group (www.nfsg.org)
First, it's still useful against the "broken program" attack, where the attacker guides a broken privileged program to change a file. The broken program is unlikely blindly clearing immutable flags.
Second, the process doing the chattr needs the correct capability to actually do the chattr call. To get a similar effect to securelevel, you can revoke this capability at bootup from all running processes.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
Linux is the "WinTel hardware world"?!?
Just off the top of my head, I can think of several platforms that Linux runs on:
- PPC
- x86
- ARM
- SPARC
- Alpha
You BSD guys just never give it a rest, do you?--
Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page
As has been mentioned above, OpenBSD's primary goal is security. The OpenBSD project is commited to being the most secure product out there. Another advantage of OpenBSD is integrated crypto. US crypto laws do not apply since their "headquarters" is in Canada.
From http://www.openbsd.org/security.html:
Our security auditing team typically has between six and twelve members who continue to search for and fix new security holes. We have been auditing since the summer of 1996. The process we follow to increase security is simply a comprehensive file-by-file analysis of every critical software component. We are not so much looking for security holes, as we are looking for basic software bugs, and if years later someone discovers a the problem used to be a security issue, and we fixed it because it was just a bug, well, all the better. Flaws have been found in just about every area of the system. Entire new classes of security problems have been found during our audit, and often source code which had been audited earlier needs re-auditing with these new flaws in mind. Code often gets audited multiple times, and by multiple people with different auditing skills.
If one is running multiple architectures or arcane/strange ones, a cool thing about NetBSD is that it is supported on many platforms. Their motto is "Of course it runs NetBSD."
Ben Higgins
I have been using Linux since 1994, and about a month ago gave FreeBSD a try. WOW, it is great. Everything about it is so well thought out, everything works, and works well. I wish that I had tried it years ago. I admin about 6 Linux servers, and now am in the process of moving a few over to BSD. I am not giving up on Linux, mind you, but I sure as hell am going to be using a lot of BSD from now on. The package management on FreeBSD blows all of the Linux systems away.
I am very impressed with the FreeBSD file system FFS/UFS, unplu a running box, and your file system does'nt get shot to hell like it does with ext2. Just give it a try, and you too will soon have Linux and BSD side by side in your server closet!
I recently installed FreeBSD 3.3 on a cheap Compaq I got from uBid. I am now happily using it as my main desktop box. The ports collection is awesome.
Netscape 4.61 for Linux runs very well (meaning it only seg faults every few hours); JDK 1.2 runs well, even with the JIT; and I've heard reports of even Oracle working on FreeBSD (?)
I still run both Linux and FreeBSD for different reasons. I have an old box with an ISA card that makes FreeBSD cough a lung serving NFS (this is a documented bug), so I installed RedHat 6.x and struggled with its experimental kernel NFS instead. Choose your poison!
Naaa, he's too stupid to be considered a BSD guy -- just read that rambling post! Don't blame him, blame the moderators for moderating before reading. DUHHHHHH
How unfortunate my
Worse than an untouchable, when I reincarnate I'll be lucky to return as bacteria.
Probably somebody who picked the "Complain about a company/organization" option for Scott Pakin's automatic complaint-letter generator, supplying "NetBSD" as the name of the company/organization, specified that it should generate 5 paragraphs, hit the "Complain" button, and pasted the results into a Slashdot comment.
I'll address just this point, never mind the rest *cough*.
Two reasons why this won't happen:
Please produce some source code for a real app whos linux bin executes faster on freebsd then on linux.
Stay away from Debian as a newbie? I would say it might be prefereable for a newbie. The key being getting in touch with the Debian community, be it through the mailing lists or whatever, and trying to learn as you go along. That and RTFM, but that pretty much applies to any linux/BSD newbie experience. As for RedHat as a newbie, I think it makes things very easy, but that can be very dangerous. A newbie doesn't know to remove un-needed daemons, use TCP wrappers, and not log in as root. If the install goes easy, and the installer pampers you, you forget the power that you are weilding with that CLI. Speaking as someone who started with RedHat and then quickly left for Debian and the BSDs, all of them are easy to use if you ask for help and RTFM.
itachi
NOTE! This is insecure by far. One should mount without suid! Things like su just rebooted my system (good reason too).
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
since they are so similar, it could just be
the little details like the installation.
example, ibm thinkpad 701. you probably want
the easiest/fastest install in case you want to
do it again. turns out the freebsd could not
detect its hard drive. netbsds install did not
offer to clear the MBR which had lilo on it
(when i got it, it had linux on it)
so it runs openbsd.
i still think openbsd is
easier to install than the other two, except
that you do cant just use a default partition
table, but i never do that anyway.
I've installed all three of the free BSD Unix variants in the last few weeks, and have to say that the OpenBSD installation is by far the easiest of the three. I guess I'm weird, but I like a no-frills, just-the-facts-maam installation. It installs everything you need, and then some. Out of the box, it's tight and stable. Given a few patches (available at www.openbsd.org) to take care of a couple little niggling bugs, recompilation of the system, and the installation of a couple packages from /usr/ports, it's up and running smoothly and flawlessly. FreeBSD - well, I installed Free and ran it for a while. It has a *ton* of stuff with its system, most of which actually works. The only thing I can say here is that it seemed less "tight" than OpenBSD. One day, my X configuration worked. The next day, after having changed exactly *nothing*, my window manager mysteriously stopped working. Then, the next day, X refused to come up at all. So, I wiped it out. It didn't seem very well put-together at that point (v3.2). NetBSD - its installer is less straightforward than OpenBSD. It uses a somewhat curses-type installer on x86, and it's a little less than flexible. For instance, I couldn't convince it to install the system to two disks (having a couple of smallish disks is an unfortunate reality on a couple of my machines). At any rate, I had to set up the slices on wd0, reboot and pretend to want to install to wd1 and set up the slices there, and then reboot again (because I wanted / on wd0a), suspend the installer after having "set up" wd0 again, and mount wd1a to /usr before resuming. After that little bit of hacking around, the system installed normally. The mouse device still eludes me, though, and I've not the time to deal with it currently. On OpenBSD, it's /dev/psm0. On NetBSD, from which Open is derived back in the mists of time, even after compiling in the wscons console drivers and setting things up, /dev/wsmouse won't allow the mouse to work. It, too, is less "tight" than OpenBSD in my opinion, but in a different way. There seems to be a spirit of technological innovation in the NetBSD camp that the other BSDs benefit from greatly. Witness RAIDFrame, pciide, etc. migrating from Net to Open. Softupdates originated in, I believe, FreeBSD, and was ported into OpenBSD. Some of the better parts of FreeBSD's userland made it to OpenBSD and was audited and changed. Some of it made it back to Free and even back into Net. So, there's a lot of cross-pollination between all of them. YMMV, of course, but my miles will be run on Open. --Corey
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
I guess I'm weird, but I like a no-frills, just-the-facts-maam installation. It installs everything you need, and then some. Out of the box, it's tight and stable. Given a few patches (available at www.openbsd.org) to take care of a couple little niggling bugs, recompilation of the system, and the installation of a couple packages from /usr/ports, it's up and running smoothly and flawlessly.
FreeBSD - well, I installed Free and ran it for a while. It has a *ton* of stuff with its system, most of which actually works. The only thing I can say here is that it seemed less "tight" than OpenBSD. One day, my X configuration worked. The next day, after having changed exactly *nothing*, my window manager mysteriously stopped working. Then, the next day, X refused to come up at all. So, I wiped it out. It didn't seem very well put-together at that point (v3.2).
