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OpenBSD review at linux.com

Posted by Nik on from the great-review-but-the-install-needs-work dept.

nicedream writes "Linux.com is running a feature on BSD, and the latest installment profiles one guy's experience with OpenBSD. Haven't read a thorough review of OpenBSD ever, so it was nice to check this out.

2 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Learning from OpenBSD by Foogle · · Score: 3
    First of all - I love OpenBSD. It's made my life as a sysadmin MUCH easier.

    Having said that, I wouldn't want Linux to pick up it's development model. Actually, Debian is almost there. The BSD groups are incredibly picky when it comes to what get's put into their OS. The kernel development is a much slower, and much more mature process. If Linux worked that way, we wouldn't see 2.4 until 2005.

    A line-by-line audit of Linux's code wouldn't be bad idea, but the state of that code changes so frequently that I don't think it could be done properly without affecting the development process.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  2. Analysing the Conventional Wisdom by Tom+Christiansen · · Score: 3
    Several posters have espoused using some flavor of BSD for "servers", but some flavor of Linux for "workstations". This viewpoint is one that you hear repeated so often that it seems to have taken on a life of its own. But what essential criteria are being used to arrive at this position? Proof by repetition has no place in the technical community. Is there any substance to this mantra, or are we just hearing the unexamined echoes of well-trained and well-meaning parrots?

    Precisely what features are desirable in a "server"? What features are desirable in a "workstation"? What even is the difference between a "server" and a "workstation"? Does optimizing for one of these environments pessimize-- or at least compromise--the other situation? Is there some technical feature that you really want to have in a multi-user situation that you don't care about in a single-user one? What about the other way around?

    Here's my conjecture: there is no difference here. You want the same in both, because a soi-disant single-user Unix workstation is still a complete multi-user environment with all the attendant issues thereof.

    A system's inadequacies appear more acceptable in a single-user system only because they can thereby annoy only one person at a time. In a multi-user situation, such problems are less tolerable because the pain is multiplied by the number of individuals affected. But inadequacies they remain.

    Just as you want a solid, sane, robust system for a computer that provides services for an entire department, so too do you wish the same coherence and correctness on my very own computer that you are the principle user of. For example, you don't expect to reboot a server just because you install some new software, and neither do you expect to do the same on my own machine. Granted, Unix isn't stupid here, the way the Evil Empire is. But by allowing sloppiness in a "single-user" environment that would never be tolerated in a "multi-user" one, we risk relegating ourselves to a plane of Hell not so far removed from the one currently inhabited by gibbering victims of the Horror Out of Redmond.