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On Fri, 11 Sep 2015 23:23:50 +0000 mr meowski <mr.meowski@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > > I can field this one, especially as it was me that said 'that'... > > BSD has a long and illustrious history (all of which you can read > about elsewhere) but the long and short of it is: > > FreeBSD - the motherlode: original version, probably best choice. > General purpose OS. > OpenBSD - Theo's infamous fork: security obsessed. Home of openssh and > libressl (my personal favourite - it is a bit hardcore though). > NetBSD - the most portable OS in the world, runs on countless > architectures from x86 to MIPS to toasters. For tinkerers. > PCBSD - a "user friendly" version of FreeBSD, probably the lowest > barrier to entry of all versions thanks to slick wizards and GUIs. > DragonflyBSD - Dillon's fork of BSD, orientated towards server admins: > decidedly not for end users unless you insist on testing HAMMER fs or > something > BitRig - super cool project to port KVM and some other critical linux > stuff to BSD, switch project to LLVM/Clang away from GCC, etc. Sadly > might be stalled, I had very high hopes :[ > > Your best bet honestly would probably be to grab a PC-BSD installer > and check that out - it will be relatively gentle on you with a GUI > installer and so forth. I'd personally recommend getting a OpenBSD > installer too, finding one of the countless online instruction guides > and following that through: it's very satisfying setting up an OpenBSD > install from scratch because you lovingly hand-craft everything > yourself (unless you script netboots like me but that's a major > escalation in effort). > > All BSDs, OpenBSD in particular, are renowned for having astonishingly > complete documentation, either on their respective websites or just in > system. There is pretty much no function, API or kernel call not > exhaustively and precisely documented in the man pages: compared to > the chaos of Linux, it's a thing of beauty. > > One word of caution: as excellent as the pkg tools (BSD's many > versions of apt/yum/pacman/etc) have slowly become, it's highly > likely that before long in BSD-land you will find yourself rsyncing a > ports tree and setting compiler flags: if you're not pretty confident > with manual software building and hacking makefiles potentially > things can get real pretty quickly. Stay away from shadowing > pre-release or dev versions until you're happy, because although it's > nice to have the latest versions of software maintaining them > yourself entirely from source can get a bit... well, difficult. Or > just clone and snapshot, throw away your failures until you've got it > down. > > This is just one of many, many awesome resources out there on the > internets for BSD - arguably the BSD community is a lot, lot > friendlier* and 'purer' (in FSF terms) than what's left of the > schismatic Linux community, or what's left of it: > > https://cooltrainer.org/a-freebsd-desktop-howto/ > > That's an excellent walkthrough to make yourself a cracking FreeBSD > box from scratch - you could certainly test in VBox, I maintain > several myself. But personally I love OpenBSD the most: only the > insane Plan9 From Bell Labs interests me as much in the world of > operating systems. Yes it's hard, pf makes your head hurt vs iptables > until it finally clicks and then it's much better and /usr/src/ports > will make you rage until again, it finally clicks in and makes > perfect sense. I reckon I'm about half way converted currently, and > as my main workstation Ubuntu 14.04 box is being a total dick and > frequently segfaulting xorg etc I'm seriously considering switching > that over for the mother of all in-person tests. Nothing beats using > an OS as your only genuine daily driver for a week or two to see if > you can live with it. > > Feel free to ask anything else about BSD chief, big fan and user for > 15 odd years now: no guru or anything but I don't mind sharing what > knowledge I do have. > > Cheers and good luck with your experiments! > > * There is one awkward exception to this: the OpenBSD dev mailing > lists are notoriously very, very, VERY hostile to idiots. Do NOT post > things there, ever. Just google Theo De Raadt for a taste of how he > makes Linus look positively kind, sweet and not angry... > Thank you for taking the time to give me such a long and very helpful answer. I will certainly look further into this and report on any progress. Just one question, is BSD really more secure than Linux? Neil -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq