Date: 09 Jan 1999 11:23:47 -0500 From: Matt Curtin <cmcurtin@interhack.net> To: Owen Barnett <rainking@shell.futuresouth.com> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: OpenBSD vs. FreeBSD Message-ID: <xlx1zl4fm98.fsf@gold.cis.ohio-state.edu> In-Reply-To: Owen Barnett's message of "Sat, 9 Jan 1999 00:52:09 -0600 (CST)" References: <Pine.BSF.3.96.990109004842.2126A-100000@shell.futuresouth.com>
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Owen Barnett <rainking@shell.futuresouth.com> writes: > I've been using FreeBSD now for a few months, but have recently read > a little about OpenBSD. [...] > what are the tradeoffs between each system? I have not run OpenBSD and FreeBSD on the same hardware, so I cannot make direct comparisons based on personal experience. I use OpenBSD on my SPARC hardware (except sun4u, where I use Solaris) and FreeBSD on my x86 hardware. OpenBSD is definitely more difficult to install. It's not hard, especially if you've been a Unix sysadmin long enough to remember the days of using a scratchpad and/or calculator before firing up newfs. (Not necessarily that long ago; SunOS4 required that IIRC.) But it doesn't compare to the ease of install of FreeBSD. The only way to screw that up is to try and outsmart sysinstall (which seems to be a mistake that a lot of people make the first time through). OpenBSD's active developers seem to be more paranoid. This is useful in security, and security is a stated goal of OpenBSD. However, that isn't to suggest that OpenBSD is completely free from security problems, or that FreeBSD doesn't give any consideration to security. Problems that are discovered in any of the BSDs are quickly published and fixed, and the other BSDs check to see if they're vulnerable, too. So, in some sense, *any* BSD being paranoid is good for all of the BSDs. OpenBSD people are more likely to fix theoretical vulnerabilities. FreeBSD folks lean more toward functionality. The "ports collection" concept was Invented Here(tm) and the other BSDs have deemed it a Good Thing and incorporate it in their systems as well. FreeBSD seems to handle internationalization better. I've had difficulty getting OpenBSD to deal properly with Latin-1 characters for German in tty-based programs running in xterms. No such problem in FreeBSD. (But I didn't spend any time to figure out what exactly the problem was, so it very well could have been the application, irc-II, though I used the same version on both FreeBSD and OpenBSD.) FreeBSD is also extremely friendly to Russian, which is very important to me, since I use that language almost daily. OpenBSD has many more supported platforms. So if you want identical systems all around, even where hardware is different, that would be an advantage for you. I have had no problems at all getting any of the BSDs to talk to each other, and they're similar enough that most sysadmins won't care; if they can run one, they can run the others. (Unfortunately, none seem to support the R5k SGI desktop machines. I've got an Indy here that is about to be upgraded to IRIX 6.5, but it sure would be nice if I could run a BSD on it. I've been thinking about doing a port myself, but doubt that I will because I'm not likely to have the time to do the deed alone, and I don't exactly see a huge base of people saying "we wanna help port (Open|Free)BSD to the Indy! Even the Linux port is still sans GUI.) There seems to be quite a bit of code sharing among the BSDs, which I think is a Good Thing, since it allows each project to focus on what it wants, while picking up the features invented in other BSDs. Hope that helps. -- Matt Curtin cmcurtin@interhack.net http://www.interhack.net/people/cmcurtin/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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