View Full Version : And now for something completely different...
Harold
01-01-2007, 08:49 PM
After using Debian for the better part of five years, I feel the urge to do something different. So I've blown the dust off the backup computer and a copy of the FreeBSD 6.2-RC2 iso is coming down one of those internet tube thingys even as I type this. Stand by, forum, for lots of stupid questions!
Sounds great! I'd like to see a lot more BSD activity.
fos
danieldk
01-02-2007, 04:35 AM
I use FreeBSD 6.2RC1 (cvsup-ed to RC2, but still have to recompile things) and NetBSD 4-beta. But these machines run without a hitch, so I don't have much to post about ;).
Keep us posted!
I'm hoping to install FreeBSD 6.1 (from a purchased DVD) this month, barring more vi$its to the vet.
For me a critical capability of FreeBSD is its Linux compatibility which runs WP8.1/Linux. (I've posted a WP8 under FreeBSD how-to.)
Leon,
I'll mail you a FreeBSD DVD if you would like.
fos
danieldk
01-02-2007, 11:27 AM
Maybe it's best to wait just a few days, because 6.2 will be out on January 10? 6.2 is really nice, and the final 6.2 will be offered with binary patches, giving it a lightweight patching facility that's also useful for modem users.
Daniel & "fos": I've had to wait this long for the commercial 6.1 DVD to become available. I do appreciate "fos's" offer, since that would put me at the same level as you guys. It would be great to have a live FreeBSD discussion going.
I am looking for a basic desktop:
1. Word processing (with WP of course, and possibly TextMaker for handling Word docs.)
2. Internet (dial-up for the present)
3. Scanning with SANE
"Fos": I sent you my snail mail address to you via private message on this forum.
danieldk
01-02-2007, 12:38 PM
Daniel & "fos": I've had to wait this long for the commercial 6.1 DVD to become available.
Out of interest, did you order it from the FreeBSDMall or BSD Mall?
I am looking for a basic desktop:
1. Word processing (with WP of course, and possibly TextMaker for handling Word docs.)
I mostly use LaTeX, but I am interested in TextMaker for Word files (I have PlanMaker and TextMaker licenses, so I should be entitled for a Softmaker Office 2006 upgrade). Still playing with the thought of buying the upgrade.
Sometimes I need real Office. So I still have to try how well it works with WINE (I use CrossOver Office on Linux), or try Win2000 with qemu or Win4BSD.
2. Internet (dial-up for the present)
I have ADSL, but dial-up should work without an effort. I used PPP on NetBSD for some years.
Daniel dK wrote:
"Quote:
Originally Posted by Leon
Daniel & "fos": I've had to wait this long for the commercial 6.1 DVD to become available.
Out of interest, did you order it from the FreeBSDMall or BSD Mall?'
I haven't ordered yet; I was looking at FreeBSD Mall though.
"Quote:
I am looking for a basic desktop:
1. Word processing (with WP of course, and possibly TextMaker for handling Word docs.)
I mostly use LaTeX, but I am interested in TextMaker for Word files (I have PlanMaker and TextMaker licenses, so I should be entitled for a Softmaker Office 2006 upgrade). Still playing with the thought of buying the upgrade."
So am I; it makes sense since the Linux and BSD versions are now bundled.
"Sometimes I need real Office. So I still have to try how well it works with WINE (I use CrossOver Office on Linux), or try Win2000 with qemu or Win4BSD."
It might be amusing to try installing CrossOver under Linux compatibility.
It would be a real hoot if you could then run Win MS Office in a BSD environment.
"Quote:
2. Internet (dial-up for the present)
I have ADSL, but dial-up should work without an effort. I used PPP on NetBSD for some years."
As long as there is PPP or KPPP, I should be able to set up. I imagine there will be the usual permissions wrestling to be able to dial-up as a user.
danieldk
01-02-2007, 06:04 PM
I haven't ordered yet; I was looking at FreeBSD Mall though.
Ok. I would personally buy from the FreeBSD Mall, since it is the same company as the Slackware Store, and they have always served me well.
It might be amusing to try installing CrossOver under Linux compatibility.
It would be a real hoot if you could then run Win MS Office in a BSD environment.
