OpenBSD Journal

Second choice operating system?

Contributed by mk/reverse on from the oh what to do dept.

OpenBSD 19.9% (279 votes)


FreeBSD 19.6% (274 votes)


NetBSD 7.0% (98 votes)


DragonFlyBSD 2.4% (33 votes)


Linux 26.9% (377 votes)


Windows 9.4% (131 votes)


MacOS 10.6% (148 votes)


AmigaOS 1.4% (20 votes)


Other (comment) 2.9% (41 votes)


Total votes: 1401

(Comments are closed)

Comments

  1. By Anthony (68.145.111.152) on

    For me, MacOS is the way to go for laptops, and Suse can be pretty nice on a desktop machine. They're second choice because I can do without them. Can't do without OpenBSD, even though most of the time I don't use it directly.

  2. By Anonymous Coward (84.31.108.183) on

    plan9 and inferno. these systems have been kept simple and relatively elegant. very nice to play around with.

    Comments

    1. By t (66.52.195.101) on

      Agreed, Plan 9 is a nice system.

    2. By Anonymous Coward (68.78.67.23) on

      I have to agreed. Another vote for Plan 9 and Inferno.

    3. By Luiz Gustavo (200.217.204.194) on

      Another here, but the license is bad... :)

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (68.78.67.23) on

        "Plan 9 is free enough for those who are more interested in technology than the religion and politics of licensing and copyright. Sadly, many Free Software advocates are more interested in licensing and copyright than in getting actual work done." ~ Geoff, 9fans Yeah, it's not as open as the BSD. But who cares?

        Comments

        1. By Anonymous Coward (82.182.149.44) on

          The license is actually quite better than the GPL, it's not viral and for most practical purposes could be considered BSD-like, it has some nonsense in it which is anoying but not as bad as some like to make it.

  3. By Anonymous Coward (207.58.193.61) on

    just to make sure i have it right ... if someone votes "openbsd," this implies they have a different preferred os?

    perhaps they can leave a comment with their #1 preferred os? and hopefully all of the comments can stick to a "i like my os because ..." and not the usual "your os sucks because ..."

    Comments

    1. By skojt (82.182.135.58) on

      I started to use FreeBSD a couple of weeks after having used and worked with OpenBSD for a couple of years. The main reason is that I was curious about their ports system and I wanted to try something "new" (5.3-BETA). I like their /etc/rc.conf-file and that the configuration files for installed ports can be found in /usr/local/etc.

      My ex-colleagues, kernel-developers, are thinking of switching from OpenBSD to FreeBSD because they feel unhappy about how their bugreports sent to OpenBSD are handled.

      If someone told me to install a firewall, mailserver or webserver I would use OpenBSD.

    2. By Lennart Fridén (81.224.95.110) on

      Started out as an Amiga user and ended up in Windows-land. OpenBSD is what I use to make inroads into the world of UNIX becuase, quite frankly, the sheer simplicity and minimalism reminds me of the Amiga. You can most certainly tell that Theo used to be an Amiga user if you can just read the signs. I don't see myself leaving Windows when it comes to the desktop (if I would it'd had to be for OpenBSD), but I can most certainly tell you what'll be on my future servers... BTW, VMware is an excellent way to get to know OpenBSD for all Windows users out there.

    3. By Anonymous Coward (62.177.197.3) on

      I like my OS because your OS sucks.

  4. By Anonymous Coward (66.52.195.101) on

    Another solid, well designed system...

  5. By Anonymous Coward (142.166.107.133) on

    I was always very fond of the AmigaOS in its day. It does not garner a vote these days -- it never had the chance to mature into a full modern OS comparable to the other options. Still, on the limited hardware of the time, it was a wonderful and promising desktop OS.

  6. By ivlad (212.233.69.112) on

    Solaris

    Comments

    1. By Steffen Wendzel (217.236.236.15) on

      I use Solaris too on a lot of my servers. Thats why it is my 2nd choise. 3rd is Slackware.