NetBSD - its installer is less straightforward than OpenBSD. It uses a somewhat curses-type installer on x86, and it's a little less than flexible. For instance, I couldn't convince it to install the system to two disks (having a couple of smallish disks is an unfortunate reality on a couple of my machines). At any rate, I had to set up the slices on wd0, reboot and pretend to want to install to wd1 and set up the slices there, and then reboot again (because I wanted / on wd0a), suspend the installer after having "set up" wd0 again, and mount wd1a to /usr before resuming. After that little bit of hacking around, the system installed normally. The mouse device still eludes me, though, and I've not the time to deal with it currently. On OpenBSD, it's /dev/psm0. On NetBSD, from which Open is derived back in the mists of time, even after compiling in the wscons console drivers and setting things up, /dev/wsmouse won't allow the mouse to work. It, too, is less "tight" than OpenBSD in my opinion, but in a different way.
There seems to be a spirit of technological innovation in the NetBSD camp that the other BSDs benefit from greatly. Witness RAIDFrame, pciide, etc. migrating from Net to Open. Softupdates originated in, I believe, FreeBSD, and was ported into OpenBSD. Some of the better parts of FreeBSD's userland made it to OpenBSD and was audited and changed. Some of it made it back to Free and even back into Net. So, there's a lot of cross-pollination between all of them.
YMMV, of course, but my miles will be run on Open.
--Corey
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
though I have not used NetBSD or OpenBSD, I have used both FreeBSD and Linux, and one thing I have definitely noticed is that in low-RAM situations, FreeBSD seems to run decidedly more smoothly.
My machine is a Pentium 133 w/16 megs of RAM, so if I am running Netscape Communicator, i have about 22 megs of stuff in the swap partition. Any Window Managers other than FVWM are out of the question, and despite that, Communicator still dies fairly often.
FreeBSD, though, will let me use Communicator with KDE, and on top that, I have never had Navigator die on me.
How this info matters to a more powerful machine is beyond me, but what it means to me is that I see no good reason to be using anything other than FreeBSD - I use only x86 computers, so there's no compatibility gap there which would justify another unix, and security is not a big issue for me since I am just running a desktop which I doubt anybody would put much effort into cracking, anyway.
I like the FreeBSD 'make world' (rebuild entire system from sources). Does NetBSD or OpenBSD have this as well?
OK, I've had experience with FreeBSD 2.2.8, 3.1, and OpenBSD 2.3.
So here's my personal opinion: for intel computers that have a single processor, use OpenBSD. For intel processors with more than one CPU, use FreeBSD. For other architectures, you may get to choose between OpenBSD and NetBSD, and I'd say go with OpenBSD first. Why?
First, FreeBSD supports multiple processors, and the other two don't. I'm planning on donating an old SMP pentium to encourage such development, but right now it's not there.
Otherwise, I recommend OpenBSD because its security enhancements are significant. It's FTP server is certainly more secure than wuftpd or Proftpd, and I'm pretty sure it's more secure than the NetBSD and FreeBSD FTP servers. More secure in a 'no longer able to get root through FTP' kind of way, which I would consider significant. Similarly with most everything else; things that today are called theoretical security problems are tomorrow's great exploits in the CERT advisories.
As for NetBSD, there really are a lot of computers you might scoff at, that can run a perfectly acceptable set of small services under NetBSD. And hey, if you can't do "real computing" on that Mac IIci in your closet, you can still use it as a damned fine terminal in whatever room in your house still doesn't have an internet connection. Don't underestimate how many computers you can suddenly find yourself being able to use again, with NetBSD. As far as I know, both FreeBSD's and OpenBSD's linux emulation is great, to the point that huge commercial products (most noticable Netscape and Star Office) run fine; OpenBSD (and possibly NetBSD?) also has a wide collection of OS emulation possibilities, depending on the architecture it's running on (i.e., expect emulation for most UNIX binaries for the given platform, if you tell the kernel so). Similarly, KDE and suchlike UI enhancements run fine, which means that the old saw about the BSD's not being for the desktop is hogwash; administration isn't more difficult, it's just different.
So, aside from my preference for OpenBSD when it's a possibility (and OpenBSD comes from the NetBSD tree, so you can run OpenBSD on that Mac IIci too), go with whatever works.
--Matthew
Well, if it's so much better, why doesn't Linux use it? Or is it dependant on kernel features Linux doesn't have or something?
I just spent the last 2 weeks playing with OpenBSD on two 486's at home. I've posted a diary of sorts here. I really like OpenBSD. In fact I may switch my last linux box over to OpenBSD in the next week or two. Too bad, I was really enjoying being able to listen to WWOZ on RealPlayer. Does anyone know if the FreeBSD realplayer works with OpenBSD 2.5?
jim
Go figure.
ok, ok,
the automatic complaint thing was funny once or twice, but it's getting very tired now.
Stop, please.
dave
I'd have to agree with the others in that you should gradually jump off the microsoft plank with Caldera 2.3 or another linux distro. I'd also highly recommend a book called "Learning the Unix Operation" by O'Reilly It's a great book if you've been stuck in that crazy wintel world for too long.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
mind exploring that thought a little more?
Any suggestions as to which BSD, or Linux for that matter, would be best as an NFS server?
I've got a Pentium motherboard to recycle, 64MB RAM, IBM IDE drive, Netgear TULIP NIC, enough to put together a server with no additional expense. Needs to serve NFS to a SS10 running Solaris and a PC running Linux. The PC runs W98 once and a while, so SAMBA would be good, too.
The last time I tried Linux as an NFS server, performance was poor. But that was some time ago.
It's been eons since I last used BSD - 4.2? - but the cobwebs could probably be swept out.
I'd have to agree with the others in that you should gradually jump off the microsoft plank with Caldera 2.3 or another linux distro. I'd also highly recommend a book called "Learning the Unix Operating System" by O'Reilly It's a great book if you've been stuck in that crazy wintel world for too long.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
NetBSD 1.4 alpha
$uptime
11:35PM up 156 days, 3:04, 4 users, load averages: 1.21, 1.01, 0.69
NetBSD's stability looks fine here. :) 156 days w/ absolutely no signs of degradation. That's 156 days since the initial setup up the machine (i.e., after transferring data from a different-type filesystem and building a custom kernel), and my first experience with NetBSD. Of course, the FreeBSD box next to it has a similar uptime (as has the Linux box..)
I think it says something about all of them that the most limiting factor for uptime is the size of your UPS and eagerness to upgrade.
Regarding the original topic at hand, I think it really depends on how eager the poster is to jump head-first into a real unix environment. I personally think it's nice to learn it the hard way first, so you know the underlying principles and can easily pick up new flavors.
