OpenBSD vs FreeBSD vs NetBSD
Rob Philip
encountered anything that's troubling about it.
But I've been asked and am unable to answer the question "why OpenBSD rather
than FreeBSD or NetBSD".
I have gleaned from various readings that OpenBSD is for routers and secure
machines, FreeBSD is for your desktop and NetBSD is for unusual hardware.
But, I have yet to find any serious flaw with OpenBSD for my desktop.
Anybody out there in *BSD land have any clear insights?
Thanks!
Rob
JD
"Rob Philip" <rob.P...@computer.org> wrote in message news:USzL7.6335$DD2....@typhoon.sonic.net...
performance in the design. If you aren't doing work where caching can
be used to advantage, or you aren't stressing the system with large processes
with marginal amounts of memory, then each of the OSes are roughly
equivalent WRT load.
Beyond the various areas where the OSes have been optimized, most of the
discussion degrades to religion.
John
Tobias Weingartner
> Ok. I've happily installed OpenBSD (2.9) on my system and haven't really
> encountered anything that's troubling about it.
>
> But I've been asked and am unable to answer the question "why OpenBSD rather
> than FreeBSD or NetBSD".
The question is "why NetBSD or FreeBSD, rather than OpenBSD?"...
> I have gleaned from various readings that OpenBSD is for routers and secure
> machines, FreeBSD is for your desktop and NetBSD is for unusual hardware.
> But, I have yet to find any serious flaw with OpenBSD for my desktop.
Exactly, there's your proof... :-)
> Anybody out there in *BSD land have any clear insights?
You have the insight, just don't fight it, it'll come to you... :-)
--Toby.
[100~Plax]sb16i0A2172656B63616820636420726568746F6E61207473754A[dZ1!=b]salax
nobody
I could be wrong, but I think this question may have been asked before
in one form or another...
While they are not identical,any of these OS's can be used for any
purpose you like, as you've already deduced. I think FreeBSD is the
most often suggested BSD more due to mindset, than any substantive
reason. However it does have some advantages: A much larger ports tree,
and as someone pointed out, the VM/Cache system of FreeBSD is very,
very, nice (what ever happened to the idea of importing it?). SMP is
present and being further refined.
That said, I still prefer OBSD to Free for general use (I have FreeBSD
on my desktop, and use both all the time). I find it has an edge in
organization and layout, and more attention paid to details like
documentation and configuration. Very minor differences really, but
enough to give it the edge in my books. I also find the OBSD ports are
frequently of better quality (particularly with respect to the
documentation!).
I haven't used NetBSD enough to give it a fair accessment, so I'll state
no opinion on it ...
nobody
And excuse me for being an idiot, and not noticing this was
cross-posted...
Rob Philip
> I could be wrong, but I think this question may have been asked before
> in one form or another...
I'm sure - thanks for answering though - I mind less asking stupid questions
when I don't have to endure "RTFM" answers :)
>
> While they are not identical,any of these OS's can be used for any
> purpose you like, as you've already deduced.
Again, from a complete newcomer's perspective - how "different" are FBSD and
OBSD from the perspective of applications software? As you've pointed out,
there are more ports for FBSD, but it would seem that the two might be close
enough that apps could run on either.
I like OBSD so far - I haven't managed to mess it up with all my fiddling
about, and while it took a gawdawful amount of time, just doing a "make" in
the KDE directory just worked.
In any case, I already like OBSD better than the Redhat Linux install I
endured.
Thanks!
Rob
Kaden
> In any case, I already like OBSD better than the Redhat Linux install I
> endured.
As a Linux convert who fiddled with 6 different distros before
'discovering' FreeBSD, I can tell you that the more you discover
and play with BSD the more likely you'll be to reel in disgust when
confronted with a Linux machine.
I still like Linux and I still have Debian on my laptop (although that's
only because FBSD doesn't support my PCCard NIC and I don't have the
money to get a supported one), but give me a BSD any day.
me
"nobody" <nob...@noplace.null> wrote in message
news:3BFF21B3...@noplace.null...
Wine Development
>
>
> In any case, I already like OBSD better than the Redhat Linux install I
> endured.
>
While I have a strong dislike of DeadRat's install setup (why _must_
every machine have a copy of sendmail on it) I am finding that the
worst of the excesses are actually coming from the KDE and GNOME
teams. They seem to be in a competition to see which can demand the
most extra obscure libraries and packages installed.
--
Keith Matthews Spam trap - my real account at this
node is keith_m
Frequentous Consultants - Linux Services,
Oracle development & database administration
Rob Philip
investigate.
I have poked away at both KDE and Gnome on Redhat, and KDE in particular has
the dubious merit of helping Linux to be substantially slower than MS
Windows 2000 running on the same machine. Just for yucks I ran a Make of KDE
on OpenBSD, and it took well in excess of 12 hours to build. I have an ugly
feeling that it'll do for OpenBSD what it did for Linux.
Any thoughts on window managers? I actually *like* Windows 2000
windows/fonts/management and would like something similar..
thanks!
Rob
"Wine Development" <wi...@sweeney.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:3BFF60FC...@sweeney.demon.co.uk...
Wine Development
>
> OK. Well, you've actually brought up something on my list of things to
> investigate.
>
> I have poked away at both KDE and Gnome on Redhat, and KDE in particular has
> the dubious merit of helping Linux to be substantially slower than MS
> Windows 2000 running on the same machine. Just for yucks I ran a Make of KDE
> on OpenBSD, and it took well in excess of 12 hours to build. I have an ugly
Try building Mozilla from scratch.
Part of KDE's problem (and Gnome I expect) is the linking problem for
dynamic libraries at load time, especially on ia32. AMD's 64 bit
system is supposed to make life somewhat easier and faster by
pre-linking.
Once loaded is a different matter. Part of KDE's problem is their
insistence on using C++ with the extra linking overheads. OO is a nice
concept for limiting bug effects but it does have performance
penalties.
Then there are all those libraries. And I still do not understand why
one has to have a sound card configured to be able to run any
multimedia stuff. I'm convinced that the people who write this stuff
have never had to work in a large open-plan office. Apart from their
all being besotted with including the latest 'kewl' facilities and
hardware without regard to its practical use.
>
> Any thoughts on window managers? I actually *like* Windows 2000
> windows/fonts/management and would like something similar..
>
Only once ever seen it and never used it so can't really comment.
Thorsten Glaser
> OK. Well, you've actually brought up something on my list of things to
> investigate.
>
> I have poked away at both KDE and Gnome on Redhat, and KDE in particular has
> the dubious merit of helping Linux to be substantially slower than MS
> Windows 2000 running on the same machine. Just for yucks I ran a Make of KDE
> on OpenBSD, and it took well in excess of 12 hours to build. I have an ugly
> feeling that it'll do for OpenBSD what it did for Linux.
Wow! My Duron-833 here did it, with 256M/256swap, in a bit fewer than
5 hours (excluding koffice anyways, but including long downloads at
an average of 15-25kB/sec).
> Any thoughts on window managers? I actually *like* Windows 2000
> windows/fonts/management and would like something similar..
XF4 includes freetype2 (as far as I could guess from the cf)
and icewm (ports!) is _the_ nice windowing manager.
I also tried qvwm, but icewm gives a better feeling even if
you use non-win/os2 themes (I prefer metal2).
Wm2, which is in XF4, is actually not _really_ nice but does
its job and works quite well, and, amazingly fast.
-mirabilos
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me
"Wine Development" <wi...@sweeney.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:3BFF60FC...@sweeney.demon.co.uk...
me
"Rob Philip" <rob.P...@computer.org> wrote in message
news:WhPL7.6433$DD2....@typhoon.sonic.net...
david parsons
Wine Development <wi...@sweeney.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Rob Philip wrote:
>>
>
>>
>> In any case, I already like OBSD better than the Redhat Linux install I
>> endured.
>>
>
>While I have a strong dislike of DeadRat's install setup (why _must_
>every machine have a copy of sendmail on it)
Heh. That's one of the questions I keep having about FreeBSD;
/stand/sysinstall REALLY REALLY wants to have sendmail running on the
box, and I find that when I finish an install I usually have to go
back in and manually kill it and then make certain it's turned off
in /etc/rc.conf.
