FreeBSD and OpenBSD reddit / BSD ---------------------------------------------------------------------- playforvoices 路 2019-10-08 15:36 Rookie question. 馃榿 What is the main difference between FreeBSD and OpenBSD? In my mind was that FreeBSD is build for high availability and OpenBSD for security. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- highway-to-helvetica 路 2019-10-08 15:52 Closed source packages. FreeBSD allows them whilst OpenBSD doesn鈥檛. That鈥檚 the big difference. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] 路 2019-10-08 16:00 OpenBSD developers actually run OpenBSD on their development machines. They eat their own dog food. A great many FreeBSD developers don't actually do dev work *on* FreeBSD. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jaypatelani 路 2019-10-08 16:42 I would suggest look at four giants DragonflyBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD at least once :) then you can decide on your own which one suits you better.. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] 路 2019-10-08 17:02 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- icantthinkofone 路 2019-10-08 20:10 Even if true, that has nothing to do with the operating system. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Malsasa 路 2019-10-09 01:35 First time I hear this. Thanks. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Malsasa 路 2019-10-09 01:39 Hi /u/playforvoices/ I am also a newbie and I don't use BSD daily, but I could see more derivatives of FreeBSD rather than OpenBSD. PCBSD (now TrueOS) and GhostBSD for example, are derivatives of FreeBSD. The only popular derivative of OpenBSD that I know --and I admire-- is LibertyBSD. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Username1224567 路 2019-10-09 02:23 Agreed. That鈥檚 the beauty of computing, it鈥檚 pretty compatible if you think about it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ishigami_san 路 2019-10-09 03:01 I think LibertyBSD is not maintained anymore :-/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Kernigh 路 2019-10-09 03:18 OpenBSD doesn't allow [binary blobs in the kernel](https://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#39). OpenBSD allows closed-source packages. Any package can have PERMIT\_PACKAGE=Yes in [bsd.port.mk(5)](https://man.openbsd.org/bsd.port.mk) if it is "allowed on FTP sites without legal issues". There is no requirement to have source code. FreeBSD and OpenBSD have source code for many packages because they use the source code to build the packages. If they can build a package without its source code, then they don't need the source code for that package. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Malsasa 路 2019-10-09 03:55 Is that true? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ishigami_san 路 2019-10-09 03:58 Well I don't see any recent downloads, so I'm just speculating. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] 路 2019-10-09 04:54 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ellipticcode0 路 2019-10-09 17:28 I suggest FreeBSD because it is easy to use. I never use other BSD. For normal people, there is not much different which BSD you use. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- kraileth 路 2019-10-10 14:44 1) The main difference is that FreeBSD is a general purpose OS (though with a strong focus on the server) and OpenBSD is primarily a research OS for people who are into strong security (and willing to give up a fair bit of common functionality for that). ​ 2) Also the release policy is very different: FreeBSD does major releases about every two years and the previous version will also receive updates and fixes for quite a while. Thanks to the POLA (Policy Of Least Astonishment), things change at a slower pace in FreeBSD and for breaking changes there's usually a heads-up early enough to give you lots of time to plan the migration. With OpenBSD there are two releases every year and only two releases are supported at the same time. So you have to update quite often - and while this can certainly be done in a production environment, it doesn't fit at all with the LTS strategy of many organizations. OpenBSD is also not afraid of making breaking changes. ​ 3) FreeBSD has a larger community and thanks to that a much larger amount of packages available. It also has a modern filesystem (ZFS) whereas this is one of the weak spots of OpenBSD. The latter however embraces the "secure by default" idea and carefully aims for sane defaults in configuration. Also OpenBSD aims for simplicity over being feature-complete, while FreeBSD generally tries to be as useful as possible, even if that complicates matters. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sehnsuchtbsd 路 2019-10-29 13:23 this comment is just so amazingly simple, rational, objective and unbiased...a true rarity for this community