Date: Sun, 7 Mar 2004 10:00:02 -0800 From: David Benfell <benfell@parts-unknown.org> To: "D.B. Lewis" <pchelper@dblewisonline.net> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: How close is FreeBSD to OpenBSD? Message-ID: <20040307180002.GA8521@parts-unknown.org> In-Reply-To: <PAELKEOOELDLPENKNACKKELGCCAA.pchelper@dblewisonline.net> References: <PAELKEOOELDLPENKNACKKELGCCAA.pchelper@dblewisonline.net>
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On Sat, 06 Mar 2004 23:34:33 -0800, D.B. Lewis wrote: > > The reason I ask is to get a handle on how useful OpenBSD tips, FAQ's, > etc. might be as I learn FreeBSD. > Some things will be similar. Some will be different. The instances I find where the two projects could learn from each other are: 1) Routing: I like OpenBSD much better for this. Each interface is configured in its own file, allowing you to much more easily do strange things. PF is wonderful. There is a port for PF to FreeBSD, but it was broken on the day I tried to install it. I basically failed to get a FreeBSD system functioning as a router when I tried, and because this was critical to my entire operation, I had to go back to OpenBSD. I'm still not happy about this, because of... 2) Upgrades: FreeBSD wins hands down on this point. OpenBSD's process is much more difficult to follow and is much more vulnerable to toolchain problems. By contrast, FreeBSD's process just works. (In my view, difficulty upgrading *is* a security issue, which undermines OpenBSD's claims.) 3) Attitude: OpenBSD folks take a very harsh view towards newbies. When I first installed it on a router, with only a 40GB disk, it went so smoothly, I was a convert. This was far better than anything I'd seen with either FreeBSD or Linux. So I decided to try migrating my server, with a 100GB disk. There was no end of problems. They appeared to be hardware related, so I wound up replacing virtually all of the hardware trying to isolate the problem. In the end, it came down to OpenBSD failing to deal with the 100GB disk, probably because of something I was doing wrong, but there was no help available at all on their list. To try to answer your question about OpenBSD's documentation, some of it is well written. Hence, there is an obvious appeal. And in some areas, things may be quite similar. In some areas, they will appear quite different. Where OpenBSD's documentation may help, however, is at a deeper level of understanding, where no matter how different the procedures, both operating systems must, some way, some how, accomplish the same things. -- David Benfell, LCP benfell@parts-unknown.org --- Resume available at http://www.parts-unknown.org/resume.html
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