9/6 Any opinions on OpenBSD vs NetBSD for running it on an old Alpha
or sparc? How do they compare feature-wise? I already know about
OpenBSD being an uber-secure system, I want to know what other
things set them aside. Which is more fun to work with?
What about hardware support?
\_ I prefer OpenBSD. The installation was exteremly easy and it
has some nifty features other than security (RaidFrame for
example). OpenBSD is pretty fast on a SS10 and a Pentium 150
200 class machine. It is probably the best maintained OS
(free or otherwise) I have ever used (upto date manpages, good
online docs, frequently updated bug lists, stable and fully
featured release code). ----ranga
\_ uhh, netbsd has sw raid as well ....
\_ Working/Stable? When I tried it (a while back now) it
didn't work very well and not many people seemed
interested in it.
\_ well I've been using netbsd for years and its fine. -ERic
\_ OpenBSD has the 'old' style install system. You get the
pleasure of mucking with disk labels and such if you like.
I prefer it for paranoia's sake but I wouldn't call it the
easiest install of the *bsd's. I don't want to use default
partitioning but I don't want to muck with the cruddy 25+
year old disk label program either. Yes, I do run openbsd so
I found it worth the trouble.
\_ What BSD has a nicer install program than OpenBSD? FreeBSD?!?
Surely you jest. OpenBSD install may not be graphical and
have a "window" driven interface (a la RH Linux) or a menu
interface (a la FreeBSD) but you can't screw it up. It gives
you all the functionality you need in a neat tight package.
The running system is quite nice too. I run both OpenBSD and
FreeBSD, and I like OpenBSD more. The *only* reason I'm
running FreeBSD is that I need servlet support and FreeBSD
has a native jdk (emulated under OpenBSD).
\_ When I did a 2.4 install, it was ok but not great. Yes,
fbsd was easier imo and has more packages for the lazy,
although this is being corrected soonish. It isn't about
\_ I'm a new comer compared to you. I've only installed
OpenBSD 2.6 and 2.7, both of which were exteremely easy
to use much better than anything else I've ever installed
including FreeBSD (2.2.6, 3.0 release, 4.0 release, 4.1
release), Solaris (2.2-8), RHL (4.0-6.2), Debian (m68k
kernel 2.0.34), LinuxPPC (R3-5,1999,2000), HPUX (10.20,
11), MacOS (3.0-9). Solaris 7,8 and MacOS 8.5 & 9 both
come pretty close, but MacOS requires a GUI (- for me)
and Solaris has problems in text only.
guis. I dont prefer guis.
\_ The current one 2.7 is much better than 4.1 FreeBSD
or RH 6.2. |