[TriLUG] Slightly OT: Which *BSD? OpenBSD!

[Jon Carnes]

On Sun, 2004-09-19 at 10:17, Roy Vestal wrote:
> I'm wanting to learn BSD. I've been reading up on the 3 I understand to be
> the "Big 3": OpenBSD, NetBSD, and FreeBSD.

If functionality is your primary criteria (unless you need some nice QoS
based routing capabilities), then stay with Linux. Nothing is being
developed faster - and it can do just about anything a computing system
(or phone system) needs to do.

But if security (and High Availability) is your primary criteria, then
OpenBSD is the flavor you want to try. I run Mandrake and OpenBSD on my
networks: Mandrake for it functionality (and I like MSEC), and OpenBSD
for Firewalling and Failover (CARP is really cool).
 
I've played with the three main variants and long ago chose OpenBSD as
my favorite. It's track record is the best in the industry for security
and for it's response to any security issues.

It's also not as big a leap from Linux as you might think. Here is an
article that will take about 2 hours to read (if you follow the primary
links) that covers most of the differences between Linux and BSD:
Migrating to OpenBSD
  http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq9.html

... And here is a primer on PF (the firewall application in OpenBSD):
  http://www.openbsd.org/faq/pf/index.html

Have fun Roy!

Jon Carnes