[ale] (OT) OpenBSD

[Joseph A. Knapka]

Hey folks,

I've just finished the process of replacing my Linux IP-masq
firewall with an OpenBSD box. This is my first serious attempt
to use any open-source OS other than Linux (I tried FreeBSD
but it pretty much sucked, and I never put it to serious use),
and I have to say that I am very impressed with the quality of
the OpenBSD distribution, and especially the coherence, currency,
and completeness of the documentation. And IPFilter and IPNAT
are IMO a lot less cryptic than ipchains et al.

I've heard that Theo de Raadt has some kind of bad rep among
the other *BSD folks, but his group has put together a pretty
amazing product. It took me about an hour after finishing
the FTP install of the OS to have all my favorite tools in
place and the box doing IP filtering and NAT (though I spent
a while longer getting my IP filter rules whacked into
shape before swapping out the old firewall). Even with nearly
ten years of Linux experience, I've never had this easy a time
setting up a Linux box.

I'm not jumping off the Linux boat, of course - the
ex firewall is still my DHCP/DNS/Samba server, which
was one reason I made the change, I didn't like running
all that other stuff on the firewall - but my
loyalty has been shaken... :-)

-- Joe Knapka
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