There's only little chance that it works. NetBSD's Linux emulation is usually a bit more up to date than FreeBSD's, and at one point I got CXOffice running on NetBSD with Word. Though, it didn't work to well (the most annoying thing being that files were opened incorrectly). This is a screenshot that I made back then:
http://www.netbsd.org/gallery/in-Action/daniel-cxoffice.jpg
I didn't really have the time to dive into the trace system calls to see what went wrong when files were opened. Later versions of CXOffice unfortunately stopped working. Lateron a tried running a minimal Linux system as a Xen domainU, installed CXOffice there, and exported the screen to NetBSD. IIRC CXOffice installed correctly, but I didn't really try any applications.
This site describes how one can get Office working on FreeBSD with the help of some file created by CXOffice on a Linux system:
http://wiki.winehq.org/Office-BSD
Daniel dK wrote:
"This site describes how one can get Office working on FreeBSD with the help of some file created by CXOffice on a Linux system:
http://wiki.winehq.org/Office-BSD"
Neat! Looks like lots of fun activity for a "snow day."
// snow days.....
What's snow?
fos in Texas :)
C'mon, fos: it snows in Texas, at least in the panhandle.
(I know the local joke: Texas snow is actually Oklahoma snow that can't read a map.)
We get snow occasionally here in North Carolingia. Neither the DOT nor the average driver can handle it though. Whenever we get an accumulation, I stay home. Although it's funnier than heck watching the soccer moms slaloming their SUV's around in 4-wheel skids, it is also tough on the sheet metal. So, it is always good to have an OS or two standing by to idle away time (productive idleness!) waiting for the thaw.
We actually had snow here in Crosby this Christmas. The neighborhood had a truckload delivered to the park. The kids were so skittish it almost melted before they would go near it. The kids in my classroom wear top coats when it gets below 70. One of them actually found a sled at a local antique shop. I'm not sure they ever figured out which end was supposed to be up.
fos....
Harold
01-03-2007, 09:44 PM
The FreeBSD installer is... interesting. Not terribly intuitive. I'll get over it eventually. FreeBSD disk partioning is an adventure. I accepted all the default values and ended up with the following.
My hard drive is now named "ad0."
The installer used up 100% of the disk space to create a single extended partion (slice), which it named "as0s1."
It then created five logical partitions (slicettes?).
/ _________512 meg _____UFS2 _______ ad0s1a
swap _____870 meg _____swap ________ad0s1b
/var ____1,459 meg _____UFS2+S _____ad0s1d
/tmp _____512 meg _____UFS2+S _____ad0s1e
/usr ___34,808 meg _____UFS2+S _____ad0s1f
Yeah, I know, ya'll got questions...
Q. What means the "+S" in "UFS2+S"?
A. I don't know.
Q. Where is "ad0s1c"?
A. I don't know.
Q. This is a journaled system, right?
A. I don't know.
Q. /home is going to live inside a 512-Meg partition?
A. Nope. I now have a directory named /usr/home/harold.
The installer also took issue with the geometry of the hard drive. It said that 77545 / 16 / 63 does not compute and what the BIOS thinks is the geometry is actually more important than what the actual geometry is. Funny, It's a standard WD drive, and Debian never had any issues it.
FreeBSD has "distribution sets." I chose: "X-user," which consists of "Average user binaries & docs plus X Window System."
The installer asked if I wanted to install "FreeBSD Ports Collection, " which would eat up half a gig of hard drive and give me access to 13,300 ported packages. I have to admit to being a little confused about ports. I'm not sure if ports are binaries or source files.
My ethernet card (actually, my enternet on-board circuitry) is now named "VR0." Ya'll are wondering what "VR0" stands for, right? Well... I don't know.
There were lots of unexpected choices to be made during the install. At one point, I was given the **option** of installing BASH, which, of course, I did. What is the default shell? I dunno. I'll do one of those"echo $SHELL" thingys next time I fire up that box.
The choices of graphical environments was slim: Gnome, KDE, FVWM and WindowMaker. I was looking for Xfce. I'll settle for WindowMaker for the time being.
Finally, the installer finished doing its thing. Computer re-booted. I logged in. I did my little dance in the end zone of life. :-) Here comes the stupid questions...
What is the FreeBSD equivalent of "apt-get install VIM"?
Don't yet know what OS manager FreeBSD uses, but it isn't GRUB. I was looking for a place to type in vga=0x305, but /boot/grub/menu.lst was AWOL. What is "Plan B"?