Of course, if you don't care about OS or having unix skills, the one with the easiest install and prettiest out-of-the-box desktop configuration would be the obvious choice, imho. The only 2 unices I've really used as workstation os's have been Linux and Solaris, though, so I can't really comment on how the BSD's compare.. (fwiw, Linux beats Solaris to a pulp in that department, and I suspect *BSD would, too)
I started as a linux user many years ago.. about the time 1.2.12 was released. At that time I tried out all the distributions etc. and ended up using Debian for ages. (I still have files in /etc dated in 1995.. I managed to keep the same install going that long). In those days I just hacked around on linux and wrote code and had fun. A year or so ago I got a job as an admin/programmer at a fairly small ISP. The previous admin had already been running Debian and I was quite happy to continue this. I decided to give OpenBSD a try not long ago mostly because Theo DeRaadt lives in Calgary, which is not too terribly far from here, and I was also interested in the security aspects, for use at work. "Security and correctness of code" caught my eye too. I'm not sure how things went from this to now.. but at this point I have a much greater tendancy to lean on OpenBSD as my first choice to solve a problem. Debian IMHO has spiraled out of control. It's fine when you are using it for something non-critical, like a workstation or for fun at home, but the last stable release was far too long ago, and there's no way you'd want to run devel/unstable Debian on a server. One of the big things that strike me about OpenBSD is its maturity. Each peice of the core system is either mature, or there's nothing there. You won't find any alpha code in what is shipped. For many things that I do at work, this is a huge bonus over what linux has to offer. I recently spent about 4 hours trying to get NAT with port redirection working on linux (after having a junior monkey with install and getting drivers for the 3c509C's working etc.). This was very discouraging, so I installed OpenBSD on it and had it up and configured in about an hour.. this and it's guarenteed to be more secure. All this code is in 'alpha' state in Linux! It's silly.. they rewrite things every kernel release.. Same deal with RAID on Linux. (And this is from direct personal experience.) Now, the other bonus of OpenBSD of course, is its much hyped security... and I'll absolutely swear by this. They really do go over every line and make sure its *correct*. Not just secure, but *correct*. This makes for a very good system. And for all those out there that say this stuff gets integrated into other OS's, it's not completely true. There are enough differences from OpenBSD and the other BSD's (and certainly Linux) that line by line audits don't apply to the others.. and no one else is doing this. Does it make the system harder to use ? No, I wouldn't say that at all. It's not much different from other systems, in fact I find it quite pleasant, there's just not nearly as many buffer overflows, or /tmp races etc. to worry about. The other argument I here is that any box can be made secure with a good admin. While this is certainly true a good extent, and a great deal of the security of the system is on the admins shoulders, there's also a lot to be said for having reliable tools to base a system on. The classic example right now is ftpd's. How many buffer overflows have we seen lately in ProFTPD and wu-ftpd ? How do you make a system secure when you start with that as a base ? And we're only talking about remote exploits. The number of holes skyrocket when you start looking at local vulnerabilities as well. Is the admin supposed to remove everything to make it secure ? There are some (for me minor) downsides. A lot of the new software coming out is written on Linux and porting it to OpenBSD sometimes requires a bit of work. In general though all the best stuff ends up in ports and there's binary packages of it. The last thing I'd like to address is the community. There are certainly not nearly as many OpenBSD users as linux, but they are all knowledgable and are hard core free software lovers as much or more so than any Linux user. It reminds me a lot of how Linux was in the early days. And yes, there are a few bigots around, but personally I don't mind this, and I don't think they are too concerned about attracting every user they possibly can in general, so the attitude is often unhindered. To wrap up I'd like to remind you that these rants come from someone who has used and loved Linux for years. I still use it daily and I still enjoy it, but I am often discouraged by a lot of the things I see when trying to make reliable systems (both security and system wise). im!spam!ain@netidea.com
Anyone? Where do I download FreeBSD so I can install it. I have no accessability to the CDs, at all.
As a former newbie who started linux with Debian, my experience was totally awful. There was no default pager for the man pages, so what you ended up with was the instructions for learning how to use linux flying by at 8 billion miles an hour. I RTFM'ed with a good linux book and figured out how to use the export function, but still, I shouldn't have needed to do that. Debian is basically the embodiment of the things that are wrong with linux. They mean well and their goal is noble, but they get easily tripped up on the common sense thing. Redhat's much better. Some people may consider Redhat to be on the side of evil and Debian to be on the side of good, but to quote Dark Helmet "Evil will win because good is dumb".
The *BSDs will do almost exactly the same things as Linux, only a lot more painfully. FreeBSD may be slightly better in a few respects, but for personal use, it's the same except it's harder to install, there are less people to help you out, and there is less hardware support. Those who are concerned about security certainly should look at OpenBSD, but seriously, there are a lot better things you could be doing with your time (and your mind) than learning about something which is semantically different but nearly functionally identical.
No, you walk Windows 98 (softly, and carrying a big stick).
> So, I ask: Is *BSD as easy/hard to learn as > Linux?
Yes. (-:
> Can I/ Should I start with FreeBSD?
Yes. Start with Anything But Microsoft. Your mileage will vary whatever you do, but with any of Linux/*BSD you can at least find out what's going on, and there are very good odds that whatever your problem is, there are tools to fix it - and it will stay fixed. It is hard to emphasise what a relief this last point is to a tech support person! (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...is which of the systems you mentioned support the hardware in your machine. Coming from the Windows world, it can be easy to forget that the OS might not have drivers for your hardware.
:) as to which distro would be best. My ideas for this right now are (in no particular order), RedHat, Caldera, and Debian. RedHat simply because I've dealt with it a little before, though I have no real attachment to it. Caldera because I've heard the install is simpler, though this isn't really a significant issue to me. I'm kinda curious about Debian, I see a lot of people on /. who seem to like it better than the other distros, but I've never really seen an explanation of why/what's different.
:-)
I'd like to ask everyone out there, since I really don't know much about Linux or *BSD, where is a good place to find out what hardware has Linux and/or BSD drivers? I'm thinking of installing Linux again (I had installed RedHat a couple of times before and played with it a bit a couple of years ago, but don't have it installed now). I would try BSD but I want one of those GeForce-based cards, and nVidia seems to have Linux drivers but not BSD.
I'm also curious (though somewhat wary of starting a flame war
Background-wise, I'm primarily a Windows user, though I have some basic Unix knowledge. The ease of installation isn't all that big of a deal, so I'm leaning more towards Debian or RedHat. Though I might try another distro if someone gives me a good reason why it might be better for me. My main concerns, ie things I'd want/need to be able to set up without extreme amounts of hassle (though I realize there's bound to be some):
1. An appropriate desktop environment, I like the looks of GNOME, though I won't rule out KDE.
2. Sound. All those mp3s
3. Web/email, but I figure I can just use Netscape Communicator for this (unless there's a better email app?)
4. FTP client and server.
5. An office suite, or possibly just a word processor. WordPerfect?
6. Gcc and the like, since I'm trying to get a little experience coding. I'd just need C and C++ compilers.
Anyone have a suggestion as to which distro might be best? I'd really appreciate any information/insight you could provide.
Thanks,
Stradivarius
I had a project where we needed to use the Linux version of MpegTV on FreeBSD under the Linux emulator. The problem was that if MpegTV crashed, it didn't clean up the SYSV shared memory segments it was using. After about a dozen crashes the FreeBSD box was out of shm and had to be rebooted. This is _not_ something you should have to do with a Unix!
I haven't encountered the problem on native Linux.
Of course the problem could just as well be in the implementation of SYSV shm on FreeBSD.
I was on the OpenBSD page, and I found it won't support dual CPU machines. I'm sure FreeBSD and/or NetBSD will... Why are the versions forked?
Especially OpenBSD, it seems like they should be handing their bugfixes back to be folded into regular BSD, and simply releasing a distro with less services and more encryption.
FreeBSD seems like it should just be #ifdef i386 code in the main release. I mean, why have a seperate fork for (mainly) intel machines?
Seems weird. Like it was decided for political instead of convenience reasons.
I am writing this on a Linux version of 4.08 Netscape running on a FreeBSD 3.3 Box.
It still has the inevitable Netscape quirks, but all in all not to bad.
