What's our standard "stripped-down FreeBSD" tool?

[Simon L. Nielsen]

On 2007.07.24 22:21:41 -0400, Michael W. Lucas wrote:

> Been researching building stripped-down versions of FreBSD for flash
> drives and suchforth.  It seems that we have three big contenders in
> this area:
> 
> Freesbie
> NanoBSD
> TinyBSD
> 
> Are any of these particularly stronger than the other?  If I was to
> start over, or recommend one to someone else, which would be the best
> these days?

I personally use NanoBSD a lot and I have only very briefly looked at
Freesbie's build framework (though I have used the normal publichsed
LiveCD) and TinyBSD.

I'm wrong on any points (especially TinyBSD / Freesbie) please correct
me.

TinyBSD uses binaries from the host systems, which makes it faster to
build, but means you have to build images as the same type as your
host environment.  I very often cross build e.g. building 6-STABLE
Nanobsd images on 7-CURRENT so I never really looked much at TinyBSD.

Freesbie 2 is from what I hear a very flexible framework, but I
haven't personally looked at it enough to really comment.

NanoBSD is a very flexible framework and is IMO rather easy to get to
do special things which is what I really like about it.  I have
(ab)using the framework for all kinds of things where I just use the
functionality I need.  I think it's fairly easy to get going with
creating a basic NanoBSD image, but I'm not really sure since I have
been using NanoBSD since before it was committed so I'm not really the
best person to answer that.  The built in dual code image
functionality which makes it rather easy to upgrade is also very nice
for appliances like firewalls.  It has saved me at least once after a
broken upgrade to be able to reboot the old image and have a working
firewall while fixing my mess and building a new image.

I have no statistics to back this up, but I think NanoBSD has the most
users (of the build framework - there are of course many Fressbie live
CD users who just download an ISO) based on following mailing lists
and the fact that it has been around the longest.

So, I would suggest NanoBSD but of course it also depend on the target
audience.

Anyway, that's my 0.02DKR, I hope that it's useful.

If this is for a book it certainly sounds interesting and is something
I think would be very useful for people considering how many places
FreeBSD is used embedded.

-- 
Simon L. Nielsen