View Single Post
  #5   (View Single Post)  
Old 20th May 2008
ai-danno's Avatar
ai-danno ai-danno is offline
Spam Deminer
 
Join Date: May 2008
Location: Boca Raton, Florida
Posts: 284
Default

I also think that Ocicat's response was admirable... so I hope that in no way this response detracts from it. But since he has given that fine response, I will do as TerryP has done, giving you an answer from the perspective of why I chose OpenBSD. Here are the reasons-

- Considered by most to be the most secure operating system in the world.
- The slogan "It just works" is true (when configured properly )
- The source code is untainted by licensing issues or commercial binary blobs (no GPL code, it's all BSD-licensed. No NDA's with companies.) In other words, it is truly free.
- As a network administrator, I like the fact that it's the original source of many network-based applications- PF, OpenOSPFD, OpenBGPD, CARP, OpenNTPD, etc.
- It's actually easy to use. Most commonly used configuration files are in /etc/, there isn't a whole lot of cruft to sift through (compare the output of 'top' in OpenBSD to any distro of Linux.)
- The development team strives to make things workable and secure, and is a truly dedicated bunch, answering to no one but themselves.

Of course, no OS is perfect, and OBSD has it's flaws- because it accepts no commercial binary blobs, 3D graphics hardware support doesn't really exist. Because they answer to no one, the development team is sometimes not the friendliest bunch. Because they work for functionality over feature-richness, Symmetric multi-processing performance isn't that hot.

So as a desktop system it's passable but I wouldn't play any serious games on it. As a server, I think it's great. As a router or firewall, I think it absolutely rocks.

If I had to pick a single word for OBSD- it would be uncompromising.
__________________
Network Firefighter
Reply With Quote