Re: [PLUG] BSD Preferences?

[gabriel rosenkoetter <gr@eclipsed.net>]

On Mon, May 20, 2002 at 12:23:32PM -0400, Adam Turoff wrote:
> That's a personal preference, much like asking a list of 
> linux geeks "what's your favorite flavor of ice cream".

Or, really, "what's the best distro." ;^>

> I use FreeBSD (4.5 at the moment; just downgraded from
> an early pre-release earlier this month).  Why?  Because
> I use Intel hardware, and FreeBSD comes with lots of stuff,
> all well-integrated.  Plus, the ports system makes installing
> new software a complete breeze.

I'm going to give my usual OS advice: "use what you're familiar
with". In this case, it sounds like that agrees with Adam, since I
think JP said he'd used FreeBSD before. The differences between the
various BSD OSes are minor, but they do exist, and if you're
familiar with how FreeBSD does its standard configuration, how it
deals with disklabels and rc scripts, and how its package system
works, then you should go with that unless you've got some pressing
reason to learn something new.

(Needing an OS to work on an architecture where FreeBSD doesn't boot
or is inferior would be a pressing reason. That's not the case on
i386.)

> Why not OpenBSD?  Because this is a desktop system, and I'm not
> overly security-paranoid about it; I use it with a standard modem
> dialout, most of the dangerous services disabled or blocked.  Would
> I use OpenBSD?  Yes, if I were running a public server, a secondary
> machine, or boutique hardware (non-x86).

These days, I wouldn't use OpenBSD anywhere, and that's not even
a political decision. There have been a *lot* of security-related
bugs *reintroduced* by OpenBSD "audits". (Things like the mail(1)
~ shell escape working in non-interactive mode; that was fixed in
the late '80s, and I know that OpenBSD started off without that
bug, since it forked from NetBSD in '96, but it magically resurfaced
in OpenBSD's mail(1) a couple of months ago.)

Then there's the whole IPF fiasco... I saw in the OpenBSD 3.1 press
release something to the effect of "many new features have been
added to PF". Congratulations. Back up to a functioning firewall
yet? No? Buh bye.

> Why not NetBSD?  Because I like the lots of stuff that's installed
> by default to be there and be well-integrated.  Would I run NetBSD?
> Yes, if I wanted to hack around a little more with the core OS, or
> running a small system, or running boutique hardware (especially
> older hardware).

I think if you tried NetBSD out for real, you'd find that though
the initial install is (purposely) rather sparse (only sh and csh
included, for instance), about twenty minutes with pkgsrc (which
is just as functional as FreeBSD's ports) gets you a plenty useable
system.

But I say that having gone through those motions many times on five
different architectures, so my viewpoint's a bit tilted. :^>

> Then there are the more focused BSDs, like TrustedBSD, MicroBSD
> and the like.  :-)

Don't recall what TrustedBSD's a fork of (FreeBSD?), MicroBSD
*looks* to be forked from NetBSD, though they don't say so anywhere
on their site.

> They're all pretty comparable these days in terms of basic features.
> If you're familiar enough with Linux, you should feel at home within
> about a week, regardless of which BSD you choose.

Agreed. (The learning curve coming strictly from Linux to any one of
the BSDs is really rather gentle and about the same in all cases.)

-- 
gabriel rosenkoetter
gr@eclipsed.net

Attachment: pgpTTkbwJUn0y.pgp
Description: PGP signature