How close is FreeBSD to OpenBSD?

[David Benfell]

On Sat, 06 Mar 2004 23:34:33 -0800, D.B. Lewis wrote:
> 
> The reason I ask is to get a handle on how useful OpenBSD tips, FAQ's,
> etc. might be as I learn FreeBSD.
> 
Some things will be similar.  Some will be different.  The instances I
find where the two projects could learn from each other are:

1) Routing: I like OpenBSD much better for this.  Each interface is
configured in its own file, allowing you to much more easily do
strange things.  PF is wonderful.  There is a port for PF to FreeBSD,
but it was broken on the day I tried to install it.  I basically
failed to get a FreeBSD system functioning as a router when I tried,
and because this was critical to my entire operation, I had to go back
to OpenBSD.  I'm still not happy about this, because of...

2) Upgrades: FreeBSD wins hands down on this point.  OpenBSD's process
is much more difficult to follow and is much more vulnerable to
toolchain problems.  By contrast, FreeBSD's process just works.  (In
my view, difficulty upgrading *is* a security issue, which undermines
OpenBSD's claims.)

3) Attitude: OpenBSD folks take a very harsh view towards newbies.
When I first installed it on a router, with only a 40GB disk, it went
so smoothly, I was a convert.  This was far better than anything I'd
seen with either FreeBSD or Linux.  So I decided to try migrating my
server, with a 100GB disk.  There was no end of problems.  They
appeared to be hardware related, so I wound up replacing virtually all
of the hardware trying to isolate the problem.  In the end, it came
down to OpenBSD failing to deal with the 100GB disk, probably because
of something I was doing wrong, but there was no help available at all
on their list.

To try to answer your question about OpenBSD's documentation, some of
it is well written.  Hence, there is an obvious appeal.  And in some
areas, things may be quite similar.  In some areas, they will appear
quite different.  Where OpenBSD's documentation may help, however, is
at a deeper level of understanding, where no matter how different the
procedures, both operating systems must, some way, some how,
accomplish the same things.

-- 
David Benfell, LCP
benfell at parts-unknown.org
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