[ale] OpenBSD, FreeBSD

[Dave Brooks]

jj at spiderentertainment.com wrote:
> 
> I just purchased OpenBSD and FreeBSD, since Linux just doesn't cut it
> anymore 

that's a rather strong statement...

> I'm looking for a different flavour. From what I read OpenBSD is
> alot more secure. But does that make it slower ? and if it does how slow
> ?. FreeBSD is mostly used by ISP's I would assume that FreeBSD is faster
> or is it just more flexible ?
> 

OpenBSD is extremely secure.  That doesn't necessarily make it slower. 
It's
proactively audited by the OpenBSD team, and as a result, it has very
few
security flaws.  However, real security always seems to come down to 
administration. Whether it's "slower" or "faster" than another *BSD, per
se, 
is tough to tell, and any difference you may notice would be miniscule. 
I
currently have OpenBSD running on my gateway/firewall at home, which is
a
Macintosh Quadra 800 with a 33Mhz 68040 processor.  The network
performance
is fantastic and uptimes are stellar.

OpenBSD does lack some of the choice of applications that [Net,Free]BSD
may
have, because it's a slightly smaller community. I make fine use of it,
however, and everything that I've found to be a necessity is there (even
bells
and whistles like Enlightenment DR15 and Gnome-support, GIMP, etc appear
in 
the ports tree).  However, OpenBSD is my BSD of choice  -- it's secure
out of
the box and it's rock-solid.  (Plus, you can't beat that "Armed to the
Gills"
Blowfish on their t-shirts).  The support community behind OpenBSD is a)
small,
b) knowledgeable, and c) sometimes a tad abrasive.  This tends to scare
off
some OpenBSD newbies (especially those migrating from the "friendly"
linux-
community), but as long as you show that you have some sort of a clue,
they'll
be more than happy to help you out.

FreeBSD, to me, seems to be more applications-oriented than the other
BSD's, 
however it must be pretty solid because ftp.cdrom.com uses it like it's
going
out of style.  I have some experience with FreeBSD, but not since the
2.2.8
release.  

Happy BSD'ing!
Dave
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