      Comments

      1. By ViPER (213.84.93.41) viper@dmrt.net on http://www.dmrt.net

        That whould be my second choice if it wasn't for it's *horrible* filesystem. A crash (it may take a year, but they can crash yes) or even a reboot without (you having to) sync it = fsck halt.
        Then the praying begins :(

        Haven't seen Solaris 10 crashing on yet though.

        Comments

        1. By Jeff (24.16.173.81) on

          ENABLE UFS LOGGING!

          Comments

          1. By Anonymous Coward (69.197.92.181) on

            Having a log to make recovery faster does not excuse having a broken filesystem to start with. And it doesn't prevent data loss/corruption.

  7. By chill (216.229.170.65) on

    Primary OS: Linux

    I roll my own Linux servers based off of modifications I've done to LFS/BLFS. I use a 2.6 kernel w/ACLs, chroot, IPSec for VPNs and SELinux enhancements.

    Why?

    OpenBSD for me has always been "too much pain for too little gain". The reality is, the VAST majority of exploits aren't at the OS level, they are at the App level. I've never had a properly locked down Linux box get exploited but have had to spend tons of hours cleaning up sloppy, buggy and insecure PHP & Perl. Actually, the only time I have documented an issue was with the recent OpenSSL DOS. I was hit by that one on the same day it was announced. Crunch!

    Things like Cross-Site Scripting attacks; SQL walking because of improperly checked form input; users who INSIST on using cleartext authentication;... these are what I focus on, and NONE of which is addressed by adding .00001% more security to the OS.

    Proper use and configuration of chroot, IPTables and ACLs along with enforcement of SMTP AUTH/IMAP/POP thru TLS/SSL only, and SFTP/SSH only (no Telnet/FTP) is by far and away good enough for daily use of the majority of the world. Hell, it would be giant steps ahead of what they use NOW.

    Prohibiting non-encrypted data transfers (mail, file, shell) lost me a lot of customers in my small hosting business, but gained me a couple and got rid of TONS of headaches.

    -Charles

    Comments

    1. By Ozwald (66.225.128.124) on

      OpenBSD for me has always been "too much pain for too little gain"
      ...

      Proper use and configuration of chroot, IPTables and ACLs along with enforcement of SMTP AUTH/IMAP/POP thru TLS/SSL only, and SFTP/SSH only

      Sounds like you spend just as much time fixing the configuration of Linux as you do worrying about applications in OpenBSD.

      First, OpenBSD only promises security in the OS and default install. They've never promised security in what you install after. Second, many applications in the ports/packages directory *are* tweeked to be more secure, both configuration and code. Often, these changes are sent to the original authors and end up as fixes in what Linux gets too.

      Besides, if you don't like OpenBSD, why are you here? I hate how little respect OpenBSD gets from Linux advocates, from previous articles it seems like Apple and Microsoft don't seem to mind us...

      Comments

      1. By Charles Hill (216.229.170.65) on

        Setting up IPTables would be the equivalent of setting up PF -- no more or less work. SSL/TLS, IPSec, and secure, non-cleartext authentication is mostly in apps, not the OS. Thus not really relavant to "fixing" anything in either Linux or OpenBSD.

        I'm here because I do respect OpenBSD. The amount of effort that has gone into fixing the base OS, getting things right and proper security is amazing and laudable.

        I use OpenBSD as my second choice -- mostly on small systems like homebrew firewalls and routers made from mostly Soekris units.

        You missed my point. Most of the time I spend "fixing" isn't fixing Linux, it is fixing the *applications*. Running them on OpenBSD would not require any more or less fixing.

        Thanks to OpenBSD and the lessons learned by their efforts, my main security concern is no longer the OS, it is the applications.

        Think of it this way: if your online business was a circus tent, Linux would be like having steel poles, stakes and guide wires. Good. OpenBSD would be like replacing those with super-hardened titanium. Great. However, if a huge storm hits, it doesn't do me any good to have nothing left but poles, stakes and guide wires. If the main canvas (application) blew away and all the spectators (users) started looting the cashbox (database) or defacing the property (website), then I'm S.O.L.