____
david parsons \bi/ DIE SENDMAIL DIE!
\/
Julio Uehara
>Ok. I've happily installed OpenBSD (2.9) on my system and haven't really
>encountered anything that's troubling about it.
>
>But I've been asked and am unable to answer the question "why OpenBSD rather
>than FreeBSD or NetBSD".
>
>I have gleaned from various readings that OpenBSD is for routers and secure
>machines, FreeBSD is for your desktop and NetBSD is for unusual hardware.
>
I am not a computer specialist but I like tinkering with the 3 of them.
>But, I have yet to find any serious flaw with OpenBSD for my desktop.
>
My hard disk has 4 partitions. By trial and error found that Free and Net
could be installed in any partition, while Open could only be installed in
the first one; something to do with the 1024 cylinder issue. But I don't
know if you can call it a flaw. Later, I wanted to practice with Solaris 8
and found that it didn't want to be installed in the remaining free
partition, due to the same 1024 cylinder issue. Because of partition size
considerations I reinstalled OpenBSD in another hard disk and installed
Solaris in the same disk together with Free and NetBSD. The remaining
partition went to Slack.
>Anybody out there in *BSD land have any clear insights?
>
>Thanks!
>
>Rob
>
Hope it helps,
-- Julio
Wine Development
The Deadrat script checks for the presence of sendmail in update mode,
and installs even then if the rpm is missing. Use it to add some major
area you omitted on the initial install and you have sendmail to
delete again !
And as for what they have done to KDE in RH7.2 is an absolute disgrace
from a security point of view.
Enough, this is well OT for the group.
walt
> /stand/sysinstall REALLY REALLY wants to have sendmail running on the
> box, and I find that when I finish an install I usually have to go
> back in and manually kill it and then make certain it's turned off
> in /etc/rc.conf.
I wonder...do the mail messages sent to root by the periodic cron updates
depend on sendmail for delivery? If not, then how do they get delivered?
Philip Paeps
> Ok. I've happily installed OpenBSD (2.9) on my system and haven't really
> encountered anything that's troubling about it.
Congratulations :-)
> But I've been asked and am unable to answer the question "why OpenBSD rather
> than FreeBSD or NetBSD".
That's a religious debate ...
The 'answer' is: 'look at the slogans'
FreeBSD: The Power to Serve
NetBSD : Of Course it runs NetBSD
OpenBSD: Four years without a remote hole in the default install!
In other words: if you want raw performance and stability for an i386 or an
Alpha with a few (very few) security sacrifices: go for FreeBSD -- it's the
BSD with the largest userbase, and best sofware support too, in my experience.
If, on the other hand, you need a system which will survive a nuclear attack:
choose OpenBSD, as you can't crack it with a crowbar. If you've got a very
odd machine (Sun, SGI, Atari, whatever ...) use NetBSD.
I use all three: my firewall is running OpenBSD, my workstations and servers
run FreeBSD, and my laptop runs NetBSD (the only BSD which has support for the
PCMCIA net.card I have). Additionally, I've set up a Sun Ultra and an (old)
IBM NetServer with NetBSD.
> I have gleaned from various readings that OpenBSD is for routers and secure
> machines, FreeBSD is for your desktop and NetBSD is for unusual hardware.
Sounds about right ... but use what you like most, or what gets the job done
for you.
> But, I have yet to find any serious flaw with OpenBSD for my desktop.
There you go: OpenBSD works for you :-)
> Anybody out there in *BSD land have any clear insights?
It's as clear as mud to me :-P
--
Philip Paeps phi...@paeps.cx
When somebody drops something, everybody will kick it
around instead of picking it up.
Timothy J. Lee
>I wonder...do the mail messages sent to root by the periodic cron updates
>depend on sendmail for delivery? If not, then how do they get delivered?
sendmail can be left installed to be runnable in command line mode,
but not run as a daemon. To ensure that queued temporarily undeliverable
messages are retried, it can be run in queue-only mode (no listening on
port 25, leave off the -bd), or run from cron (with only the -q option).
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Timothy J. Lee
Unsolicited bulk or commercial email is not welcome.
