OpenBSD / GhostBSD / FreeBSD

knightjp

knightjp

I do have a few questions about the difference in between OpenBSD, FreeBSD and GhostBSD.
From what I know ( I do welcome any correction), GhostBSD is a distro based on FreeBSD.
OpenBSD is a fork of NetBSD that concentrates on the purity of the code base and security. I guess if you're looking for the most secure system, OpenBSD is the one to install.

However my questions are:
1. If GhostBSD is based on FreeBSD, does it use the FreeBSD repos for the "pkg install" or its own?
2. What are the pros and cons of each?
 
knightjp said:
OpenBSD is a fork of NetBSD that concentrates on the purity of the code base and security.
Click to expand...

Security is a side effect that happens automatically if you care about code correctness.

knightjp said:
I guess if you're looking for the most secure system, OpenBSD is the one to install.
Click to expand...

I would guess that Plan 9 wins this race, but Plan 9 is (arguably) a worse desktop OS.

knightjp said:
If GhostBSD is based on FreeBSD, does it use the FreeBSD repos for the "pkg install" or its own?
Click to expand...

Both, actually.

knightjp said:
2. What are the pros and cons of each?
Click to expand...

Pro GhostBSD: A preconfigured desktop.
Pro FreeBSD: No surprises re: the package configuration.
 
Pro OpenBSD: A relatively minimalistic system which still includes (most of) the kitchen sink, made by talented developers who fully embrace meritocracy.

Contra OpenBSD: The performance could be better. That might be relevant on lower-specs desktops.
 
You didn't put us into context. Are you building a file server, a laptop, a research workstation, something else?

OpenBSD is such a clean and pure system - a delightful sight to behold, especially in our age of "modern" operating systems where ps ax takes multiple terminal screens after clean install. Most of things you would expect are working out of the box. Configuration is simple, and documentation is great, albeit concise. My experience with it, however, is that it was very slow for desktop use - performance takes a hit for all this security stuff, so much that I couldn't play a video in the browser on the same hardware that worked fine on FreeBSD. Also, OpenBSD has no wine.

Updating OpenBSD was also a hassle - I am not sure if this is still true, but there was no binary option, so you've had to re-compile everything or rely on a third party to compile the updates for you. I guess with modern CPUs performance isn't a big deal these days, and many people don't need Windows emulation, and for them, I guess, OpenBSD can be a wonderful home.

So, I went with FreeBSD as my main desktop/laptop. FreeBSD, on the other hand, is fast, has Linux and Windows emulation, ZFS (a big deal if you want to keep your data safe), even better documentation - the FreeBSD Handbook and man pages. There are more people maintaining ports and packages, so you don't feel on a desert island when it comes to a wide range of user applications. Updating is easy. I'm running a business and doing all sorts of work from my FreeBSD workstation - from research to web design and desktop publishing, and it works very well. It replaced my Macbook at some point in life and I'm not looking back (when things are working!) I am running web and file servers on FreeBSD, and a few hundred of small firewalls at remote locations. It's just a great all-around operating system you can throw at virtually anything.
 
blackhaz said:
Updating OpenBSD was also a hassle - I am not sure if this is still true, but there was no binary option, so you've had to re-compile everything or rely on a third party to compile the updates for you.
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No, this is not true (anymore). You can run the "bleeding edge" (-CURRENT) or you can have support for one year with upgrades twice a year. In either case, security updates are officially available through syspatch, software updates are in -CURRENT or, well, twice a year.
 
blackhaz said:
You didn't put us into context. Are you building a file server, a laptop, a research workstation, something else?
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Yeah.. I just realised. I was actually talking more for the desktop side.

blackhaz said:
Also, OpenBSD has no wine.
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Yeah... that doesn't bother me. But to be fair, the only things I would need from Windows side is to be able to run a couple of old games. AOE2 / RA2.

blackhaz said:
So, I went with FreeBSD as my main desktop/laptop. FreeBSD, on the other hand, is fast, has Linux and Windows emulation, ZFS (a big deal if you want to keep your data safe), even better documentation - the FreeBSD Handbook and man pages. There are more people maintaining ports and packages, so you don't feel on a desert island when it comes to a wide range of user applications. Updating is easy. I'm running a business and doing all sorts of work from my FreeBSD workstation - from research to web design and desktop publishing, and it works very well. It replaced my Macbook at some point in life and I'm not looking back (when things are working!) I am running web and file servers on FreeBSD, and a few hundred of small firewalls at remote locations. It's just a great all-around operating system you can throw at virtually anything.
Click to expand...
I'm still getting to grips with FreeBSD. I wonder why there is no xenodm for it.. I like it on OpenBSD.
 