        Comments

        1. By Anonymous Coward (82.155.52.10) on

          Thank you for your insight. Very interesting.

        2. By Anonymous Coward (67.71.76.239) on

          I like your anology!

      2. By sol (200.66.29.171) on

        > OpenBSD only promises security in the OS and default install.

        I can't trust in an operating system like openbsd because is hosting under solaris, is like microsoft is hosting under linux or kernel.org is hosting under macOS :-)
        greets

        Comments

        1. By Anonymous Coward (207.215.252.173) on

          For posterity:
          http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq8.html#wwwsolaris

    2. By Anonymous Coward (69.197.92.181) on

      Yeah, OpenBSD is just too much work. You have to do a very short, simple installation, and then just setup your ports/additional software. Your custom linux solution is so much easier, since you only have to build the OS yourself from hundreds of packages from various people, making sure to get the latest versions, installing them all, getting all the random assortment of patches to make linux less insecure, compile a custom kernel, and then just setup your additional software.

      Wow, it all sounds so simple and elegant, I'm sold. I can just imagine monitoring dozens of mailing lists and websites for security updates for those hundreds of packages, and then updating all those packages, with all their different ways of being updated must be a breeze.

  8. By Anonymous Coward (209.249.160.76) on

    1st choice: Linux - as an OS for PCs. All of which are behind my 2nd choice: OpenBSD firewalls

  9. By Frank (82.92.27.168) on

    For me it's OpenBSD on the firewalls, FreeBSD on the servers and Windows on the clients. Greetz, /Frank.

  10. By pete g (62.255.32.13) on http://p3t3.net

    no, i'm not joking.

    http://plan9.bell-labs.com/

  11. By ShinMei (193.253.187.79) on

    Gentoo :)

    Powerful package system :)
    I use it for desktop, but also for some servs :)

    OpenBSD is my choice for security for now. Perhaps later I'll have much knowledge on it and I'll use it more often :)

    Regards,

    ShinMei :)

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward (68.145.111.152) on

      "Gentoo"

      So the part where it breaks itself on a regular basis doesn't bother you?

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (152.23.192.56) on

        After well over a year of using Gentoo on three machines, I can honestly say none of my systems has ever broken. Certain packages have not worked on the first compile, but that has been rare. The system has certainly never borked itself to the point where it wasnt recoverable through simple maintainence.

        Gentoo stable has been, well, quite stable. Upgrading a package is simple, and if the package does not work, reverting to the old package is just as simple, and can be done nearly instantaneously if the system is properly maintained.

        I wouldn't normally respond to FUD like this, but quite honestly Gentoo has earned my affection. I first tried it on a whim, and have found that it fits perfectly for my needs, which is really what this question is all about. It has simply done everything I have asked of it, and offered more.

        Which is what brings me to my answer, that my second choice is OpenBSD, though it is first choice for my networking servers.

        Comments

        1. By anpe (192.54.193.35) on http://open-news.net

          I'll second that, I'd use Gentoo/Linux for desktop and OpenBSD for servers.
          It may be worth noting that there's an effort to bring portage to BSD people:
          www.gentoo.org/~g2boojum/bsd.html

        2. By Anthony (68.145.111.152) on

          "Gentoo stable has been, well, quite stable. Upgrading a package is simple, and if the package does not work, reverting to the old package is just as simple, and can be done nearly instantaneously if the system is properly maintained.

          I wouldn't normally respond to FUD like this, but quite honestly Gentoo has earned my affection. I first tried it on a whim, and have found that it fits perfectly for my needs, which is really what this question is all about. It has simply done everything I have asked of it, and offered more."

          FUD is it? Well, I guess I'll just have to back up what I said with facts that are backed up by information on the public record. All of these apply to the stable branch. These issues took place during my first attempt at Gentoo (nov 2003 - jan 2004) and my second attempt (aug 2004).

          -The update to KDE 3.2 had a masked dependency. As a result, no stable system could install/update successfully. This could only have happened if none of the developers tested the update on a stable system. Broken for over a week.

          -An update to X11 made Xinerama support a compile time option instead of the default with no warning. As a result, after an update to X11 my dual monitors ceased to work properly (they were treated as one big screen). I didn't figure this out until I did a ground up install for my second attempt.

          -Inline assembly in mplayer (or one of the dependencies, I can't remember) wouldn't compile with the processor set to pentium 4.

          -X11 stopped using my second monitor correctly in a different case. For some reason, the image was wobbly. I posted a lot about this, but I never got it fixed. FreeBSD and Suse with the same version of XFree86 on the same hardware don't have this problem. I never found out why this happened, but it seemed to have something to do with DPMS.

          There were many other problems, but they were more minor and I don't remember specifics, so I won't post them.

          I require an OS to work consistently without my help, and to not require excessive effort on my part to keep it working. MacOS takes less than 20 minutes per month. Suse Linux takes less than 20 minutes per month. FreeBSD takes less than 20 minutes per month. OpenBSD takes less than 20 minutes per month.

          A good month with Gentoo is less than 20 hours. That's not acceptable for me.

          It's possible I'm just not awesome enough to use Gentoo, but I followed the docs pretty extensively (as they were generally quite good), and if there's magic I missed that would have made things work better, then it just wasn't documented properly.

          I think it's highly unlikely that my UNIX skills are somehow insufficient, given that I use the OSes I mention above on a regular basis without any of the same problenms.

          It's also been my experience that most Gentoo fans tend to be so in love with the flexibility that they don't even notice all the time it takes to keep it working. The rest are, as far as I can tell, just lucky, as they've never been able to tell me anything that I did wrong.

          Comments

          1. By Anonymous Coward (152.23.192.56) on

            FUD is it?

            Well, I think I will have to take a stand and say that a rhetorical question without any sort of support is, in fact, FUD. I didn't mean for my response to be offensive, and thank you for actually responding with examples of your assertion.

            In response, I can only say that I have not run into the problems you have, and can't recall hearing about them, either. I have put Gentoo on an IBM laptop, and two machines I built myself: one desktop and one fileserver. I have yet to run into OS problems with any of them (I have run into an issue with the Linux kernel, but it is minor, and has been improving). Obviously my experience will be different than yours. Different experiences are inevitable with an operating system. Again, I can only speak to my own, which have been very good.

            In all fairness, I will admit to being rather OCD, which possibly explains my affection for the system. I did feel the need to speak up for it, however.

            Comments

            1. By Anthony (68.145.111.152) on

              "Obviously my experience will be different than yours. Different experiences are inevitable with an operating system. Again, I can only speak to my own, which have been very good.

              In all fairness, I will admit to being rather OCD, which possibly explains my affection for the system. I did feel the need to speak up for it, however."

              Yes... well if no one got anything out of Gentoo, it wouldn't exist.

              Portage would have a lot more utility for me if "stable" meant "stable", IMO. Having to continually keep track of the state of things in the stable branch to be able to update anything was quite an onerous task for me. I could of course just roll back to an older version if something didn't work, but then Portage stops being an automated tool.

              As it is, Gentoo did a very good job of selling Suse Linux to me. And unfortunately, even if Gentoo did improve, it'll be a long time before I think about using it again (as I was let down by claims of improved stability in august this year).

              At the end of the day, I get 90% of the results with about 5% of the effort with Suse. For the rest of my needs, OpenBSD covers them fine, and I'm using it anyway for my firewall; SSHing to another computer on a gigabit network is not particularly hard.

          2. By Anonymous Coward (69.182.24.152) on

            "Suse Linux takes less than 20 minutes per month. FreeBSD takes less than 20 minutes per month. OpenBSD takes less than 20 minutes per month."

            Except for how ever many hours you spend upgrading to the next iteration every 6 - 10 months...