Somewhere hidden in one of the boxes in my spare bedroom is a copy of NoStarch's "Absolute BSD." Maybe I'll get lucky this weekend and find the right box. Or maybe my copy of FreeBSD Handbook will arrive shortly! I don't think I'm going to get too much further on my own until I do some book-learning.
danieldk
01-04-2007, 06:22 AM
Q. What means the "+S" in "UFS2+S"?
A. I don't know.
Softupdates, a mechanism that gives (close to) the safety of synchronous filesystem mounts, but the performance of asynchronous mounts. It's a different solution to a part of the problem that journals try to solve.
Q. Where is "ad0s1c"?
A. I don't know.
It is not listed, because it represents the whole disk.
Q. This is a journaled system, right?
A. I don't know.
Journalling is not strictly necessary with synchronous mounts or softupdates. Though, journals speed up the recovery process dramatically, FreeBSD has a background fs check to compensate that. Future versions of FreeBSD will have gjournal, a GEOM provider that provides journaling, and possibly the ZFS filesystem (which is a journaling filesystem).
Q. /home is going to live inside a 512-Meg partition?
A. Nope. I now have a directory named /usr/home/harold.
Yup, /home is just a symlink on FreeBSD.
The installer asked if I wanted to install "FreeBSD Ports Collection, " which would eat up half a gig of hard drive and give me access to 13,300 ported packages. I have to admit to being a little confused about ports. I'm not sure if ports are binaries or source files.
None of both. It is a directory structure with Makefiles, that can be used to compile and install packages. E.g. if you'd like to install Opera, you could do a:
cd /usr/ports/www/opera
make install
It will fetch the code, and install it, and its dependencies. I usually skip this step, and use portsnap to get a fresh ports tree:
portsnap fetch
portsnap extract
After that, you can update the ports tree in the future:
portsnap fetch
portsnap update
an it will only fetch the differences, and apply them (saving a lot of bandwidth). Of course, FreeBSD can also install binary packages, either through pkg_add or sysinst. From CD, FTP, or wherever you like ;).
My ethernet card (actually, my enternet on-board circuitry) is now named "VR0." Ya'll are wondering what "VR0" stands for, right? Well... I don't know.
VIA Rhine. Interfaces are named after their driver name. E.g. my Intel NIC is fxp0. In the end, it is much more comfortable, because you never mess up interface names :).
There were lots of unexpected choices to be made during the install. At one point, I was given the **option** of installing BASH, which, of course, I did. What is the default shell? I dunno. I'll do one of those"echo $SHELL" thingys next time I fire up that box.
Bourne shell, which is fairly primtive. The base install also features csh and tcsh.
The choices of graphical environments was slim: Gnome, KDE, FVWM and WindowMaker. I was looking for Xfce. I'll settle for WindowMaker for the time being.
Yeah, that's what's on the install CD. You can install other environments from the ports collection, or by using precompiled packages. The latter can easily be done by starting "sysinstall" as root, choosing "Configure" -> "Packages" -> "FTP", choose a mirror that is close to you. And you can start picking stuff from thousands of packages (including Xfce ;)).
What is the FreeBSD equivalent of "apt-get install VIM"?
cd /usr/ports/editors/vim
make install
Enjoy :). Of course, you could also use sysinstall to install the binary package. Last, but not least, there are some APT work-alikes, like portmanager and portupgrade. The FreeBSD handbook describes some of these tools. Personally, I use the ports collection to install software, and portmanager to keep track of interesting updates (and install them).
Don't yet know what OS manager FreeBSD uses, but it isn't GRUB. I was looking for a place to type in vga=0x305, but /boot/grub/menu.lst was AWOL. What is "Plan B"?
man loader.conf
Harold: congratulations on your first FreeBSD installation.
I installed 5.3 several times; I have a "lab rat" - an obsolete system (Celeron 850) I use to try out new OS's before putting one on my main systems. Before installing, I obtained a book: The Complete Reference FreeBSD, by Roderick W. Smith. I got it for a low price as a surplus book through Amazon. Unfortunately, it is based on 5.0 so some research of on-line documentation is necessary to get the full answer.
I recall having to edit a file in user (.xsession) to start Gnome. Easy editor (command: ee) is simple and friendly. I don't know if 6.x has automated the graphic login.
Some suggestions:
1. Make a couple of more installations. You certainly can set the size of the installation "slice", which is actually sort of an "extended" partition in which FreeBSD sets up its own "logical" partitions.
2. Don't forget to assign your "user" to the "wheel" group or you will not have the permissions you need to run anything!