Its good to break stuff with Red Hat; its easily re-installed and after a while you start not to panic when you've just broken something important. Debian on the other hand is meant more for Gurus (just ask MY Guru!). I personally run Slackware 4.0, but I spent about six months breaking Red Hat. I don't have anything against Debian for power users, but remember that this fellow is switching from Win98; its all well and good to shout 'RTFMYSC! Start with Debian!' but the sheer amount of options with Debian and the fact that you have to know something about linux to begin with to use it properly means ...
So take your entire HD, figure out how much swap space you want, subtract that number and make your primary partition first, then add the swap. If you make the swap the first partition it gets ugly (in my experience).
Cheap, not totally accurate, but it worked nice for me.
Once you're done, add the initial packages you want, and your system is pretty much ready to be added to using pkg_add and an ftp:// URL.
And buy the CD-Roms, they come with stickers :)
-- The unsig...
The two things that definitely convinced me te use FreeBSD are the ports collection and cvsup.
The ports enable you to install 2000 different utilities with a single "make install".
cvsup allows you to keep up with all security patches with a 5 line script that is cronned every week.
But after using it for some time (after being a Linux user), the total consistency of the system is another good argument (although this is not a specific FreeBSD argument...)
-- Nothing is as subjective as reality --
I am going to try to answer the Original Question to the best of my ability:
/eye-suh-kemp/ built-in to the OS, many crypto libs built-in, etc).
;> I've seen NetBSD and OpenBSD on laptops before, however, so it still mostly depends on what you are going to be using and doing with your machine (of course).
is there really much of a difference in security and performance among the BSDs? Do any of the BSDs have any features that sets it apart from the others (for example, does one work better on laptops than the others?) I am more concerned in the performance, stability and security than packaging or an easy install process.
1. Security and Performance Issues
1.1 All three BSD's (and Unix or Unix-like Operating Systems) are server-class, carrier-class, and datacenter-ready applications geared specifically for performance, stability, and security. There may be other OS's that excel [Unix and Unix-like OS's] in one of these three fields, but never in all of them. Plus, Unix is an actual useable OS when compared to say, OpenVMS, MVS, VOS, OS/900, etc. I am specifically speaking from a mid-range perspective.
1.2 My point is this: any good Unix implementation will have you fully covered (assuming you know what you are doing) for security and performance. I do not believe that security and performance issues vary WILDLY between Unix and Unix-like OS's. (well, see below)
1.3 If your goal is development, and not implementation, then you may have to shop around. For example,
1.3.1 OpenBSD is great if you would like to rid Unix of the evil problem of buffer/heap overflows and poorly written code as far as SECURITY goes. It also includes SERIOUS Userland material for security-awareness (it has IPSEC and a keyserver for ISAKMP
1.3.2 FreeBSD is great for the Internet Server market it was geared for. It is simply BSD for the masses, but it does an EXCELLENT job in this manner. If you are not a coder and looking to help a project on the Internet -- this is it. If you are a coder and like to see your code actually used and cherished by it's users/implementors, this may also be a great and exciting development evironment for you.
1.3.3 NetBSD has probably the cleanest implementation of Unix code anyone has ever laid eyes on. I mean, this stuff is *solid*. If you are ever interested in SERIOUS kernel development, this OS is like the BIBLE. It is so clean and bug-free, it's simply amazing. They need a lot more developers to get where they want to be. Only for serious low-level hardware hackers, display hackers, device driver writers, and the like! But you will be very happy little coders.
2. Userland Support (such as Laptop support)
2.1 FreeBSD has all the Userland support you will be looking and expecting to find. This may not neccesarily be true under NetBSD and OpenBSD.
2.2 Most serious advocates of OpenBSD and NetBSD run FreeBSD on their laptops
3. My take on the BSD's for maximizing Performance, Stability, and Security (versus ease of use / ease of install)
3.1 FreeBSD is the easiest to deal with. It has the most documentation. It has the best driver support for say, NIC cards under x86 (this is probably true in general for x86 arch -- the FreeBSD network driver support is insanely awesome). It has the long-standing Vendor support that Linux has (one example: Accelerated-X, however, there are many more). If you are building a generic BSD server or workstation, this is the OS you probably want to do it on.
3.2 NetBSD is better than FreeBSD in all three areas. But the Userland support lacks in some ways. Since most people change around Userland into something completely different ANYWAYS -- this might not be an issue for you. If you already expect *LOTS* of development, than this is the OS you want to do it on. But, if you expect certain Unix Userland things to be there, you might find them missing or at least Under/Un-Documented. FreeBSD fills in those places, but at a slight cost of performance and stability.
3.3 OpenBSD is great for "Community", especially "Hacker community" environments. If you want to crack your life away, than this is the OS you belong in. It allows you to at least attempt to give out shell accounts and sleep well at night. I wouldn't do this with any other OS, and believe me, you will end up modifying OpenBSD to hell and back by the time you feel semi-confident with it. But, there is already a lot of work done with OpenBSD to guard against Userland attacks. FreeBSD or NetBSD will have all of the regular security stuff you are looking for (IPSEC, SSH, etc) and you can build a lot into FreeBSD or NetBSD for security (as much or MORE than any other Unix OS). But if you want all that stuff to play with right away, OpenBSD has it by default.
4. Final Discussion
Well, it's totally up to you. Check out all three homepages. Read up. And the best answer is probably, "Use what your friends use". I am a BSD bigot. If it were up to me, I would never want to use Linux again. But, everyone at work uses Linux. So, I either a) have to turn them all over to the darkside -or- b) become a Linux-head myself. But then again, I've fought the same battle for years at companies about Windows. I just enjoy an OS that actually works. And IMHO, it's got to be a *BSD.
Can anyone provide me with some pointers as to how to make FreeBSD as secure as possible? (Its FreeBSD 3.3 running).
Virtual Fish
I tried to install FreeBSD, but it didn't support my network card. I talked to one of the guys at work and he seemed to want to tell me that it was my fault, and I should just go out and buy a new network card to use with BSD.
If openBSD's code is so safe and secure because they audit their code, why doesn't Linux do the same? Is it because no one wants to initiate and maintain such a project?
-----
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
The bottom line is that not all Linux software will run under FreeBSD. The non-trivial applications that can run under FreeBSD are not seamless drop-ins. Extra configuration work and "tricks" are usually required. Been there, done that. Don't believe the hype. Anyone who would claim that Linux software "works perfectly" under FreeBSD is dishonest and intent on promoting an agenda rather than the truth.
I tried OpenBSD out of curiosity, and I found that its multitasking performance was significantly worse than either Linux or FreeBSD. While doing compiling, or just running CPU-intensive programs in the background (some simulations), I found the mouse to get very jerky under X, Netscape slowed to a crawl, etc. The other OS's just chugged along and it was difficult to notice any other processes running until the load hit 3.0 or so.
This was version 2.5 of OpenBSD. Anyone else see this? Machine is a K6-200 w/ 128 meg RAM. I would like to use OpenBSD as a firewall, but if it performs like it did before, forget it.
I ordered freebsd 3.3-Stable the other day; I booted into the cd-install only to find that it didn't work I couldn't install it properly: Walnut creek told me- "The iso image on our FTP site mysterously fails to boot on IDE/ATAPI cd-rom drives" Great. Just wonderful. Walnut creek is a rip. I now have a cd that can be used as a coaster. Dave Sims ======================================== dave@solprov.com.au
If practice makes perfect but nobodies perfect, why bother practising?
Everyone recommends Caldera OpenLinux for newbies, but I wonder how many recommenders have actually tried it. I have some older computers (a 486/66 aand a Pentium 90). RedHat 5.2 and 6.0 and SuSE 6.0 and 6.0 all installed easily and worked well. Caldera (2.2) proved to be either uninstallable or a royal pain (and was not set up well when all was said and done). Perhaps if one has a newish, middle-of-the-road computer it works. I wouldn't know. When I finally got a Pentium 2 to play with, I didn't even bother with Caldera.