No warranty of any kind is provided with this message.
Wine Development
There are other MTAs, and many people prefer them.
mic...@lpthe.jussieu.fr
> OK. Well, you've actually brought up something on my list of things to
> investigate.
> I have poked away at both KDE and Gnome on Redhat, and KDE in particular has
> the dubious merit of helping Linux to be substantially slower than MS
> Windows 2000 running on the same machine. Just for yucks I ran a Make of KDE
> on OpenBSD, and it took well in excess of 12 hours to build. I have an ugly
> feeling that it'll do for OpenBSD what it did for Linux.
Your PC must be an antiquity. On my Athlon 1.2 G with 256 Megs memory
(the thing that costs next to nothing now) running FreeBSD it takes of order
of an hour. This box is not completely ruined by KDE. I bet the effect
on OpenBSD may be dramatic if you don't have enough memory.
128 Megs is very short, 256 almost required.
> Any thoughts on window managers? I actually *like* Windows 2000
> windows/fonts/management and would like something similar..
--
Michel Talon
Thomas Mueller
>As a Linux convert who fiddled with 6 different distros before
>'discovering' FreeBSD, I can tell you that the more you discover
>and play with BSD the more likely you'll be to reel in disgust when
>confronted with a Linux machine.
>I still like Linux and I still have Debian on my laptop (although that's
>only because FBSD doesn't support my PCCard NIC and I don't have the
>money to get a supported one), but give me a BSD any day.
For that PCCard NIC, you might want to check http://www.netbsd.org to see if it
is supported under NetBSD.
I've installed DR-DOS 7.03 and Debian 2.2.3 Linux on new computer, allowed
Debian to install a preselected set of packages, which apparently was a mistake.
Debian Linux wvdial couldn't find my modem, which I later found in /proc/pci at
the same base address and IRQ revealed by Ralf Brown's DOS-based PCI program.
Modem is a hardware modem, not a Winmodem. I still have Slackware 8.0 (Linux),
NetBSD 1.5.2 and OpenBSD 2.9 to install, will probably not keep all of these.
OpenBSD partition is above virtual cylinder 1023, which could make booting
difficult or impossible; I don't think this would apply to Linux, FreeBSD or
NetBSD with the newer BIOSes.
Imad
I was running OpenBSD on my SPARCstation 5 (80 MHz microSPARC II, 64MB
RAM, 540 MB HDD) not too long ago and found it to be fine (better than
Linux (Debian) and Solaris, the other two OSs I've tried on the system).
I was thinking of switching from my current Debian configuration back to
OpenBSD next month sometime, but I was wondering if NetBSD offered me
any benefits that I should be aware of. I use the box primarily as a
workstation (X with BlackBox, running gcc under Aterm, using Links, and
XWPE, along with a good bit of SSH (both in and out) and SFTP (both
ways), as well as some other basic apps (LFTP out, GQview, nano, Xpdf,
dillo)). I like OpenBSD's philosophy and the relatively clean nature of
the base install (as well as the fact that you only need one floppy to
install the system) with few services enabled by default. Apart from a
slightly larger port tree, am I missing anything by choosing Open over
Net? TIA
Best,
--Imad "(e)magius" Hussain
_____________________________________________________________________
"I object to you. I object to intellect without discipline. I object
to power without constructive purpose."
-- Spock to Trelane, "The Squire of Gothos"
______________________________________________________________________
Dave Uhring
> May I ask for advice?
>
> I was running OpenBSD on my SPARCstation 5 (80 MHz microSPARC II, 64MB
> RAM, 540 MB HDD) not too long ago and found it to be fine (better than
> Linux (Debian) and Solaris, the other two OSs I've tried on the system).
> I was thinking of switching from my current Debian configuration back to
> OpenBSD next month sometime, but I was wondering if NetBSD offered me
> any benefits that I should be aware of. I use the box primarily as a
> workstation (X with BlackBox, running gcc under Aterm, using Links, and
> XWPE, along with a good bit of SSH (both in and out) and SFTP (both
> ways), as well as some other basic apps (LFTP out, GQview, nano, Xpdf,
> dillo)). I like OpenBSD's philosophy and the relatively clean nature of
> the base install (as well as the fact that you only need one floppy to
> install the system) with few services enabled by default. Apart from a
> slightly larger port tree, am I missing anything by choosing Open over
> Net? TIA
>
>
> Best,
>
> --Imad "(e)magius" Hussain
NetBSD is a considerably smaller install, but it lacks such vital utilities
as Perl. Of course you can add them after install through the pkgsrc
system (similar to ports in OpenBSD).