I was very pleased to see how well FreeBSD performed on a Celeron 850 compared to Linux distro's on it.
For the broad-band challenged: I found
http://www.amazon.com/FreeBSD-6-Unleashed-Brian-Tiemann/dp/product-description/0672328755
This book bundles a copy of 6.1 on a DVD. I have not yet found out what is actually on the DVD beyond the standard 2-CD set.
I just read the release schedule for FreeBSD 6.2. The final release is scheduled for January 8 and the announcement is January 10 after the mirror sites have been updated.
fos
Harold
01-13-2007, 07:11 PM
Not officially announced yet, but she's out there.
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ISO-IMAGES-i386/6.2/
All I could find was the boot image. I'm still waiting for the full distro.
fos....
danieldk
01-14-2007, 07:29 AM
Please don't download if it isn't announced yet :). The problem is that it puts a lot of load on the primary servers of projects, that should be available for mirrors to synchorize.
Some sites (like OSNews and Slashdot) have done early announcements of BSDs in the past, and it had a disastrous consequences, because people were blocking the mirrors from getting the files.
(Fortunately many primary mirrors usually get their files over rsync, but it still saturates links and increases load.)
The FreeBSD 6.2 images are now available at: http://www.freebsd.org
fos....
danieldk
01-15-2007, 11:52 AM
The party can start :). Let's get freebsd-update rolling ;).
Harold
01-15-2007, 10:25 PM
Several people have suggested that I need to read through The FreeBSD Handbook. So I ordered both volumes I and II from FreeBSD Mall. They arrived, and I spent two evening reading through them. They are... ok.
Then I ordered FreeBSD 6 Unleashed. http://tinyurl.com/yasg4p WOW! I've been working on this puppy for a full week (and weekend) and am maybe halfway through the book. Plus, the book give directions for downloading more chapters -- GOODIES! -- from the author's website. And it looks like I'm going to have to re-read some of the chapters to to pick up what didn't completely soak in the first time.
Just in case someone out there isn't getting the hint, I'll be blunt. This is A Really Good Book (TM) and anyone interested in learning about FreeBSD will find this tome to be a wonderful investment.
[/hyper-ventilate mode]
Several people have suggested that I need to read through The FreeBSD Handbook. So I ordered both volumes I and II from FreeBSD Mall. They arrived, and I spent two evening reading through them. They are... ok.
Then I ordered FreeBSD 6 Unleashed. http://tinyurl.com/yasg4p WOW! I've been working on this puppy for a full week (and weekend) and am maybe halfway through the book. Plus, the book give directions for downloading more chapters -- GOODIES! -- from the author's website. And it looks like I'm going to have to re-read some of the chapters to to pick up what didn't completely soak in the first time.
Just in case someone out there isn't getting the hint, I'll be blunt. This is A Really Good Book (TM) and anyone interested in learning about FreeBSD will find this tome to be a wonderful investment.
[/hyper-ventilate mode]
I found out about this book and went looking for it; it's not in any of my local book sellers, so I've bookmarked it on Amazon.
Could you post what is on the DVD? It is supposed to be 6.1. I'm curious if it is just the two CD ISO's or if it contains additional archives. This is important to me because I do not have broadband and must be very discrete when it comes to downloads.
TIA
danieldk
01-16-2007, 11:43 AM
Leon: my offer is still standing :). (I can mail you a DVD of 6.2 with a large package set, with any custom additions you want, as long as it fits on the DVD.)
Daniel: thank you. I have sent you my particulars privately.
I will be particularly interested in installing WP 8.1.
I shamelessly admit I mainly use my PC for word processing, and some may say I let the tail wag the dog.
My recent experiments with Fedora Core 6 and Mandriva 2007 tell me that I am stuck with older Linux distro's like Libranet or will have to go the FreeBSD way.
Harold
01-16-2007, 02:03 PM
The book contains one CD labeled "FreeBSD 6.1."
I have not examined the contents of the CD.
Leon,
I sent out the 6.2 CDs today, 1 distro image, 1 packages, 1 docs. It is everything in the 6.2 archive.
fos....
fos - thanks. That means i should be able to join the party this weekend, unless the weather delays the mail.
For Daniel de K: if your offer is still open maybe you could put together a 6.2 archive for me.
Harold
01-16-2007, 09:39 PM
H> The book contains one CD labeled "FreeBSD 6.1."
H> I have not examined the contents of the CD.