I like RedHat but really like SuSE (except for it's imposition of an unnecessary choice between primitive sound card configuration procedures and commercial sound drivers)
Michael Kerpan
Credo quia impossibilis -- Tertullian
Along with sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste, FreeBSD has recently included support for telepathy, nonlinear temporal awareness, and artificial compassion.
Ok, I've read basically that FreeBSD has the best support for the x86 platform, but I've also heard NetBSD is very well designed and written and fast.
So which is "fastest"? If I want to stick a *BSD on an old or even mediocre Pentium class machine...which of these is optimized for that, and would I be able to recompile with optimizations for my chip? E.g., Stampede Linux is compiled with pgcc which is optimized for pentiums...can I get that sort of optimization from a *BSD?
I'm actually considering to install some form of Linux, and I guess it could be an ask slashdot itself. I've looked at Slackware, and Debian for its package features, and Stampede for its optimization.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
u sound like using windows 98 is a grave sin. this is a free world. this not like a christian practicing christianity in the muslim world.
OS X Server is a nice BSD with a very nice GUI and 4gl IDE.
No reference counting?
/* number of current attaches */
...
short shm_nattch;
What's that? Look at shmctl(2)
As a side note, those nifty Solar Designer patches for 2.2 will free shm allocations when they are totally detached. Very nice for shell boxes with evil lusers.
My two cents... I used Linux for a while but I switched to OpenBSD because I got a Sparc and have never looked back...Setup/install was a breeze. I like the security. If its an Intel type machine I would go with FreeBSD though. Setup/install is outstanding with that. FreeBSD on a laptop runs well, too.
I enjoy OpenBSD.
Just a curiosity, but the OpenBSD web site doesn't say if the "line by line" code audit was an ongoing thing. It looks to me like they did it once. I'm not trying to be snide. Is it reall all that secure now?
A while back I installed FreeBSD onto my system for experimental purposes, after I had troubles with Linux's kernel compatibility with my NE2000 NIC.
I did an FTP install of FreeBSD, and the process was as smooth as silk. I was very suprised! I could not believe I spent dozens of hours with Linux, and then I was farther ahead with FreeBSD in only a few.
For one reason for another, I had to loose my FreeBSD partitions, and now I kind of miss it. I see there is a new version out, 3.3, and I will probably give it a try when I get time.
As for Linux, it needs some more time in the oven, but that is not a bad thing. The time is not right for Linux now, but next year I believe Linux will realy take off, and the BSDs will probably tag along with it.
--EC
EverCode
I myself have had no prior experience to working with unix, or even dos, before I picked up a copy of the FreeBSD CD release about a month ago. If you find all of this *nix stuff interesting, then its definitely worth it. Granted, it took me a week to get my window/file manager to play nice with each other (I don't think that kde installed correctly the first time), and another 2 weeks to configure my printer - but the way I see it, I'm learning some serious tools that will help me in the future. The next time won't be as difficult, I think. Granted, I don't have PPP up on that machine yet, but I've got AbiWord!! :) I say, definately go with FreeBSD, especially if you have a somewhat older machine (mine's a P100 with 1GB and 16 Megs of RAM). It seems that the memory requirements for FreeBSD is a little less taxing in that area, compared to what Red Hat and SUSE recommends (32 megs RAM for GUI, 600+ Megs of hard disk space). Of course it's difficult. But as they say, nothing worth doing is easy. Just be prepared to read a LOT of documentation, and utilize the online help resources (I'm assuming that you have a computer at work that you can use for this in the meantime, like I do), and dive in! -adrian
We use FreeBSD religiously on all of our servers. (About 9, by now) and most of the staff has found themselves installing FreeBSD on their development servers. People still seem to install Red Hat on their workstations (6.1 is pretty freaking cool) but I even found myself turning my Slackware Linux server into a FreeBSD server. Before I settled on FreeBSD, I tried OpenBSD on it and, while I was disappointed at first over the speed hit (logging in takes a good 4 seconds), I told myself it was worth it for the maniacal levels of security I'd have. Well, that stopped reassuring me because every so often, accessing a file would block a process indefinately in the kernel, meaning that I can't even break out the kill -9 on it. I upgraded from OpenBSD 2.5 to a 2.6 development snapshot and still had the problem. I'm guessing it's the IDE driver at fault. Oh well. FreeBSD is neat, we love it. -MB
We use FreeBSD religiously on all of our servers.
(About 9, by now) and most of the staff has found themselves installing FreeBSD on their development servers.
People still seem to install Red Hat on their workstations (6.1 is pretty freaking cool) but I even found myself turning my Slackware Linux server into a FreeBSD server.
Before I settled on FreeBSD, I tried OpenBSD on it and, while I was disappointed at first over the speed hit (logging in takes a good 4 seconds), I told myself it was worth it for the maniacal levels of security I'd have.
Well, that stopped reassuring me because every so often, accessing a file would block a process indefinately in the kernel, meaning that I can't even break out the kill -9 on it.
I upgraded from OpenBSD 2.5 to a 2.6 development snapshot and still had the problem. I'm guessing it's the IDE driver at fault.
Oh well. FreeBSD is neat, we love it.
-MB
Though my BSD experience is quite limited (I've piddled around with FreeBSD before) I am quite familiar with the GNU/Linux environment. The first thing I did after installing OpenBSD was lock down my system (as best I could, following the afterboot man page) and then install all the usual suspects from /usr/ports --- bash, egcs, python, emacs, etc. (I'm currently having a problem getting my favorite editor XEmacs to work correctly in console mode, but...)
The installation was slightly hairy. I especially found the disklabel software confusing, and I'm an old hand at linux fdsik. But the kernel / installer detected all of my hardware on the first try. It detected my modem but I couldn't get the PPP dialer to work (that's okay, I don't really need my modem now that I've got DSL.)
Since then I've found OpenBSD very pleasant to work with, and you do get the feeling that there is some proactive security going on. I'll probably sleep slightly better at night because OpenBSD is on the job and not, e.g., Red Hat Linux. For instance, I like the blowfish passwords and soon to be integrated OpenSSH (encrypted telnet.) Today I'm going to be disabling ports like telnet and installing apache. I don't like the default BSD /bin/sh but it was quite easy enough to install Bash 2.0 and all my favorite editors, scripting languages, etc.
I get the feeling overall that OpenBSD is a solid, mature, and quite useful system. I'm going to be using it as a firewall / NAT / email / web kind of box on my new DSL line. I recommend it to anyone who has any unix setup / admin experience.
I understand that its nice to be able to brag about running linux on alpha, or freebsd on alpha or sparc or whatever, but for 99% of us, its a moot point. x86 virtually owns the entire market.
freebsd supports a huge number of ethernet cards. if your card isn't on the list, its either utterly obscure or totally outdated. in such a case, support on any OS is going to be difficult.
added to which, ethernet cards are dirt cheap. nearly free. you can get a supported card for around $30. less if you hunt around. sometimes under $20. really, it isn't worth dumping an os, ANY os, for $30.
yo, chang, got any specifics? ever here of posix?
I have installed FreeBSD-3.3 and I use DHCP when to set up its network parameters. The installation is very smooth. Btw, if you wanna use Apache you need to "activate" the configuration files which has intentionally renamed. I like the FreeBSD screensaver running on my console! A 3 years Linux user.
after having my previous IP-MASQ Linux system, also connected to the cablemodem, cracked using a well known named buffer overflow (yes it was my fault) I'm now convinced I don't want a Linux box sitting out on the open net.
