OpenBSD

Turgon

I used OpenBSD about 6 years ago. Do any of you use it at work?

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undomiel

Contemplated it but went with a linux solution for our latest server, so I don't forsee any bsd happening at my site in the near future.

sprkymrk

I've used FreeBSD but not OpenBSD.

liven

Use FreeBSD every day.

Hands down one of the most secure stable operating systems I have ever used.

Exceptional for networking tasks.

Turgon

liven wrote:

Use FreeBSD every day.

Hands down one of the most secure stable operating systems I have ever used.

Exceptional for networking tasks.

Now there is a man with some insight outside the drones following corporate policy, what is used at work and vendor study tracks. These folks are missing out in terms of bonuses at work for introducing something useful.

Can you expand on the benefits?

I was introduced to this in 2001 from someone who worked for an educational establishment where (like all educational establishments they were starved of cash and needed free things.)

I think we used it for pf but it was ages ago. I have to decide if I should have another look at this or try all the linux flavours later in the year.

liven

Turgon wrote:

liven wrote:

Use FreeBSD every day.

Hands down one of the most secure stable operating systems I have ever used.

Exceptional for networking tasks.

Now there is a man with some insight outside the drones following corporate policy, what is used at work and vendor study tracks. These folks are missing out in terms of bonuses at work for introducing something useful.

Can you expand on the benefits?

I was introduced to this in 2001 from someone who worked for an educational establishment where (like all educational establishments they were starved of cash and needed free things.)

I think we used it for pf but it was ages ago. I have to decide if I should have another look at this or try all the linux flavours later in the year.

First off FreeBSD is extremely efficient with resources. It is a complied operating system that typcially out performs most flavors of linux and unix. Pretty impressive for being free.

The kernel is extremely sound with no bloat, and it is very easy to tweak and recompile the kernel. I have stripped kernels down to the bare bones on some boxes.

There is a variety of firewalls that can be installed on FreeBSD and they are extremely powerfully allowing for all the features of any enterprise level firewall that cost thousands of dollars ( you can get a gui with PFsense if you need it, but I have not used it). And when you compile the kernel with a firewall in it, you can compile it to DENY by default. This way if you do not allow internal traffic out through the firewall, nothing gets in or out.

Practially NO bloat with the software. To illustrate my point I have boxes that have count them 3 process running when I list all the running process on the box. And one of the process is the command I used to list the processes, and the other is the process for my ssh session.... Try getting a windows box to do that...

Vulnerabilities for Freebsd are VERY few and far between. Maybe once a month or every other month and 99 % of the time they will not even apply to you (because they apply to specific applications not the os).

You can Jail process, and you will need root access (by default to do just about anything on the box). Making knowledge of the root password or having a user in the sudoers group necessary to pull off lots of things.

The list goes on and on, but I am still amazed every day at how well machines running this operating system perform.

There are countless other benefits that I could list, but I am lazy...

Maybe this will put it in perspective. My co-worker came from Google, and they build everything from the ground up creating effectively some of the most powerful computer environments in the world. But he is blown away by the performance and robustness of freebsd (trust me the guy has seen some amazing stuff).

In the beginning it is a bit of a pain getting used to Freebsd but once you get the hang of it you will love it.

Oh ya if your looking for a good desk top, don't use freebsd. It really isn't suited for that. I do use it for my desktop, but ubuntu, suse, fedora work much better for that.

Slowhand

I've only used OpenBSD once, doing some troubleshooting work for a colocated client at the datacenter I used to work at. Other than that, it was FreeBSD across the board. I think we used FreeBSD, specifically, because it played nice with the particular software we had to run, including the specific version of BIND we used and the monitoring software we ran. I never had any problems with FreeBSD, it's a stable operating system with a lot of software available through Ports and very rarely squawked at running Linux apps.

liven

Slowhand wrote:

I've only used OpenBSD once, doing some troubleshooting work for a colocated client at the datacenter I used to work at. Other than that, it was FreeBSD across the board. I think we used FreeBSD, specifically, because it played nice with the particular software we had to run, including the specific version of BIND we used and the monitoring software we ran. I never had any problems with FreeBSD, it's a stable operating system with a lot of software available through Ports and very rarely squawked at running Linux apps.

ah yes the ports system!!! Making installing software and packages a breeze!!!

Mishra

no BSD in any of our environments

liven

Mishra wrote:

no BSD in any of our environments

Bummer!!!!

JK

Its not for everyone, but if you like open source, and super stable systems give it a shot!

Slowhand

One nice thing about using (most) BSD-based operating systems is that they're not licensed under GPL, but rather under a BSD license. The long and the short of it is that means if you were to make modifications to the operating system, or were to design an application that took advantage of that particular BSD OS, you wouldn't have to re-release that software as open-source. BSD licensing gives you a choice. (Anyone with better knowledge of permissive licensing can feel free to add to or correct anything I've said, but that's my understanding as of writing this.)