Mea Culpa. It's a DVD, not a CD.
H> The book contains one CD labeled "FreeBSD 6.1."
H> I have not examined the contents of the CD.
Mea Culpa. It's a DVD, not a CD.
Could you post the top directory's contents?
Harold
01-16-2007, 11:12 PM
The DVD is at the office. I'll post the listing for you tomorrow morning.
Harold
01-17-2007, 10:35 AM
The DVD is a standard F-BSD installation DVD. Includes hardware, install, release notes, errata and readme files, and multiple directories for BSD files that look essentially the same as the directories one sees on a Linux install CD. No extra goodies.
- H
Harold wrote inter alia:
"No extra goodies."
Thanks for the intel. Looks like I'll have to wait 6 months or so for the 6.2 DVD with all the extra ports to become available on FreeBSD Mall. :-(
Since you've got the book, please let me know how it explains setting up a graphic login and CUPS. I checked the official BSD guide and it was not very informative about CUPS at all. When I was playing with 5.3 I wound up using old apsfilter so I could print.
I am not averse to spending some $ for a good BSD book. The Rod Smith FreeBSD book was helpful, but because it tried to cover FreeBSD 4.x as well as 5 it can be confusing.
Harold
01-24-2007, 08:39 PM
wtf... I'm procrastinating. I have no option but to go cold turkey. In about ten minutes, I'll be doing a hard disk-dectomy on my computer. The drive with Debian comes out and a virgin drive goes in.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
H> What is going to happen, Dave?
B> Something wonderful.
H> I'm afraid.
B> Don't be. We'll be together.
H> Where will we be?
B> Where I am now.
H> Lock confirmed on Beacon Terra One. Message Commencing...
Harold
03-21-2007, 11:42 AM
Update on the FreeBSD project... Progress has been sporadic. :-(
The justification for my little project isn't terribly compelling. I've been using Debian Testing for five years now; my computer is fully optimized for my wants and needs; everything works! I fire up the computer; I do what I want to do; I shut down the computer. No viruses, no hard drive fragmentation, no package conflicts, no problems of any kind, other than the Firefox freeze which has periodically plagued me since building the latest computer, but this is clearly not a systemic problem. Debian has gotten kind of boring, actually. ;-)
But, I've been dismayed by the ever-increasing interval between Debian releases -- that is, the inability of the Debian developer clusterfuck to get their act together. And I have gotten frustrated at hearing certain questions repeatedly asked over at forums.debian.net by newbies who are trying to install Debian Sarge on brand new computers, only to discover that the Sarge installer doesn't know how do deal with SATA drives, newer Intel chipsets, so on, so forth, yada, yada...
Also, there has been a change in forums.debian.net during the last two years. Maybe the "feel" of forums inevitably change as they grow. Whatever the reason, the percentage of high-posting-rate "kiddie" posts and other chatty, low-value posts on that forum has noticeably increased, and there has been no movement towards optimizing the poorly-delineated sections of that forum to make it more of a knowledge base and less of a same-question-posted-42-times-this-month kind of place. Maybe I'm just burnt out.
So, FreeBSD committers seem to be able to get out two or three releases EVERY YEAR, and www.bsdforums.org (http://www.bsdforums.org) seems like a nice place to visit and maybe ask questions rather than try to answer them.
It's obvious at this point that, if this was a political decision, you would say that I'm not so much wanting FreeBSD because it's the clearly superior system, as I am looking for an alternative to the "entrenched incumbent," Debian. This is not a compelling reason to switch OSs.
And maybe that is the reason that the conversion is moving so slowly. Back in '99, I had good reason to persevere up the steep Linux learning curve. The alternative was to either use Windows or shell out for a new Macintosh. In the late '80s and the early '90s, the purchase price premium of Apple computers was easily justifiable. That was no longer the case by the late '90s. Now I'm contemplating a move ***away*** from a system that admirably satisfies all my needs. ?!?!?!? I'm not crystal clear on my motivation.
In many ways, FreeBSD and Debian are identical. In many ways, they are not. Perhaps there are more differences than I anticipated. "Different" may or may not mean "better." That's what I'm trying to determine. Progress is slow.
Installing ports on FreeBSD is every bit as easy as installing packages on Debian. Does it make for a better system? Dunno. There are certain applications on Debian that I prefer to build from source rather than install packages. To be specific, Xfce4 and Firefox. Every other application in Debian I am content to install as precompiled packages. In FreeBSD Release 6.2, released January of this year, I have built Firefox and Xfce4 and Xorg and Openoffice from ports. Is this an improvement over the Debian builds or packages? That question is complicated by application versions.
