From owner-freebsd-advocacy Sat Nov 28 01:57:11 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id BAA25757 for freebsd-advocacy-outgoing; Sat, 28 Nov 1998 01:57:11 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from smtp03.wxs.nl (smtp03.wxs.nl [195.121.6.37]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id BAA25752 for ; Sat, 28 Nov 1998 01:57:09 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from asmodai@wxs.nl) Received: from chronias.ninth-circle.org ([195.121.58.149]) by smtp03.wxs.nl (Netscape Messaging Server 3.6) with ESMTP id AAA5DF4; Sat, 28 Nov 1998 10:56:59 +0100 Message-ID: X-Mailer: XFMail 1.3 [p0] on FreeBSD X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <19981128143603.L6182@freebie.lemis.com> Date: Sat, 28 Nov 1998 11:02:00 +0100 (CET) Organization: Ninth Circle Enterprises From: Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai To: Greg Lehey Subject: RE: What are the strengths of FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD? Cc: OpenBSD-advocacy@OpenBSD.org, NetBSD-advocacy@NetBSD.org, FreeBSD advocacy list Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On 28-Nov-98 Greg Lehey wrote: > 1. What is the difference between FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD? > > Once upon a time it was relatively easy to answer this question: > FreeBSD aimed at ease of use on the Intel platform, NetBSD aimed > at portability, and OpenBSD wasn't. Now it's more difficult: > FreeBSD has moved to other platforms, and while I don't know if > NetBSD is any easier to install, there's at least OpenBSD to > address as well. The best I have come to in recent times has been > ``FreeBSD aims for ease of use and maximum performance, NetBSD > aims for portability, and OpenBSD addresses security''. > > I'm not very happy with this statement, which bases mainly on > hearsay, and which may not even be a good basis for discussion. > I'd welcome any input. Since OpenBSD is exported from Canada its initially exported with strong cryptography additions. Also if one takes a look at the Changes lists of the various versions a lot of security fixes are easily spotted. Theo and cohorts focus a lot on the overal security of the source. NetBSD, unfortunately not very familiar with it yet, has the widest range of supported platforms and is the spreader of the BSD word on different platforms ;) But I guess the folks of the appropriate advocacy lists care to indulge us some more... > 2. What aspects of *BSD would interest a SunWorld reader? At first I > thought ``well, they're not going to be interested in FreeBSD, > because FreeBSD doesn't run on Sparc'', but it seems to me that > it's unlikely that many Sun users would install current versions > of *BSD on their modern hardware. Sure, there are plenty of older > Sun machines out there, on which it's either impossible or > impractical to run Solaris 2, and for them NetBSD or OpenBSD would > be a good alternative to SunOS 4. But what are the majority of > the users going to want to know about *BSD? Sure, it has the > comfortable feel of SunOS 4, but what hardware would they run it > on? What would they do with it? I've thought of things like name > servers and Internet gateways, but there must be more than that. Don't forget Solaris has also been ported to x86 architecture, so in effect I guess x86 might be appropriate to mention for FreeBSD. Then again, one could also mention all the Sparc versions we already have or going to have. General firewalls for all sorts of gateways, cheap routers, mail system, and god knows what else. Hope I attributed a little to clarify the `chaos'. --- Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven/Asmodai asmodai(at)wxs.nl | Cum angelis et pueris, Junior Network/Security Specialist | fideles inveniamur *BSD & picoBSD: The Power to Serve... To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message