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! "

Comments

Linux "emulation"

[Trepidity]

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.

My FreeBSD perspective.

[Above]

Everyone will have a different opinion, and they are all right. I'm going to offer my FreeBSD-slanted opinion as one view.

NetBSD

Coke, 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.

OpenBSD

I'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.

FreeBSD

The 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".

Linux

I'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.

Summary

Any 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 is probably a good starting point

[Mr Z]

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.)

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