[GTALUG] curious... Linux vs BSD ?

[Peter King]

On Thu, Sep 29, 2016 at 10:45:09AM -0400, Lennart Sorensen via talk wrote:
 
> So for me, bsd is only a necessary evil to be used if linux won't run
> on the hardware, and the last time I had to resort to netbsd to get a
> machine running and doing useful stuff was about 18 years ago.

The *BSD software ecosystem lags behind Linux in hardware support; as far
as I'm concerned, the ports/packages system is years behind Gentoo, Debian,
Arch, and others; the communities are smaller and much less open.

For all that...

OpenBSD is where we get things like openssh from.  Their packet-filtering
system, PF, is a joy and a delight.  The continuous code-auditing means
that kernelspace *and* userspace programs that make up the system are often
rewritten to get rid of cruft, and run cleanly and efficiently.  They are a
remarkable implementation of UNIX, without the ``better ideas'' such as
systemd, and they are all phenomenally stable -- even more so than Linux.
Granted, some of that comes from not having drivers for the latest hardware
and innovations.  But if clean and debugged code matter to you, if you want
better deep ideas like privilege separation and default security, then I'd
say there is a reason to have a look at OpenBSD.  If you run a server, then
you should definitely look at it.  There's a reason why the internet ran on
*BSD for so long, and why much of it still does.

FreeBSD is the most common platform but has fewer distinctive features.

NetBSD runs on almost anything, including toothbrushes, but is otherwise
pretty plain vanilla.

-- 
Peter King			 	peter.king at utoronto.ca
Department of Philosophy
170 St. George Street #521
The University of Toronto		    (416)-978-3311 ofc
Toronto, ON  M5R 2M8
       CANADA

http://individual.utoronto.ca/pking/

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