You might also look into getting a second HDD regardless of which you
install; 540MB is about the minimum for a useful system.
Philip Paeps
> May I ask for advice?
# -- snip [Net or Open on a SparcStation] snip -- #
The 'problem' with NetBSD -- as has already been posted -- is the fact that it
comes with very little tools in the base system. On the other hand, it does
have the best hardware support (I'm running it on a laptop here, with all
sorts of strange micro-muck which is unsupported by just about everything).
I would suggest you stick to OpenBSD on your Sun, leave NetBSD to the hardware
which is really exotic. Unless, of course, you enjoy a challenge, in which
case, of course, I'd suggest you go for it!
Ah ... and one other small thing: NetBSD isn't *quite* as complete as the
other BSDs when it comes to localisation. At least not in my experience. If
anyone has had success with getting Danish characters to show in vi(1) or on
the console -> let me know :-P
- Philip
--
Philip Paeps phi...@paeps.cx
One way to make your old car run better is to look up the price of a
new model.
Boner Stabone
For a longer version of what Philip wrote, check out the following
article from PC Magizine.
OS Alternatives
http://www.pcmag.com/print_article/0,3048,a%253D17492,00.asp
http://www.deadly.org directed me to it :)
--
Tbone
Thomas Mueller
> My hard disk has 4 partitions. By trial and error found that Free and Net
could be installed in any partition, while Open could only be installed in
the first one; something to do with the 1024 cylinder issue. But I don't
know if you can call it a flaw. Later, I wanted to practice with Solaris 8
and found that it didn't want to be installed in the remaining free
partition, due to the same 1024 cylinder issue. Because of partition size
considerations I reinstalled OpenBSD in another hard disk and installed
Solaris in the same disk together with Free and NetBSD. The remaining
partition went to Slack.
Did you have any trouble persuading FreeBSD or NetBSD to install when the other
was already installed? I think FreeBSD and NetBSD use the same partition type
as defined by the one-byte number in the partition table (or is this no longer
true?), while OpenBSD uses a different type (hex A6). I think NetBSD partition
type is A9, am not sure if FreeBSD partition type is A9 or A5.
Julio Uehara
>Did you have any trouble persuading FreeBSD or NetBSD to install when the other
>was already installed? I think FreeBSD and NetBSD use the same partition type
>as defined by the one-byte number in the partition table (or is this no longer
>true?), while OpenBSD uses a different type (hex A6). I think NetBSD partition
>type is A9, am not sure if FreeBSD partition type is A9 or A5.
>
No, no trouble. Except that NetBSD also displayed a 1024 cylinder related
message, but it installed just fine after defining the partition for NetBSD
and assigning the "a", "b" and "e" slices for /, swap and /usr.
Sorry, don't know about the one-byte number in the partition table still
holding or not. But doing an fdisk -l in slack [came to BSD through Linux :=)]
it shows a5 for FreeBSD, a9 for NetBSD and a6 for OpenBSD.
The following shows the partitions in the 30 GB disk installed as a primary
slave drive (/dev/hdb),
OS Cylinders Id System
Solaris 8 1-1000 82 Linux swap
Slackware 8 1001-2000 83 Linux native
NetBSD 1.5.1 2001-3000 a9 Unknown
FreeBSD 4.4 3001-3736 a5 BSD/386
I use GRUB as a boot manager and the program resides in Slack 8.
Solaris (id=82) is missidentified as a Linux swap and Slack, using the
reiserfs, is seen as Linux native. NetBSD is not identified.