Hi.. I've had mine cracked too.. (yes, my fault - known buffer overflow, and I was relying on a misconfigured ipfwadm ruleset to protect me, instead of upgrading it.)
This doesn't stop me from wanting to use Linux though. Any box is as secure as you make it. I learned from my experience, (not just to upgrade software as soon as a fix is released, but on how to properly configure a firewall,) and now I'm reasonably certain that the box is as hard to get into as any BSD; I don't run anything I don't need, and I have firewall rules to block incoming connections to sensitive ports.
I don't blame you for shying away from Linux, (after all, experience is the worst teacher, because it's always test first, and lesson afterwards,) but I didn't because I prefer to apply what I've learned (and because I enjoy doing things myself..).. and if someone does come along and crack my box again, then I'll have learned some more.
Debian is technically superior to Redhat... meaning, it has better tech. Redhat, OTOH, is more well-rounded, not to mention that everybody and their dog packages in rpm format.
... )
... dependencies are all happy and the package system is none the wiser. But this is obviously risky, and any instability in X is my own fault now.
:o
The basic difference comes down to the package formats... Debian packages have a package identity which can provide, conflict with, or depend on other packages - many of which are 'virtual packages' that don't exist (so you can have multiple packages that provide 'mailreader' or 'newsserver' or what have you, and plug-in replacements of one thing for another.) This allows (assuming proper debugging) for a beautiful automation of dependencies to the point that I can type 'apt-get install lyx' and it will go out and get for me (by ftp or from the cd) all the appropriate packages - libraries, TeX, LaTeX, LyX itself, and install them. (I'm not sure what it would do about X-windows and window managers and such since there are so many options there... probably issue a warning that you need to choose a package that provides xserver
It's also pretty good (though not as good as Slackware) at not getting in your way. You do run into a problem in that, if you want to compile from sources, then you also have to compile everything that depends on what you're compiling, to do it cleanly - though it is possible to cheat... I installed the SVGA X-server as a package and then just installed the Voodoo3 server over it (without package)
When the new release comes out I plan to do an 'apt-get upgrade' and have everything automagically replaced... though, I'll have to re-tweak the XServer and recompile my compiled apps.
Anyway... by contrast, Redhat does its packages and dependencies by filename. This is okay, especially if you only stick to official redhat packages and only upgrade the entire distribution.
(I have a habit, in debian, of doing partial upgrading... upgrading some library so I can install some new program and then, of course, I need to upgrade all the things that depend on that library... I don't know how well that'd work in redhat.) I -think- that all this is mostly a philisophical difference in how to do things, without too much practical impact, at least right now. I also think Redhat currently has better install tools - but I don't use Redhat, so... maybe a redhat person can discuss their advantages.
Anyway, if you don't mind installing via command line client, debian is great. But... use dpkg on old debian systems or apt on new debian systems. Deselect was a nightmare.
(Though you had to use it once for the base install... )
Right. So, in a nutshell, debian is really cool tech under a not-so-hot front end, and redhat is a really cool front-end over not-so-hot tech.
IMHO, YMMV, I am a Debian user, I was not paid for this statement.
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
I have been lucky (or unlucky enough as the case may be) to try out 6 of the BSD flavors on the internet and availible commercially. Here is what I've found:
BSD/OS: Commercial BSD varient. Quite stable, yet lacks a lot of the newer BSD's features. Secure-wise it's decent, yet nothing I'd brag about. Linux support is laughable I've found, slower than on a native Linux box.
BSD/Lite 4.4: The grand-daddy of the modern BSD's. Very stable, quite reliable. I am quite pleased with it's performance and flexibility. No Linux support at all, and it hasn't been updated since the mid-90's
NetBSD: If you want an OS to run on that strange mainframe your company has had since the 70's, this is it. Never tried the Linux support tho. Security, it's got holes, but not too many. Speed, don't look for it here.
OpenBSD: First thing I noticed about OBSD, it's SLOW! Not a performance hog. Next thing, it didn't suffer from any problems. Everything ran smoother than glass. Linux support was a breese to work in. Plus it's ports section makes things even smoother, it'll remote install any programs you need, including all dependencies. It is also the most secured OS I've ever found, no stack overflow, buffers, root theft problems at all.
FreeBSD: The fastest BSD out there. It's also fairly secure. Linux compatability is excellent. it also has the ports feature, which I still say kicks RPM in the pants.
A note about BSD's tho, I don't like their method for kernel creation, their sound support, etc. I would like something more akin to the Linux menu system brought to BSD. Plus a built-in OSS-lite or ALSA-like project would be nice. BSD'ers seem to accept paying for sound compatability, something I say should be built into the OS.
My 3 cents worth
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
I'm not sure how much it's worth, since between alien and compiling from sources you can get whatever you want for any distribution, with more or less work, but still, it's nice to know there's so many official packages out there. Even if some of them (the Bible, the anarchy faq... ) are of dubious computing value...
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
Coming out of the closet should only be preformed through a Window. This is usually very easy because the Window is usually broken. Be careful not to cut yourself on the proprietary glass on the way out; that would probably void some license agreement. If your one of the lucky few that just bought their closet and haven't used the Window yet you can take it back for a refund. Enjoy!
A while back, someone on a mailing list I read pointed out that a recent OpenBSD security fix to poll() corrected a bug *which was not present in the NetBSD code at the time of the fork*.
I have, at this point, no reason to believe that OpenBSD is *any* more secure than the other BSD's, except in the default configurations.
I mostly use NetBSD and BSDi. (Disclaimer: I work at BSDi.) I like them both plenty; they do what I want, they install easily, and they haven't given me any attitude.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
The thread was:
What BSD should I pick for X86.
Are you claiming that Linux is BSD? If not, why did you mention Linux? Or are you a clueless AC?
Does this give you an idea for a reader poll?
The "Ask Slashdot" flow of questions must be getting thin when the guys decide that "Which BSD should I use?" is a) news for nerds or b) stuff that matters.
/. for help in picking a BSD needs to get a clue before he gets the idea to move up in the UNIX world.
/. on perhaps even just getting these URLs, let alone figuring out the differences between the systems, he definitely should not be getting into BSD.
/. for help in picking a distribution, you should not be allowed to have a distribution. UNIX is hard. Sure, Linux looks like UNIX and feels like UNIX, but it's not UNIX. If you can't even figure out on your own which BSD to get, you're going to have a hell of a time learning it. I suppose you'll just get another Ask Slashdot on your problem then, hmm? "Ask Slashdot: What's CVSup? Do I need to install it? What's DES? Who are Regents and why do they own my operating system?"
Sure, sure. Which flavor you choose certainly does matter. That fact is not in debate. My problem is with this even getting mentioned here.
Come on, people. This question gets asked a gazillion times a month on each and every one of the comp.unix.bsd.* newsgroups. I don't want to resort to petty name-calling, but anyone who asks
Each of the main candidates -- he specifically wants a free x86-compatible, so that basically leaves Free, Open, and Net -- have representative websites that fully explain their pros and cons. If this person is so clueless so as to require help from
My point, if there is one to be made, is that this individual is asking everyone for directions because he doesn't feel like reading his map.
Frankly, if you need to ask
And as for you, Cliff. My God. How could you let Slashdot get turned into a message board for fscking newbies? In all politeless, you dropped the ball on this one. Next time, try to show a little bit of integrity in your work and remember that there plenty of places on the Internet that have answered this exact question before. Poodle Fang needs help, sure, but not from us.
