Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 07:35:49 -0500 From: Ingrid Kast Fuller <ingrid@cityscope.net> To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Simon Says Mailing List Boasts BSD's Message-ID: <37E0E425.3FC2CC6A@cityscope.net>
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I received this in my Simon Says Mailing List. I don't know how many are
on their list, but advertising is advertising!!!!
Subject: SIMSON SAYS: Even better than Linux
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 07:14:50 -0400
From: simsong@acm.org
To: <simson-says@vineyard.net>
PLUGGED IN - Even better than Linux
Trio of operating systems based on BSD is even more reliable and secure
By Simson L. Garfinkel, 09/16/99
The Linux operating system has gotten a tremendous amount of publicity
in
recent months. Millions of computers are running Linux; it is playing an
increasingly important role in business; and people are beginning to
think
Linux might be a credible threat to the dominance of Microsoft.
But I'm not rejoicing for the ascendancy of Linux or its penguin mascot.
I
have my two feet firmly planted in another camp. No, I'm not rooting for
Bill Gates and the Redmond home team. Instead, I've thrown my lot in
with a
trio of operating systems that all end with the initials BSD.
At my home, I run an operating system called NetBSD on the computer
that's
connected to my MediaOne cable modem. This NetBSD machine is my file
server
and my print server. It also runs a system called NAT (network address
translation) that lets me access the Internet from the other computers
on my
home network. I installed NetBSD on the computer a little more than a
year
ago, and it has been working well for me ever since.
It's important to understand that everything I do with NetBSD I could do
just as easily with Linux. That's because there are far more
similarities
between the two systems than differences. Both are based on the Unix
operating system, developed at Bell Labs in the 1970s, and both can be
freely redistributed. The big difference is portability. While Linux can
only run on a few kinds of computers, NetBSD can run on more than 22,
including Intel-compatible PCs, Amigas, old 68000-based Macs, Digital
VAXes,
and even those sleek but defunct NeXT workstations. This has made the
system
popular at places like MIT and NASA, both of which have large menageries
of
computer systems from a multitude of vendors.
Earlier this year there were a number of well-publicized security
problems
involving the Linux operating system. During that time my computer was
frequently attacked. However, since I wasn't running Linux, I wasn't
vulnerable. Linux is the favored operating system for most of the
attackers
on the Internet, which is another reason I don't use it.
Last month I set up a high-performance database server. This machine
runs
FreeBSD, a different version of the BSD operating system. FreeBSD has
gained
notoriety in recent weeks because it powers Yahoo and Hotmail. The
operating
system also has a reputation for never crashing - while offering high
performance and leading-edge features. I chose FreeBSD for the database
server because FreeBSD has exceptionally good support for multiple
execution
threads within a single process, allowing the database server to be more
responsive when more than one person is using it at the same time.
OpenBSD is the ultra-secure version of BSD developed by programmers in
Canada. Although all the BSD systems are reasonably secure, the dozen
people
who created OpenBSD spent more than four years doing a line-by-line
audit of
it, fixing security pitfalls other Unix vendors haven't even conceived.
Because the OpenBSD team is based in Canada, it isn't hobbled by the
antiquarian export control laws that stifle much of the US software
industry. As a result, OpenBSD comes with military-grade cryptography
deeply
integrated into the core system. OpenBSD also comes with IPsec, the
cryptographic extensions to the Internet's TCP/IP protocol that let
systems
automatically encrypt information before it is sent over the wire. This
is
the same software other companies sell for thousands of dollars. It's
free
with OpenBSD. (NetBSD should have a full implementation of IPsec by the
end
of the year; a version of IPsec is also available for Linux, but it
isn't
built-in.) All of these combine to make the operating system a good
choice
for firewalls and the paranoid.
The three BSD operating systems are all descended from the BSD version
of
Unix developed at the University of California at Berkeley during the
1980s
(''BSD'' stands for Berkeley Standard Distribution). They're also the
descendants of Project GNU, started by Richard Stallman at the
Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. There's a lot of infighting among the groups
developing these three systems, but there's also a lot of cooperation,
since
all are distributed in source code. All can run most programs that are
written for Linux, and frequently they can run the programs faster than
Linux itself.
If I had to pick out the single difference between the BSD community as
a
whole and the proponents of Linux, I would say it is something called
''correctness.'' The BSD developers are more concerned that the
underlying
technology in their operating systems be implemented in a manner
consistent
with the overall design of the systems. Linux developers, overall, are
more
interested in just putting together something that works.
Another big difference is commercialism. Where the BSD projects are
largely
the work of individuals, businesses are now the driving force in the
Linux
community. This may be one reason proponents of Linux are frequently
slow to
admit the debt they owe to the Computer Science Research Group at
Berkeley,
which created BSD, and to the Free Software Foundation at MIT, the
charitable organization that raised money for Project GNU. Although
Linus
Torvalds frequently gets the credit for creating Linux, he only wrote
the
system's kernel. The rest he cobbled together from other sources,
largely
BSD and GNU.
Kirk McKusick wrote an excellent history of BSD in his essay ''Twenty
Years
of Berkeley Unix.'' You can find it in the book ''Open Sources,''
published
by O'Reilly & Associates. It is also on line, along with the rest of the
book, at www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/kirkmck.html.
Although Linux is a fine operating system, I would encourage businesses
as
well as advanced enthusiasts to take a serious look at the other
choices.
Technology writer Simson L. Garfinkel can be reached at
plugged-in@simson.net.
================================================================
SIMSON-SAYS is Simson's column on computer issues that appears weekly
in The Boston Globe and other newspapers.
Please feel free to pass this column on to a friend.
If you wish to subscribe to SIMSON-SAYS, just send an e-mail message
with the word "subscribe" as its first line to simson-says@vineyard.net.
This message (C) Simson L. Garfinkel.
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Ingrid Kast Fuller
CityScope Computer Services
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Email: ingrid@cityscope.net
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