[rescue] bsd's

[rescue at sunhelp.org]

>> I thought this list might be the best place to ask without starting a
>> flame war. I was wondering what the differences are between the
>> various bsd variants (netbsd, openbsd and freebsd particually). Which
>> versions are best supported on various hardware (sparc,i386 and vax).
>
> I don't even look in the general direction of OpenBSD.  It's
> NetBSD's idiot brother.

Oh come on...he just asked a technical question and was trying
not to start a flame war, and you give an unsupported opinion
that's just *begging* to be the first shot in a flame war.

I left my flame thrower at home, though, so I'll just say:
OpenBSD isn't necessarily perfect when it comes to security,
but if you're concerned about pro-active code audits *and*
integrated cryptography, OpenBSD is ahead of the other two
IMNSHO.  As a full-time security geek, I tend to use OpenBSD
when I need a basic but robust platform to build security-critical
nodes (firewalls, NAT boxes, etc.) on.  If I want to set up
an IPv4-to-IPv6 router that also supports stateful packet
filtering and can serve as a dual-stack (4/6) aware endpoint
for IPSec tunnels (my next "spare time" project) then
Open again seems to be the starting point.

As to hardware support, I've used Open recently on x86 and
SPARC32 with no issues--but if I wanted more-or-less identical
hardware support across multiple platforms, I would probably
go for NetBSD.  If I wanted a BSD that had reliable/stable/
well-tested support for SMP on x86, then I *might* try FreeBSD
(based on friends' reports) but personally I use Debian with
a 2.4 Linux kernel in such situations--and in cases where I
need support for specific x86 hardware (like DAC960 RAID
controllers, which didn't work reliably under Net or Open
when I first got mine).  A combination of OpenBSD and Linux--
It Works For Me.

Trying to talk about the BSDs without flamage is tough, since
the two biggest reasons that there are three projects right now
are 1. personality conflicts and 2. inability to agree on what the
goals are (sometimes 1. and 2. are indistinguishable).

I haven't used FreeBSD or NetBSD in >18 months, so if anyone
has *technical* corrections to the above please send them in.

  --Rip