Hope it helps,
--Julio
Chris Huang
>
> The 'problem' with NetBSD -- as has already been posted -- is the fact
that it
> comes with very little tools in the base system. On the other hand, it
does
Doesn't mean to flame, but ..... =)
"comes with very little tools in the base system"
thats why it is called "base package" and untill you starting adding your
*own* packages from pkgsrc
since assumptions are genereally bad ideas and unless you want a bloated
base version eg linux =)
I will say "lean and mean", >70MB for a fully fucntional system , not bad
eh ...
just a thought....
Chris
G.T.
>
> Any thoughts on window managers? I actually *like* Windows 2000
> windows/fonts/management and would like something similar..
>
It's no Windows, thankfully, but WindowMaker has been my fave for a
couple of years now. Nothing has else has compelled me to change.
Greg
--
Never trust a top-poster.
Lasse Hillerře Petersen
<phi...@paeps.cx> wrote:
>The 'problem' with NetBSD -- as has already been posted -- is the fact that it
>comes with very little tools in the base system.
The 'problem' with FreeBSD is the fact that it come with awful many tools
in the base system.
Also the one time I installed it, I definitely didn't like the installer.
But then, I tend to exit the installer in NetBSD and install by hand from
the shell.
:-)
>If
>anyone has had success with getting Danish characters to show in vi(1)
Man har ikke prّvet man vi, har man?
:set print="وّهئطإ"
(or put it in .exrc for convenience; add characters as suits you.)
Or just install and use vim instead.
>or on
>the console -> let me know :-P
You mean in shells? I have no problem in any shell, although ksh is
heartily recommended. For the keyboard, use wscons and put encoding=dk in
the wscons.conf file.
-Lasse
Philip Paeps
> In article <rSeM7.54311$XM4....@afrodite.telenet-ops.be>, Philip Paeps
> <phi...@paeps.cx> wrote:
>>The 'problem' with NetBSD -- as has already been posted -- is the fact that it
>>comes with very little tools in the base system.
> The 'problem' with FreeBSD is the fact that it come with awful many tools
> in the base system.
You have a point there. But if you choose an 'expert' installation, you can
nuke most of them out :-P
> Also the one time I installed it, I definitely didn't like the installer.
> But then, I tend to exit the installer in NetBSD and install by hand from
> the shell.
> :-)
I couldn't agree more there -- sysinstall(8) is a monster (sysinst too, well,
actually, just about any installer makes me want to go drinking). Generally,
I pick the 'expert' install, pick as little as I need, and get on with life.
>>If
>>anyone has had success with getting Danish characters to show in vi(1)
> Man har ikke prøvet man vi, har man?
Ikke i længere tid :-o
> :set print="æøåÆØÅ"
Joooo, det har man, og man bruger de same .exrc filer på FreeBSD og NetBSD.
På (eller er de 'under', jeg har ikke talt dansk i længere tid :-o) FreeBSD
virker den, ikke på NetBSD...
Back to English, my NetBSD laptop is booted ... let's try... And of course it
works. My sincere apologies for the 'temporary blindness'.
> (or put it in .exrc for convenience; add characters as suits you.)
> Or just install and use vim instead.
Too heavy, it's a laptop, not a toy :-)
>>or on
>>the console -> let me know :-P
> You mean in shells? I have no problem in any shell, although ksh is
> heartily recommended. For the keyboard, use wscons and put encoding=dk in
> the wscons.conf file.
The encoding=dk isn't a problem, works nicely, only my tcsh doesn't show it
... back to the manpage. Implementation is likely different from FreeBSD
(syscons and wscons are not the same beast).
Thanks for the e-mail too, Lasse, always appreciate it :-)
- Philip
--
Philip Paeps phi...@paeps.cx
The primary function of the design engineer is to make
things difficult for the fabricator and impossible
for the serviceman.
Philip Paeps
Just to let you know that I've managed to get NetBSD to understand what Danish
is all about. I did have to download a French locale.tgz file from the NetBSD
ftp server, and extract the LC_CTYPE bit into /usr/share/locale/dk/, but ...
It now works. I suppose this is one of the disadvantages of NetBSD's
'compactness'. It works though -- and it was a good reminder of how looking
things up worked again.
It's amazing how used one gets to one operating system :-P I can see the
morale behind it though, and I like it :-)
In the past, I've only had limited experience with NetBSD (as I said, I've
been using FreeBSD extensively, and it's spoiled me), and only in
'all-English' contexts. Now I know that it can be put to use for me in other
places too. Yummy.
