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Old 21st May 2008
BSDfan666 BSDfan666 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ocicat View Post
Uh BSDfan666, I didn't say this...
Ugh, Sorry, botched attempt at quoting.. post has been edited, ai-danno was the culprit.
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Old 21st May 2008
BSDfan666 BSDfan666 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ai-danno View Post
Of course by this misquote it appears I wasn't the only one.
Meanie.

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Old 21st May 2008
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Originally Posted by BSDfan666 View Post
...BSD stands for Berkeley Software Distribution, not System...
Yes, it does. Thanks for the correction.

As FreeMan can tell, Unix and Unix-like systems have a long and colorful history.

I was a user of Multics in the mid 1970s; many consider it the "precursor" of Unix. I remember clearly reading the user's manual: Chapter 1 was how to log on, Chapter 2 was all about something initially very confusing regarding data storage, called "tree structures."

I think my first use of Unix was around 1981 or 1983; I can't recall the exact year. Everything after the 1960s is fuzzy anyway.
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Old 21st May 2008
FreeMan FreeMan is offline
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Oh, thank you jggimi and ai-danno. I didn't know you guys were answering the question. I pressed "Preview Post" after I typed that question, but then deleted it.

P.S. I really like Daemon Forums because you guys take time to answer the question completely.

Last edited by FreeMan; 21st May 2008 at 03:45 PM.
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Old 21st May 2008
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Originally Posted by jggimi View Post
I think my first use of Unix was around 1981 or 1983; I can't recall the exact year. Everything after the 1960s is fuzzy anyway.
My godness! In 1983, I even didnt exist!
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Old 21st May 2008
DrJ DrJ is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 18Googol2 View Post
My godness! In 1983, I even didnt exist!
Well, that is pretty common. I too started using Unix on 4.2BSD at about the same time, using the Unix program "learn" in the bowels of Gilman Hall at Berkeley. Man that was a rathole. The old LSI ADM-3a was no great terminal either.
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Old 21st May 2008
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My godness! ....
I have shoes older than you.
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Old 21st May 2008
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At my last encounter, NetBSD felt to me more like what I would expect the old BSD releases to behave as if I fired up an emulator. When compared to how different modern FreeBSD is at least.


I've always thought of FreeBSD, as being the one modern BSD with the "We've been using this thing for decades, no reason not to keep evolving" attitude.

My first time setuping up NetBSD was quite interesting hehe.


Quote:
Originally Posted by ai-danno View Post
- 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.
Not really, even in OpenBSD there is _still_ GPL code. I know FreeBSDs source tree as a contrib and a gnu directory, I see a gnu one in OpenBSD. Even with the changes to GCC in OpenBSD, GCC is still essentially GPL'd.


BSD in one form or another has had GPL code for years, I believe GNU's C Compiler became the systems standard C Compiler in 4.4BSD. Which probably means all of Free, Net, and Open BSD's CVS-recorded lives.

A number of utilities also slip through between the *BSDs (more of them in FreeBSD then OpenBSD imho) but they are often ones you'd rather not have to rewrite and maintain yourself, especially when on occasion you might have to be compatible with the GNU softwares or complicate the ports system.


I'm not partial to GCC, but you'll have to pardon me... I'm a bit of a technical-bastard when it comes to details :|
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Old 22nd May 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ai-danno View Post
...So as a desktop system [openBSD] is 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.
Ditto. I might add that I found openBSD straight forward and it's man pages quite competent. It's a good learning on, and growing up with, O/S.

/S
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Old 22nd May 2008
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Originally Posted by s2scott View Post
Ditto. I might add that I found openBSD straight forward and it's man pages quite competent.
/S

Yeah this should be emphasized. I was a little turned off to the idea of wading through MAN pages when first getting know OpenBSD... my experiences with Linux MAN pages were not so wonderful. But after actually reading them, you realize they are, as a whole, very well-written.

I recently published a guide for site-to-site vpn in the guides section. I learned how to do that in a single day based on the MAN pages alone. It's not because of any smarts I have upstairs (because I'm truly average), but because you can actually use OBSD MAN pages. Go figure
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Old 22nd May 2008
erehwon erehwon is offline
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As someone who is not a technical professional, just a hobbyist, I settled on OpenBSD for my server after much experimentation with Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD.


I like that it maintains a small footprint after installation. No unnecessary daemons.

I like that the code is very well audited. I can trust ftpd, for example.

I like that both userland and kernel are of the same 'source', pun not intended. I don't need to worry about kernel modules.

I like that keeping the system updated means no booting into single-user mode, since I don't have the machine attached to a console.


All in all, I want to spend less time maintaining the box, for what I need. I once read of someone who kept a Slackware box running in his basement without needing to touch it, for years. Now that's freedom, too. In fact, that's my aim with OpenBSD. I love to tinker, but I want freedom from worrying about the thing. Let it serve, so I can have a life
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