blackhaz said:
Updating OpenBSD was also a hassle - I am not sure if this is still true, but there was no binary option, so you've had to re-compile everything or rely on a third party to compile the updates for you.
Click to expand...
The two third party package updates I'm aware of are both run by OpenBSD developers.
OpenBSD Mozilla Builds
M:tier updates
The base system now uses binary updates via syspatch
OpenBSD syspatch

knightjp said:
I'm still getting to grips with FreeBSD. I wonder why there is no xenodm for it.. I like it on OpenBSD.
Click to expand...
Xenodm was forked from xdm and cleaned of useless code in the process. You would use Xorg's xdm in FreeBSD.
This brings up another distinguishing feature of OpenBSD is the development of userland utilities.
xdm => xenodm
openssl => libressl
sudo => doas
sendmail => opensmtpd
ntp => openntp
openssh => openbsd owns this - everyone else, including Microsoft, uses it.

Each of the above apps had its genesis in concerns with bloat/code quality in the original application. I think all, except xenodm, are available in FreeBSD.
 
Just to throw this out there, I did a bare-metal install of OpenBSD a couple of months ago just to see what all the fuss was about. First observation was that the FreeBSD installer is tremendously easier than the OpenBSD installer, in my opinion. Also, could not install using more than one block device with OpenBSD. To clarify: I run 2 SSDs: one for the OS and one for my user's /home. OpenBSD didn't allow me, or I couldn't figure out how to, use my second SSD as my user's /home. Lastly, performance was terrible. I run a homebuilt PC with a 4 core i7 7700, 32GB ram, 2 SSDs and onboard Intel 6300HD video. Display is a 34 inch 4k @ 3440x1440, which I suspect was the issue. Screen redraws were so slow it looked like I was viewing web pages over a 1990 dial up connection.

I am staying with FreeBSD simply because it gives me a great base to customize, I am used to it and performance is fantastic.
 
blackhaz said:
You didn't put us into context. Are you building a file server, a laptop, a research workstation, something else?

OpenBSD is such a clean and pure system - a delightful sight to behold, especially in our age of "modern" operating systems where ps ax takes multiple terminal screens after clean install. Most of things you would expect are working out of the box. Configuration is simple, and documentation is great, albeit concise. My experience with it, however, is that it was very slow for desktop use - performance takes a hit for all this security stuff, so much that I couldn't play a video in the browser on the same hardware that worked fine on FreeBSD. Also, OpenBSD has no wine.

Updating OpenBSD was also a hassle - I am not sure if this is still true, but there was no binary option, so you've had to re-compile everything or rely on a third party to compile the updates for you. I guess with modern CPUs performance isn't a big deal these days, and many people don't need Windows emulation, and for them, I guess, OpenBSD can be a wonderful home.

So, I went with FreeBSD as my main desktop/laptop. FreeBSD, on the other hand, is fast, has Linux and Windows emulation, ZFS (a big deal if you want to keep your data safe), even better documentation - the FreeBSD Handbook and man pages. There are more people maintaining ports and packages, so you don't feel on a desert island when it comes to a wide range of user applications. Updating is easy. I'm running a business and doing all sorts of work from my FreeBSD workstation - from research to web design and desktop publishing, and it works very well. It replaced my Macbook at some point in life and I'm not looking back (when things are working!) I am running web and file servers on FreeBSD, and a few hundred of small firewalls at remote locations. It's just a great all-around operating system you can throw at virtually anything.
Click to expand...

The documentation project needs more manpower. Much of the information is getting outdated. Also, OpenBSD update process is very decent, i.e loading the initial ramdisk, and booting it will pull rest of the upgrade. OpenBSD is not a bad option. The developers communicate with users (patch submitter) so quick that even a paid project can't beat that. However, FreeBSD is way ahead in terms of features and performances.
 
