What’s the point of it?

OpenBSD = Security

FreeBSD = The main UNIX-like

NetBSD = ???

Based on the name of have assumed it’s be used in things like network appliances but in 20 years I’ve never seen a single device use it.

  • Ramin Honary@lemmy.mlEnglish
    431·
    5 months ago

    Yes, it is mostly appliances, but an (informal?) stated goal of NetBSD is too run on all computing hardware.

    • FreeBSD = user-friendly free Unix (plus ZFS and jails 😀)
    • OpenBSD = very secure free Unix (no ZFS 🙁 but has the VMM hypervisor 😀)
    • OpenIndiana = user-friendly free Unix that runs old Solaris software (plus ZFS and zones 😀)
    • NetBSD = runs on any computer chip ever built within the past 40 years (some ZFS support, but no zones, jails, or VMs 🙁)

    Naturally, that makes NetBSD a good choice for appliances, especially ones that might only have limited memory.

    (Here is a quick explainer on the difference between Jails, Zones, Containers, and VMs)

    EDIT1: someone pointed out to me that ZFS is not supported on OpenBSD. Sorry about that everyone.

    EDIT2: there is a ZFS driver for NetBSD

      • whoami
        2·
        5 months ago

        No, but I think someone made read only support for ZFS available on OpenBSD. Freebsd is obviously the best for ZFS. It works on NetBSD too.

      • Ramin Honary@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        5 months ago

        Thanks, I had to double check that but you’re right, ZFS isn’t on OpenBSD. What a shame. Anyway I edited my above post.

      • Ramin Honary@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        5 months ago

        According to the wiki, ZFS “works well” but doesn’t seem to be as stable as in FreeBSD or OpenIndiana, and is not enabled by default so you have to update your rc.conf file to build the ZFS drivers.

  • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    16·
    5 months ago

    From “back in the day” the big claim was that NetBSD would run on anything. Portability seemed to be their major goal.

  • ryannathans@aussie.zone
    143·
    5 months ago

    Somewhat confused this is in a linux community when none of these OS are linux based. Are we lacking on BSD communities?

  • bizdelnick@lemmy.ml
    111·
    5 months ago

    There’s no specific point in any of *BSD. They all are general purpose OSes. NetBSD forked from FreeBSD, OpenBSD forked from NetBSD. Conflicts between developers were main reasons for that.

    • whoami
      3·
      5 months ago

      NetBSD didn’t fork from Free iirc. They took 4.4 BSD and started developing it themselves of the net.

      Theo de Raadt was kicked out of netbsd, and started OpenBSD.

      • bizdelnick@lemmy.ml
        2·
        5 months ago

        Yes, you are right. Both FreeBSD and NetBSD are based on earlier BSD systems. Anyway there are no fundamental differences between them.

        • whoami
          1·
          5 months ago

          no fundamental differences between net and freebsd?

          • bizdelnick@lemmy.ml
            2·
            5 months ago

            No such ones that would make one of them unsuitable for some task that another copes with.

          • scratchandgame@lemmy.mlTiếng Việt
            1·
            4 months ago

            What the hell??

            They evolve differently. Saying *BSD is like 4.4BSD is still developed by ucb to provide a single base for all BSD.

            Michael W Lucas wrote in Absolute FreeBSD (3rd):

            Absolute BSD (No Starch Press, 2002) was my first technology book and was written when the various BSD operating system had more in common than they wanted to admit. The second edition, Absolute FreeBSD (No Starch Press, 2007), came out after the BSDs had diverged, and detailed FreeBSD’s advances in the previous five year

    • TCB13@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      5 months ago

      Pretty much like all Debian forks. They’re all forked from Debian because of conflicts between developers / different ways of seeing things. :P

  • scratchandgame@lemmy.mlTiếng Việt
    2·
    4 months ago

    OpenBSD = Security

    It is actually correctless. OpenBSD = Correctness + Simple + Free (free from copyleft too)

    FreeBSD = The main UNIX-like

    Citation???