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Remember when "Truth, Justice, & the American Way" wasn't contradictory?
The BSD stack, because of the way the BSD license works, has been somewhat of the "reference implementation" that most other OSes import in when they need a TCP/IP Stack. That's what Microsoft did, at least as their first embrace of native TCP/IP.
Linus, for some historical reason "didn't like" the BSD reference design, so adopted some other lesser implementation for Linux. That mistake may now be paved over, but historically Linux has had a rather mediocre TCP/IP stack, with problems that force workarounds on systems that need to connect to a Linux host.
Talking about any of this, of course, gets certain Linux advocates very upset. You'll probably need a low threshold setting to read what I am writing in a few minutes.
"Masquerading" is a Linux term.
The industry standard term is Network Address Translation (NAT).
It's implemented on FreeBSD in two ways, which both use the same libraries (libalias).
There's the NAT Daemon (natd). It requires setup via divert rules using the FreeBSD IP Firewall (ipfw.)
There's also the userland ppp program, which has an -alias option. No further configuration is necessary.
If you've got a direct connection (DSL, Cable, etc), use natd. If you dial-up, use ppp with -alias.
--
My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
OpenBSD uses IPFilter (ipf) and ipnat for it's NAT implementation. I'm not sure what NetBSD ships with, but IPFilter is available.
IPFilter is in FreeBSD, but is not the default.
--
My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
I run linux binaries on FreeBSD 3.3 constantly. I can tell no difference. Mathematica runs. Netscape runs with flash. Ideally you use this only for the code for which you don't have the source to compile. Duh.
There are problems for low-level code that expects linux cruft. Also some of the kernel calls are broken in 3.3-STABLE for SMP machines.
Slashdot has a simple moderation algorithm:
/. moderators with a set of perl/haskell scripts.
(1) Long posts are good. (Never mind if they're correct or not...)
(2) Long posts are also "Insightful" or "Interesting". Never mind that "Insightful" is usually applied to conclusions that the two-year-old Chinese leftovers in my fridge can reach...
(3) If it doesn't have "windoze" anywhere in it, then it gets moderated down. (It's a self-actualization problem on their part; don't get me started...)
(4) If it criticizes the oh-so-holy moderators (who are in the sad state of obtaining their self-esteem from running a web site), you'll never see it. (Care to prove me wrong on this one?)
So don't expect much. If you're a moronic blowhard with impressive verbage capability, then you'll be a Moderator God.
My proposal: Replace
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The Linux TCP/IP implementation is different because that's how the Linux gang wanted it to be; they wanted to develop a GPL'd IP stack and they have done a remarkable job. They couldn't just incorporate the BSD networking stack because the license on the BSD code would not allow it to be GPL'd.
I'd sum up the performance of both as being darned close to "as good as it gets."
I, on the other tentacle, recommend getting The Complete FreeBSD by Greg Lehey with the FreeBSD CD-ROM set and starting from there. It is also a great book; Tim O'Reilly has publicly lamented deciding not to publish it. The Complete FreeBSD will walk you through the installation of FreeBSD and then provide help in configuring FreeBSD to do a variety of work, including various internet services and X windows workstation configuration.
For those of you who want to run BSD on top of Linux or NT, have a look at VMware, www.vmware.com - FreeBSD is supported and OpenBSD has worked at least for some people.
Why is this useful? I'm intending to try out OpenBSD as a firewall, largely because of its security focus - script kiddies will be less familiar with it and there should be fewer exploits for it. VMware is one way of running a client-side firewall, particularly on laptops.
VMware is a good way to play with different OSs/distros - I've had Debian, NT, Win98 all running on top of Red Hat 5.2.
While I do respect the OpenBSD project -- OpenSSH being integrated with the distribution makes it a great choice for the security minded -- I noticed problems compiling a few things when I tried OpenBSD (snapshot several months after 2.5s initial release). Agknowledably, a lot of it wasn't exactly software most server admins would be interested in (gnome, icewm, etc.) In short, GCC was extremely picky out of the box with paticular things. I don't know if this has been fixed with the 2.6 source freeze, but that was the main reason I choose not to run it.
obviously one would not dump a $350 dollar scsi card so flippantly...
Yes.
No, Netscape Communicator is not based on Mosaic
all "hacked to hell." Internet Explorer *is*
based on Mosaic. To see for yourself, load up
Internet Explorer and hit "About". It will say
quite clearly that it is based on the NCSA Mosaic
code.
.. somebody actually moderated this tirade up as "Informative." :-)
BSDi is a company.
Their product is BSD/OS. It is fairly good, but its probably not worth the money.
_Please_ stop saying "i run bsdi"
-bugg
interesting enough, here on Purdue campus, I know more OpenBSD people than FreeBSD people. I know more OpenBSD boxes than FreeBSD boxes. (i own two of them) OpenBSD has excellent man pages. Linux man pages cannot compare to OpenBSD man pages.
Among Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD and OpenBSD, OpenBSD is the only OS I've had kernel-panic on me. BTW this was OpenBSD 2.5. I'm not saying Linux is perfect (my computer used to lock up a lot with the cdu31a module) but empirically it's stable enough to make a strong case for not switching to OpenBSD.
There is a huge difference between any other *ix out there and OpenBSD: the fact that OpenBSD only allows completely free source code in it's base -- that's how I understand it. That means GNU is discouraged, and so is Berkeley w/ the advertising clause; their FREE means FREEDOM, No Restrictions.
For embedded system developers (don't underestimate this market; it is the next big wave), that means OpenBSD is "completely" (to what extent I do not know) embeddable and licensing or funny GNU/Berkeley clauses are not a problem. Developers can embed the source, add proprietary extensions, and sell the result without releasing the source.
This is clearly stated in the OpenBSD philosophy (OpenBSD Project Goals):
I am only stating a huge difference in the Goals of OpenBSD. Do not argue that their philosophy is better or worse than GNU/Berkeley licensed O/Ss.
To my knowledge, no other Open Source *ix has this same Goal.
I thought the whole idea of the BSDL was that you could do ANYTHING with the code, including using it in your closed-source commercial product, etc.
How do they reconcile this with making it non-GPLable? And what clause do you use to do that?
so no-one is a little harsh. I mean the CEO of BSDi might just read slashdot :)>,
This isn't terribly relivant to which BSD is better, but since you brought RC5 up I thought I'd throw this in. Almost all of the distributed.net 'staff' have at least one box that runs FreeBSD, and for many of us, it is almost the only OS that we use. Many of our public boxes run it (web, many of the proxies, etc.), and all of the private boxes we depend on do.
Why? Well, certainly, there is an issue of familiarity. Several staff members are very familiar with FreeBSD; one of them is even on the FreeBSD team. But, most of them are also familiar with Linux, and they all prefer FreeBSD. I don't want to start another holy war, but I'd say that the biggest reasons why they prefer FreeBSD are stability, security, easy upgradeability (cvsup), and software distribution (ports). Some of it is also personal preference, and what you're used to. In fact, the stats box, which originally ran Red Hat, has been so heavily hacked that it could almost qualify as it's own OS (we call it dbnug BSDux release 1.0 (Bovinator) internally }:8) ). The only reason there's a linux kernel on the box is because of the Sybase Licensing.
As for the rest of us who aren't quite as 'in the know' (like me), we've just kinda followed along since it's easy for us to ask questions about FreeBSD. ;) Seriously though, many of us (myself included) have tried both Linux (various distros) and FreeBSD, and most of us prefer FreeBSD.