Anyhow, thanks for the help, Lasse, I appreciate it ...
Næste gang jeg er i Norden får du en øl :-)
- Philip
--
Philip Paeps phi...@paeps.cx
"You've got to have a gimmick if your band sucks."
-- Gary Giddens
Mike
wrote:
>In comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc Lasse Hillerře Petersen <lhp+...@toft-hp.dk> wrote:
>> In article <rSeM7.54311$XM4....@afrodite.telenet-ops.be>, Philip Paeps
>> <phi...@paeps.cx> wrote:
>
>>>The 'problem' with NetBSD -- as has already been posted -- is the fact that it
>>>comes with very little tools in the base system.
>
>> The 'problem' with FreeBSD is the fact that it come with awful many tools
>> in the base system.
>
>You have a point there. But if you choose an 'expert' installation, you can
>nuke most of them out :-P
>
>> Also the one time I installed it, I definitely didn't like the installer.
>> But then, I tend to exit the installer in NetBSD and install by hand from
>> the shell.
>> :-)
>
>I couldn't agree more there -- sysinstall(8) is a monster (sysinst too, well,
>actually, just about any installer makes me want to go drinking). Generally,
>I pick the 'expert' install, pick as little as I need, and get on with life.
>
Well, at least you have the option to pick 'expert install' and roll
your own.
At this point, I appreciate the installers of FreeBSD and OpenBSD
(haven't tried NetBSD yet). I'm a relative newbie to the BSD world
(and a newbie to *nix for the most part) and, while I will eventually
be using the 'expert install' options, for now I tend to let the
installer put the base system on my disk. That way at least I know I
will wind up with a working system. The installers offer me enough
leeway to be as 'expert' as I choose to be, or give me all the
hand-holding I need. To me that is a good design.
(keeping things in perspective: has the Windows base install reached
1GB yet?)
Philip Paeps
> Well, at least you have the option to pick 'expert install' and roll
> your own.
Yes, it's briliant :-)
It takes a bit of getting used to, initially, but once you've got the hang of
it, you never want 'next-next-reboot-next-next-reboot-next-next-finish' things
again ...
> At this point, I appreciate the installers of FreeBSD and OpenBSD
> (haven't tried NetBSD yet). I'm a relative newbie to the BSD world
> (and a newbie to *nix for the most part) and, while I will eventually
> be using the 'expert install' options, for now I tend to let the
> installer put the base system on my disk. That way at least I know I
> will wind up with a working system. The installers offer me enough
> leeway to be as 'expert' as I choose to be, or give me all the
> hand-holding I need. To me that is a good design.
NetBSD is slightly more 'trying' on the newbie, but it gets the job done, and
that's the important bit. I like the fact that I can just ignore sysinst and
install my stuff straight from the shell.
> (keeping things in perspective: has the Windows base install reached
> 1GB yet?)
I don't think they're far from it ... any service-pack now <veg>
- Philip
--
Philip Paeps phi...@paeps.cx
People usually get what's coming to them ... unless it's been mailed.
Frederick Bruckman
Ju...@TMA-1.discovery.net (Julio Uehara) writes:
> On 26 Nov 2001 08:46:57 GMT, Thomas Mueller <tmue...@bluegrass.net> wrote:
>
>>Did you have any trouble persuading FreeBSD or NetBSD to install when the other
>>was already installed? I think FreeBSD and NetBSD use the same partition type
>>as defined by the one-byte number in the partition table (or is this no longer
>>true?), while OpenBSD uses a different type (hex A6). I think NetBSD partition
>>type is A9, am not sure if FreeBSD partition type is A9 or A5.
> Sorry, don't know about the one-byte number in the partition table still
> holding or not. But doing an fdisk -l in slack [came to BSD through Linux :=)]
> it shows a5 for FreeBSD, a9 for NetBSD and a6 for OpenBSD.
NetBSD changed to 169 (from FreeBSD's 165) with 1.3.3. The GENERIC
kernel still recognizes the old type, though. For a dual boot system,
you'd want to build a custon kernel without that option. Putting the
NetBSD partition earlier in the (bios) master partition table might
work, too. (It shouldn't matter where it actually lies on the disk.)