Sevendogsbsd said:
Just to throw this out there, I did a bare-metal install of OpenBSD a couple of months ago just to see what all the fuss was about. First observation was that the FreeBSD installer is tremendously easier than the OpenBSD installer, in my opinion. Also, could not install using more than one block device with OpenBSD. To clarify: I run 2 SSDs: one for the OS and one for my user's /home. OpenBSD didn't allow me, or I couldn't figure out how to, use my second SSD as my user's /home. Lastly, performance was terrible. I run a homebuilt PC with a 4 core i7 7700, 32GB ram, 2 SSDs and onboard Intel 6300HD video. Display is a 34 inch 4k @ 3440x1440, which I suspect was the issue. Screen redraws were so slow it looked like I was viewing web pages over a 1990 dial up connection.

I am staying with FreeBSD simply because it gives me a great base to customize, I am used to it and performance is fantastic.
Click to expand...

The installer prompts you to choose a disk and partition it and then choose another or done. No problem using multiple disks...in the last six months or so I brought up a new box with 4 drives and did everything through the installer. Filesystems on all drives...

OpenBSD does not have good/any hardware acceleration for a lot of graphics. So yeah, don't expect a video editing setup on OpenBSD. I have used OpenBSD for around 15 years and while you can make a desktop out of it, I think FreeBSD is a better desktop. I like OpenBSD in that it's very simple and clean as was already said upthread. The upgrade and patching process have improved a lot over the years and they have a lot of good innovations.
 
Just my opinion.

Openbsd is overhyped by the net. It's a clean system where many great homegrown softwares like OpenSSH was ported to use everywhere. The project is very good at cryptography. Suitable for resources constrained environments like mail server, router, firewall or old laptop but for high performance pc/server it's just doesn't scale. About security it's not the most secure like it pr. Security like Openbsd like yourself to cut your legs because you mostly sit on your chair but rarely move, so just "remove it to reduce the attack surface". It's nonsense. They remove loadable kernel module support. Disabled SMT by default. And many mores. Secure but useless. The idea Openbsd code base is smaller than Linux and FreeBSD and has less features means lesser bugs is just plain wrong. The low numbers of exploited bugs only means there're many more not exposed so not discovered, not mean it's any more secure than the other OSes. Being a smaller and very selective community also means fewer eyes looking on the code. Read the twitter of Maxime Villard and you will see the latest exploit using vmm/vmd's bug.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1109208948429725697

I hear something named HardenedBSD which has the largest number of "security features" they list on their page. Secure but still has FreeBSD performance. I see pretty much just pr. Doing security stuff you need a team of professionals to implement to audit and many tests tests tests but it's just a play of two men. After read this I'm very sure I'm right: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17382388

The master of hyping. Made himself a victim and FreeBSD as a evil and bureaucracy project. But many clueless and hater just go with him.

Edit: I'm noway hate the two nor personally attack them. But I believe in facts and common sense. Hope their business will be good but for now we should just avoid the hype and sticking with FreeBSD. If their patches someday be good enough sooner or later we will have it. Quality is preferred over quantity (and hype).

Don't ride the trends. Don't take the hype. You will be safe. My brain will shutdown right now too tired of editing a very long post god bless everyone.
 
The last FreeBSD based GhostBSD edition I tried is fine. It worked out of the box like any other Linux based live system. Nothing special. I hate the default fonts installed. Too ugly compared to a standard Linux live system like Manjaro. I'm not talked about screen font but fonts available by default on LibreOffice. Is it has anything related to licensing issue so Linux could ship a better one but we can't?

Recent version switched to TrueOS base. As the author of it now works for iXsystem. Incompatibility happens. We can no longer use FreeBSD ports and packages but TrueOS ports and packages, freebsd-update now trueos-updates... I found it's very adventurous to run a system based on current so I don't use it.

If NomadBSD supports installing to hard drive just like GhostBSD it's so great.
 
badbrain said:
Just my opinion.

Openbsd is overhyped by the net. ... About security it's not the most secure like it pr.
Click to expand...

You are free to have your opinion. I think your opinion is completely wrong. OpenBSD is good at what they strive to do: Being minimal while usable for small servers, being relatively secure, and being above all clean and well designed. If you try to use OpenBSD for large servers, or as general-purpose machines, the results will be predictably bad. I like the fact that the OpenBSD community gives us an alternative OS, which allows trying different things, and using them where appropriate. Personally, I haven't used it in several years, but I enjoyed it for the 6 or 8 years that it was my main home server OS.
 
ralphbsz said:
You are free to have your opinion. I think your opinion is completely wrong. OpenBSD is good at what they strive to do: Being minimal while usable for small servers, being relatively secure, and being above all clean and well designed. If you try to use OpenBSD for large servers, or as general-purpose machines, the results will be predictably bad. I like the fact that the OpenBSD community gives us an alternative OS, which allows trying different things, and using them where appropriate. Personally, I haven't used it in several years, but I enjoyed it for the 6 or 8 years that it was my main home server OS.
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Not need to argue with you anymore. Live with the doctrine people fed into your head.
 