    NetBSD

    maximum portability??

    But up to NetBSD 10 (at the time writing it was not released) YOU DON’T HAVE SSL CERTIFICATES INSTALLED IN THE BASE SYSTEM !

    That’s my warning :)

    • Pantherina@feddit.de
      21·
      4 months ago

      I dont get that “no copyleft” of OpenBSD. Like, anything they do will just be used by Apple, Sony etc. and they dont give shit back

      • scratchandgame@lemmy.mlTiếng Việt
        1·
        4 months ago

        OpenBSD try to remove GPL licensed software from base. (with free alternative)

        Like, anything they do will just be used by Apple, Sony etc. and they dont give shit back

        This is what the OpenBSD team want, and also appreciated by other BSD developers.

        • Pantherina@feddit.de
          11·
          4 months ago

          I have no idea why they would do that to themselves. You develop free software without any protection again abuse?

          • scratchandgame@lemmy.mlTiếng Việt
            1·
            4 months ago

            SEE THEIR POLICY, don’t complain with me

            https://openbsd.org/policy.html

            They distribute a Free operating system

            The original Apache license was similar to the Berkeley license, but source code published under version 2 of the Apache license is subject to additional restrictions and cannot be included into OpenBSD. In particular, if you use code under the Apache 2 license, some of your rights will terminate if you claim in court that the code violates a patent.

            A license can only be considered fully permissive if it allows use by anyone for all the future without giving up any of their rights. If there are conditions that might terminate any rights in the future, or if you have to give up a right that you would otherwise have, even if exercising that right could reasonably be regarded as morally objectionable, the code is not free.

            In addition, the clause about the patent license is problematic because a patent license cannot be granted under Copyright law, but only under contract law, which drags the whole license into the domain of contract law. But while Copyright law is somewhat standardized by international agreements, contract law differs wildly among jurisdictions. So what the license means in different jurisdictions may vary and is hard to predict.

            The GNU Public License and licenses modeled on it impose the restriction that source code must be distributed or made available for all works that are derivatives of the GNU copyrighted code.

            While this may superficially look like a noble strategy, it is a condition that is typically unacceptable for commercial use of software. So in practice, it usually ends up hindering free sharing and reuse of code and ideas rather than encouraging it. As a consequence, no additional software bound by the GPL terms will be considered for inclusion into the OpenBSD base system.

                • Pantherina@feddit.de
                  11·
                  4 months ago

                  A project could compromise by entering into NDA agreements with vendors, or including binary objects in the operating system for which no source code exists

                  Agreed.

                  I appreciate that they are blobfree but “no copyleft” has nothing to do with that. Actually, I think Copyleft Linux could not include blobs?

  • whoami
    21·
    5 months ago

    NetBSD, from their own website:

    The NetBSD Project’s goals

    A project has no point if it doesn’t have goals. Thankfully, the NetBSD Project has enough goals to keep it busy for quite some time. Generally speaking, the NetBSD Project:

    provides a well designed, stable, and fast BSD system,
avoids encumbering licenses,
provides a portable system, which runs on many hardware platforms,
interoperates well with other systems,
conforms to open systems standards as much as is practical.

    In summary: The NetBSD Project provides a freely available and redistributable system that professionals, hobbyists, and researchers can use in whatever manner they wish.

    Based on the name of have assumed it’s be used in things like network appliances but in 20 years I’ve never seen a single device use it.

    The name comes from being develop over the internet, when that was still a pretty new concept. It’s pretty popular among Japanese ISP’s iirc.

    If you’re at all interested in unix, you should try NetBSD. Open has security as a focus…although some of that is overstated imo. FreeBSD is clearly targeting servers, even if it is all purpose.

    NetBSD is less popular, but it’s clean, lightweight, portable, has pkgsrc. Think of Net as a cross between Open and Free.

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
    411·
    4 months ago

    BSD is kind of dead

    Additionally the lack of copyleft does nothing for user freedom. You could buy a device and you would have no way of knowing it runs free software.