--
Frederick
Clemens Buschmann
>> Sorry, don't know about the one-byte number in the partition table
>> still holding or not. But doing an fdisk -l in slack [came to BSD
>> through Linux :=)] it shows a5 for FreeBSD, a9 for NetBSD and a6 for
>> OpenBSD.
FB> NetBSD changed to 169 (from FreeBSD's 165) with 1.3.3. The GENERIC
FB> kernel still recognizes the old type, though. For a dual boot
FB> system, you'd want to build a custon kernel without that option.
FB> Putting the NetBSD partition earlier in the (bios) master partition
FB> table might work, too. (It shouldn't matter where it actually lies
FB> on the disk.)
I use XOSL Boot Manager and it never got confused about the three OS's
(Win, NetBSD, FreeBSD) residing on the same HD. And it's Open Source
software too :)
Regards,
Clemens
../
> investigate.
>
> I have poked away at both KDE and Gnome on Redhat, and KDE in particular
has
> the dubious merit of helping Linux to be substantially slower than MS
> Windows 2000 running on the same machine. Just for yucks I ran a Make of
KDE
> on OpenBSD, and it took well in excess of 12 hours to build. I have an
ugly
> feeling that it'll do for OpenBSD what it did for Linux.
>
> windows/fonts/management and would like something similar..
>
>
> Rob
>
> "Wine Development" <wi...@sweeney.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:3BFF60FC...@sweeney.demon.co.uk...
> > >
> >
> > >
> > > In any case, I already like OBSD better than the Redhat Linux install
I
> > > endured.
> > >
> >
> > While I have a strong dislike of DeadRat's install setup (why _must_
> > worst of the excesses are actually coming from the KDE and GNOME
> > teams. They seem to be in a competition to see which can demand the
> > most extra obscure libraries and packages installed.
> >
> > Keith Matthews Spam trap - my real account at this
> > node is keith_m
> >
> > Frequentous Consultants - Linux Services,
> > Oracle development & database administration
>
KDE compile, oh gawd.. never again for me...
pkg_add that bumchoi!
A. L. Meyers
(huge snip)
> KDE compile, oh gawd.. never again for me...
Gnome is even worse. It doen't even install from packages (based
on weekly changing libraries), let alone compile.
What do you all expect from projects whose avowed purpose is to
IMITATE M$ windoze? Buggy bloat and frills, nothing unixy about
them.
The Unix way was "one job, one tool". Modern apps following this
paradigm are e. g. vim, pine, mutt, tin, lynx. If you must have
a "unified computing environment" Emacs is your friend. A
universe all its own with a unique look and feel. w3m.el as a text
browser in Emacs does what w3 never has: work.
Which other OS even purports to follow the paradigm of "quality
before features, keep it as simple as possible" besides obsd?
"Less IS more."
Lucien
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Random Liegh
> "../" <som...@somewhere.com> writes:
>
> (huge snip)
>
>> KDE compile, oh gawd.. never again for me...
>
> Gnome is even worse. It doen't even install from packages (based
> on weekly changing libraries), let alone compile.
Same for compiling under the FreeBSD ports (I didn't compile KDE, however
...scared of that). IIRC, compiling GNOME took some-where around 4 hours
or so for the whole thing (on an 500mhz K6).
If it won't install from packages; there's something seriously wrong with
your install program. Are you trying to install from pkg_add (or the
openbsd equivalent?)?
I *have* had problems installing both KDE and Gnome from /stand/sysinstall
recently (in 4.4, I don't remember about in 4.3)...but it was pretty
simple to run pkg_add (-v) from the commandline.
[ludditisms snipped]
>
> "Less IS more."
"Give Me Convience Or Give Me Death"
"Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks"
>
> Lucien
> --
> If you receive this by error, please delete it and inform the sender.
> http://www.consult-meyers.com recommends e-mail encryption using pgp.
> To Big Brother Echelon from "spook":
> cryptographic Uzi PLO Qaddafi NSA DES assassination Soviet FSF
-Random