Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2001 23:53:08 +0200 From: Roelof Osinga <roelof@nisser.com> To: Zigmars Ziemelis <zigisz@e-apollo.lv> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Security Message-ID: <3AE4A444.C6716DED@nisser.com> References: <200104230739.JAA09184@pop.apollo.lv>
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Zigmars Ziemelis wrote: > > I'm a newly acquired user of BSD, and I'm testing *OpenBSD* for now and > planning to use it to run > my mail and WWW servers and maybe a FTP server too. I have chosen OpenBSD > because it was told that > OpenBSD is quite the most secure OS available 4 intel x86 and other PC > platforms and I use (as many > other people :) ) exactly intel based comp. > Could You, please, reply me what exactly are the differences, > advantages/disadvantages of security > and performance comparing w. Linux and other Unix type platforms, > especially OpenBSD? > Are Open- And Free- BSD projects related somehow except names? And thus you ask questions on the FreeBSD maillist. It figures ;). The distinctive feature of OpenBSD is that it development team proactively performs structured walkthroughs of not only its code base but also of its 'port base'. Even more spectacular for users is that it installs a closed system by default. I.e. you don't have to turn off things like telnet. Then again, FreeBSD has its jails <g>. There isn't all that much difference. BSD being BSD. Well, apart from Apple's OS/X which comes with the Mach micro-kernel. But basically they all come from the same tree (UNIX release 7 if I remember correctly ;) and only started to infight after Berkeley killed the Software Distribution project and the world went with the latest BSD/386 (? see above thingum). I'll spare you the details, if only because I followed them as you would any ...show - I was into Linux back then <g> - but the end of it is that we've got three camps. NetBSD focussing on portability, FreeBSD focussing on efficiency and OpenBSD focussing on (well... I'll spare you the bad puns I came up with :) security. Yet they're all open source as is Linux. They all watch each other as hungry peregrines (I was going for that mythical beast (not the phoenix) but, alas, all that came out of my associative memory were some letters 'y', 'n', 'l', ...). That's another beauty of OSS, you can learn from each other. Nonetheless one has to make choices. It's therein they differ. Especially Linux <g>. With choices come flipsides (of coins flipped). In the case of OpenBSD it is its conservatism at things/times. Like sticking with bind 4.x. Nothing wrong with that, but if you're used to bind 8 like I or would like some modernistic feature... You win some, you loose some. Hope this is of some help. Roelof To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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