Debian Testing.........FreeBSD 6.2-Release
Firefox: 2.0................Firefox: 1.5
Xfce: 4.4....................Xfce: 4.2
Xorg: 7.1....................Xorg 6.9
Openoffice 2.1............Openoffice 2.0.4
Have you guys figured out by now that, metaphorically speaking, I'm just thinking out loud here?
There are other differences. While both Debian and FreeBSD are used extensively as servers, the number of FreeBSD desktop users appears to be miniscule in comparison to the number of Debian desktop users. This is reflected in the content of both available FreeBSD books and in the questions posted on BSDforums.org.
You remember the famous Pogo saying, don't you? "We have me the enemy and he is us!" Do you remember the quote in the frame which followed? That's ok; hardly anyone does. "We are surrounded by an insurmountable opportunity."
I have yet to make sound usable under FreeBSD.
I have yet to get the higher console resolution that was so easy to get in Linux.
I have yet to get my CD-ROM usable by users.
I have yet to get this "domain" business sorted out on FreeBSD.
I have yet to get my computer to power down when I halt the OS.
I have yet to build a FreeBSD kernel. (Debian kernel images have spoiled me!)
So many opportunities...
Leon> Since you've got the book, please let me know how it explains setting up a graphic login and CUPS. I checked the official BSD guide and it was not very informative about CUPS at all. When I was playing with 5.3 I wound up using old apsfilter so I could print.
Don't know about setting up the graphical login because I prefer to boot to the command line, therefore haven't used a display manager in several years. Configuring X is quite different on FreeBSD than it is on Debian. FreeBSD 6 Unleashed did an excellent job of walking me through a configuration process that I *never* would have suss'ed on my own.
I'm not having much luck making CUPS work either, but I'm 99% certain that the "domain" issues that I am struggling with are preventing configuration of both CUPS and Privoxy, so I'm not yet bent out of shape.
danieldk
03-21-2007, 12:25 PM
OpenOffice 2.1, Xfce 4.4, Firefox 2.0.x are in the port collection. Perhaps you haven't updated your local ports collection?
As for "desktop documentation", most instructions should be comparable for both systems, since they both provide GNOME, OpenOffice.org, etc. It's primarily system administration that is different.
Harold
03-21-2007, 12:38 PM
You are correct; I have not updated my ports collection. I was initially planning on staying with 6.2-Release and getting only the security updates. If I understand the ports system correctly, then I would have to change to 6.2-Stable to get those upgrades. Is that correct? What are your thoughts on -Release versus -Stable?
danieldk
03-21-2007, 12:55 PM
Af for security updates for FreeBSD itself, you can use 'freebsd-update'. IIRC it is documented in the freebsd-update manual page. It retrieves binary updates for the base system, and is fast and easy to use.
You should see the ports system as separated from the base system (FreeBSD itself). The ports collection works with 5.x, 6.x and -current. The easiest way to get a fresh ports collection is with portsnap:
rm -rf /usr/ports
portsnap fetch
porsnap extract
This installs a fresh tree through portsnap. After you have done this one, you can just grab the updates next time. This is faster, and takes less bandwidth:
portsnap fetch
portsnap update
("fetch" gets the latest compressed version, "update" updates all ports in /usr/ports for which updates were available)
You can manage installed packages/ports with "portmanager" or "portupgrade". Personally, I think "portupgrade" is the most comfortable tool, though it is a tad slow.
I read on a security site recently that OpenBSD is considered more secure than FreeBSD. Is this true? If so, is it significant enough to use OpenBSD?
There seems to be a larger community and greater support for FreeBSD.
fos
danieldk
03-22-2007, 02:45 AM
Define "more secure". FreeBSD has a mandatory access control framework and support for encrypted disks. Security is not only indicated by the number of local root vulnerabilities.
I hope to join the party this weekend. I had to wipe Solaris 10 from my "lab rat" drive because it apparently creates a drive geometry FreeBSD does not understand.
I will install FreeBSD behind Fedora Core 6, and if that works I'll reinstall Solaris 10, having partitioned the drive with two empty primary VFAT partitions using FC6. I anticipate a real boot loader frenzy if I manage to get all three OS's installed.
Stay tuned.
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