In the case that I was dealing with, I didn’t know what os would run on my sun machine. Trying openbsd, it ran. Freebsd did not. So in that case, oponbsd was better ewen tho both support the same machine.
Over all
openbsd you’ll be doing most of the work
freebsd the computer does most of the work
or at least from my use of it xD
Within the last 8-12 months the license bs gate whatever happened with linux. So, I listened to as many interviews about licenses and how they work so I could get it.
Yeah well its still trash documentation built to tear apart projects. And I learned that freebsd has a similar thing.
Is that something to think about later? Does that license difference effect the os that much? Are Free and Open handled differently because of it? What are the major differences to think over?
I think I want to try openbsd just because I’ve seen people say it takes 50% less bullshit to get it running and have a desktop. But if theres a better reason to do freebsd, I’d like to know it.
Is that something to think about later? Does that license difference effect the os that much?
If you’re not using the code in your own published projects, licenses are entirely irrelevant from a practical perspective. End users can mix and match Free Software all they want.
Are Free and Open handled differently because of it?
Free and Open in the BSD names is (essentially) branding. Both are predominantly Free Software.
I think I want to try openbsd just because I’ve seen people say it takes 50% less bullshit to get it running and have a desktop.
Both FreeBSD and OpenBSD require a bit more intermediate skill to install and configure than most user-friendly Linux distros. If you want a dead simple desktop *BSD, you’re probably going to be more interested in Project Trident or MidnightBSD.
FreeBSD is generally a better experience for desktops. OpenBSD is very opinionated and focused on security. Their security focus means features and hardware support are sometimes lacking if they deem the features poorly designed.
It might be a minor semantics different, but I think their goal is to have a more refined codebase than a more refined system.
User-friendliness isn’t a priority for OpenBSD, but simple codebases tend to lead to refined software.
Both OpenBSD and FreeBSD develop their core as a single, cohesive project, so both BSDs are arguably “more refined” than Linux-land, which is a collection of constantly evolving targets.
Some of my favorite talks on youtube are from OpenBSD people.
This one is about pf, but also provides some good info on OpenBSD in general.
And this one of LibreSSL is also a favorite. There are several follow-ups to it as well.
Not sure what this is in reference to, but I do wish some things were more flexible license-wise.
For instance, I think we would have seen ZFS on Linux much sooner and that it would be included in most distros by now if it weren’t for nuances in licenses. RHEL distros in particular lack a modern CoW filesystem since BTRFS was dropped.
OpenBSD is more secure
FreeBSD is higher performance and more functionality
Neither is “better” they’re both tools for different jobs IMHO. Which one is “better” for a particular box depends on what tasks you expect that box to do, and what trade-offs you are willing to make.
If you want a hardened internet facing server - maybe consider OpenBSD. If you want a higher performance application server with more functionality (or a desktop), put FreeBSD behind it. Not saying FreeBSD can’t face the internet of course. But that’s what OpenBSD is focused on.
OpenBSD code is heavily audited. FreeBSD relies on upstream for security patches. OpenBSD does not. OpenBSD audit everything themselves and thus they find a lot of bugs that others continue to ship. They do feed back to upstream, but the policy and focus is different. OpenBSD is security over everything else. FreeBSD is not. FreeBSD is more concerned with performance, functionality, etc. SMP for example was way behind on OpenBSD vs. FreeBSD for example (probably still is) because the focus on that was not there with OpenBSD.
Not saying FreeBSD do not care about security, but the level of focus is nowhere near that of OpenBSD. OpenBSD will refuse to ship or include code that they do not feel meets their standards, even if it means that functionality suffers. This means things like driver support, application support, etc. is generally better on FreeBSD than OpenBSD.