Decibel!
distributed.net Human Interface
decibel@distributed.net
Not that some of the best slashdot action isn't at the -1 level, mind you.
Good Question. I am relatively unsure about the TCP stacks also. However, they can somewhat say that since well, all other stacks are essentially BSD derived :)
But yet again, there are _many_ examples of high-yield TCP stack usage. One word: Beowulf. feel free to click on my link or go to www.beowulf.org.
"Hex, Bugs, and Rockn'Roll"
Well said, phred!
The poster of the Ask Slashdot is asking honest, legitimate quesions, and I've found many of the posted answers informative and interesting. I know the various BSDs exist and have glanced through material on the Web and on paper, but some of the applications that people have talked about have tempted me to put it on my 'experimental' box.
So "phhhht" to the haughty objections!
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
*everyday* people join #openbsd (efnet) looking for iso's.. the same respsonse every time is "there are none." Your best bet is to buy the cd's.
Actually, while I use fBSD on most all of my machines, I had actually been running linux on one of my laptops. The reason was that the Xircom10/100/56kmodem card didn't have support under FreeBSD yet - at least as far as I could see. Turned out I was wrong, someone had written a driver it just wasn't referenced anywhere useful. :)
:)
I can definitely understand the frustration of not having your hardware supported, having once many years ago tried to get linux to recognize my cdrom drive with *no* success. Hardware bugaboos are one of those things that can turn you off of an operating system entirely, which is unfortunate.
One thing that does make me happy though is that the driver support in fBSD is really solid - they don't include a new driver in the release just because someone wanted it, if it's not ready for prime time, it's not there. The driver for my card was available under Linux, but flakey as hell. Which is the better option? I dunno. It's nice *having* an option, though.
Truth be told, I probably *should* have gone out and spent the 30 bucks on a new card, but oh well.
Benchmarks: http://www.anzen.com/gif/test-intf47.gif
The full report the benchmarks came from: http://www.anzen.com/research/r esearch_perform.html
An explanation of the problem: http://www.nfr.net /nfr/mail-archive/nfr-users/1999/Feb/0110.html
Actually, Soft Updates originated in a version of SVR4, as described here.
The GPL does not allow you to place extra restrictions on the code beyond those contained in the GPL. The BSD license places extra restrictions (the advertising clause). QED.
If you like rpms, you'll love the ports collection on FreeBSD. Go to the /usr/ports/ directory, type 'make; make install' and wait for it to finish building. (Takes a while on a 486/66) I just get sick of trying to track down all of the rpm dependencies(sp?) to get something installed. Matt corey
I am a long time Debian GNU/Linux user and am very happy satisfied user. I want to try out FreeBSD.Is there something like Debian/BSD ?
At the recent USENIX, it was generally agreed to that, for whatever reason, BSD was dying. The main topic of one of the BOFs was how to stem the death of FreeBSD. And FreeBSD is not the only version of BSD which continues to be in trouble. While FreeBSD is beset with its own internal schisms, it is not the only BSD to be affected by an ongoing malaise. NetBSD and OpenBSD are dying too. The reason for BSD's death was analyzed from many perspectives. The continuing loss of market share was a prime topic for discussion. While no agreement was reached on all points, one common point of contention was that that the failure of the BSD license was attributable to the hated "advertising clause". This requirement was flagrantly violated by even those who pretend to support BSD derivatives, such as Walnut Creek CD ROM. Talk of a lawsuit against Walnut Creek soon turned to the real problem, the hated "advertising clause" of the BSD license. The participants hoped that by eliminating this clause, that BSD software could be incorporated into mainstream software such as Linux and Free Software Foundation offerings. So people, these are the reasons that the licensing was changed. Note the date and place of the original announcement. It is the hope of the BSD community that this new license will stop the bleeding and prevent its pending death.
At the recent USENIX, it was generally agreed to that, for whatever reason, BSD was dying. The main topic of one of the BOFs was how to stem the death of FreeBSD. And FreeBSD is not the only version of BSD which continues to be in trouble. While FreeBSD is beset with its own internal schisms, it is not the only BSD to be affected by an ongoing malaise. NetBSD and OpenBSD are dying too. The reason for BSD's death was analyzed from many perspectives. The continuing loss of market share was a prime topic for discussion. BSD is in freefall with no bottom in sight. While no agreement was reached on all points, one common point of agreement is that the failure of the BSD license was attributable in great part to the hated "advertising clause". This requirement was flagrantly violated by even those who pretend to support BSD derivatives, such as Walnut Creek CD ROM. Talk of a lawsuit against Walnut Creek soon turned to the real problem, the hated "advertising clause" of the BSD license. The participants hoped that by eliminating this clause, that BSD software could be incorporated into mainstream software such as Linux and Free Software Foundation offerings. So people, these are the reasons that the licensing was changed. Note the date and place of the original announcement. It is the hope of the BSD community that this new license will stop the bleeding, and prevent its pending death.
At the recent USENIX, it was generally agreed to that, for whatever reason, BSD was dying. The main topic of one of the BOFs was how to stem the death of FreeBSD. And FreeBSD is not the only version of BSD which continues to be in trouble. While FreeBSD is beset with its own internal schisms, it is not the only BSD to be affected by an ongoing malaise. NetBSD and OpenBSD are dying too, although at a slower rate. The reason for BSD's death was analyzed from many perspectives. The continuing loss of market share was a prime topic for discussion. While no agreement was reached on all points, one common point of agreement is that the failure of the BSD license was attributable in great part to the hated "advertising clause". This requirement was flagrantly violated by even those who pretend to support BSD derivatives, such as Walnut Creek CD ROM. Walnut Creek CD ROM hijacked the FreeBSD trademark and will sue anyone who redistributes FreeBSD CD ROMS. But plans for the lawsuit against Walnut Creek soon turned to other problems, such as the hated "advertising clause" of the BSD license. The participants hoped that by eliminating this clause, that BSD software could be incorporated into mainstream software such as Linux and Free Software Foundation offerings. So people, these are the reasons that the licensing was changed. Note the date and place of the original announcement. It is the hope of the BSD community that this new license will stop the bleeding, and prevent its inevitable death.
That's very descriptive on what your problem was that was causing the kernel panic. Maybe you were spilling coffee or sacraficing a goat to Linus over your box.
I got an old 486 running FreeBSD and hooked it up to my network. Until the box is set up, you have to use a keyboard/screen, but after you can just shove it behind a chair/bed/desk/etc. and telnet to it. It means that you can still run windows (or whatever) and not worry about killing your system.
not this one again. you're being misleading by omission. allow me to rephrase your statement to make it correct: "the performance differences are huge for packet filtering applications that use BPF (berkley packet filter)."
Berkely packet filters? BSD unix? hmmmm....
Did you know that Linux is faster than FreeBSD at running Linux kernel modules?
This "benchmark" gets the "no shit, that's absolutely useless" award.
I demo the others and buy from what I consider the best.
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
Don't believe me? Grab a .99 release of NS and Mosaic.
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
Oh, I wish I was a moderator today and hadn't yet commented in this thread.
Allow me to rewrite.
"If you just want to play with a UNIX or clone, FreeBSD will get you through your day, but if you are doing real work, Linux is it."
"Linux is a fast, small, and easy system. It presents a clean, consistent interface without bogging down the system with unused "features" and bloat as BSD code tends to."
"The package systems also make it a snap to install anything from Java to Apache to KDE without anything more than "rpm -Uvh" or "dpkg -a"." (ed. random guess on dpkg as I don't use Debian)
Shall I continue?
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Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!