Cthulhux said:
I find a good number of uses in it.
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I wrote too short. Useless for high performance pc/server. As I wrote before, used for resources constrained environments like mail box, router, firewall or old laptop.
 
rigoletto@ said:
This is funny, and you don't do that, but Ralph is more like someone more than qualified to create not just technically correct doctrines but actual theories. ;)
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I don't care who he is. If you fed a student with a doctrine again and again he will remember it instinctively just like how you teach a carrot talking. That student then become a professor or famous researcher but he still spread the false doctrine despite the facts. One of such doctrine is C is the best, cli is the best which many here still advocate zealously. Everyone is equal in this regards.

Edit: no insult. No personal attack. Sorry about my bad English and if you can't understand it. Sorry.
 
Btrfs is not available on FreeBSD, ZFS is. Also reading the comments on that video mirrors what I see from power users here. They use ZFS with no issues. Attempts to run big stuff on btrfs easily gives you migranes 32/7. Also, btrfs was the result of a NIH spell over ZFS. They are playing catch up.

All the talk about memory requirements and speed is mood. You need to factor in the time for restore/downtime/customer relations.

As an example, your car will go some percent faster and consume less fuel if you make it lighter. So why not take out all these air bags, seat belts, climate comtrol, wipers,... ? Oh, they are safety devices? But they eat fuel and make the car go slower. I happily spare a gig of memory for my data being safe.
 
I keep saying the same thing over and over.

ZFS is a very very good file system. To begin with, it is written by real professionals, large teams (so people can check each other's work). It started out life in a company that was trying to write a highly reliable and good performance file system for serious servers; it has since been maintained by respectable people. In has (most importantly) several features: Checksums for everything (which make it much more reliable), scrubbing, and a built-in RAID system (which makes it both more reliable, and easier to use, the argument for why "more reliable" is interesting and complex).

There are other very good file systems. For example, a lot of my data is stored on ext4. No, it doesn't have those safety features, and you need to use external RAID, but it is also very well built, exceedingly well tested, and it tends to have superb performance for most workloads (ZFS is good for many workloads, but there are use cases where it is slow).

BtrFS is an interesting case. It started out with a genius idea by one very smart person; I think I heard the idea at lunch about a week or so after it happened, long before implementation. But the original inventor was not involved in the implementation, which is mostly done by a very small team (at times de-facto one person). It has checksums, but no RAID. And it has lots and lots of bugs. About 5 years ago I was chatting with a few friends (including some of the original ZFS people, and the father of ext2/3/4), and we decided to call BtrFS "a machine for destroying data". It was super unreliable, and pretty much guaranteed data loss. The design of BtrFS contains one very good idea, then it copies many of the implementation techniques from other good file systems ... but you also need top-notch quality control, lots of bodies, and extreme thoroughness to implement a really reliable file system.

There are other good file systems. XFS (from Silicon Graphics) was very good (no checksums, no RAID, but well implemented), alas it is being forgotten these days. Similarly, the original Berkeley file system (called variously FFS and UFS) is so well designed and so well tested, it just works: not fancy, no modern features, but reliable. IBM's JFS is all but forgotten today, but it was pretty reliable too (and it had transactional correctness when used with a database); similar with VxFS. NTFS and APFS are also very fine systems, but they are not freely available (they come with commercial OSes, and are tuned to them). In contrast, ReiserFS and HammerFS are egomaniacs writing their own file system; in the former case, it got some commercial traction. In research, you can find zillions of other interesting but not practically usable file systems.

I store all my important personal stuff on ZFS. It is the file system I trust most for amateur use. I don't trust it enough to give up on backups ... those are stored on both ext4 and on Apple's file system. Several machines I use at home run ext4, and I have not had any trouble with them either. I would never ever use BtrFS or ReiserFS for my own data, nor would I recommend it to customers at work. At work, I use and develop custom storage systems, which tend to be a lot better than any of the free solutions (but they are not available to the public, at least not for free).
 
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