    2. By Anonymous Coward (68.238.189.58) on

      You've got to be kidding me. I've never heard better idiocy in my life. Gentoo is best left to the grade school kids who have a good 20 hours to watch the gcc screensaver. Not to mention most of the optimizations most gentoo users use are useless. funroll-loops.org please. I don't really like flaming other users opinions, but lets be serious here and all agree gentoo is a waste of time, even many developers don't find it fun anymore (a few of them told me thats how they feel). Lets just all look back and forget the connecting points in time where we mentioned it, so we can get on with our life just like drobbins did ;)

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (69.182.24.152) on

        "You've got to be kidding me. I've never heard better idiocy in my life. Gentoo is best left to the grade school kids who have a good 20 hours to watch the gcc screensaver. Not to mention most of the optimizations most gentoo users use are useless."

        The reason source-based distros are useful isn't because of the optimizations, its because you aren't stuck with whatever package dependencies a binary distro would give you.

        If you're spending 20 hours watching gcc compile, you really should upgrade from your 386SX-20 to a newer machine.

    3. By Anonymous Coward (207.215.252.173) on

      Gentoo is Rice:
      http://funroll-loops.org/

      Comments

      1. By Anthony (68.145.111.152) on

        The picture at the bottom says it all.

        Comments

        1. By Anonymous Coward (69.182.24.152) on

          " The picture at the bottom says it all."

          It shows a picture of a sinking ship. Exactly how is Gentoo a sinking ship? It is one of the most popular Linux distros out there, and its not showing signs of fading.

  12. Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward (216.254.22.68) on

      Couldn't agree more. This is the way to go. Best of all possible worlds.

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (4.159.119.156) on

        Ditto. OS X clients and OpenBSD servers (mail, web, file) + the firewall. Life is very good.

  13. By Anonymous Coward (216.190.52.69) on

    Second choice would be IRIX (first for desktop use). OpenBSD and IRIX covers the whole spectrum of security: on a default IRIX install you can telnet as root with no password.

  14. By Bob Beck (129.128.11.43) beck@openbsd.org on

    AIX or Slowaris. Seriously.

    Comments

    1. By Miod Vallat (212.234.41.17) miod@ on

      Who are you, and what have you done with Bob? Bob would never recommand AIX because of the hardware it runs on.

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (212.202.37.35) on

        aix runs on romp too! (:

  15. By mirabile (212.185.103.56) on http://mirbsd.de/

    Second choice is still DOS - currently a patched
    MS-DOS 7.10, for its good direct hardware access.

    Third choice is Windows 2000 SP2, for playing
    games or with Interix/Services for Unix.

    Comments

    1. By Ray (216.254.116.107) ray@cyth.net on

      What about MirOS?

  16. By ratpoison (84.128.246.146) thorsten@mandrakeuser.de on

    MacOS X for my iBook, FreeBSD and Windows XP for the clients, OpenBSD for the filserver and my fallback-dataserver.

    Nice playground all-in-one-LAN.

  17. By afunix (81.9.112.134) on

    I prefer Linux on my desktop, because of better device support (imho).
    And OpenBSD drives my servers.

  19. By Tomas Norre Mikkelsen (130.225.194.13) on milpoer.dk/blog

    I think it depend on what you want to do. For a nice firewall my choise will be OpenBSD with pf. And as a desktop-pc i use FreeBSD, because of the amount of packages.

    Conclusion: Different systems for different tasks.

  20. By Terrell Prude', Jr. (151.188.247.80) on

    My first choice is Slackware GNU/Linux, followed by OpenBSD. The reason I chose Slackware GNU/Linux as my primary OS is that, on x86 computers (what I use every day), the hardware support in the Linux kernel is somewhat more broad than that for the BSD's. Also, binaries for "critical apps" are built for GNU/Linux more often, e. g. Mozilla Firefox and OpenOffice.org, without which I cannot function at work among my Windows-using colleagues. That's really critical for me; without especially OO.o, I would have to revert to MS Windows, which I emphatically do not want to do.

    The reason for specifically the Slackware distribution? Well, it reminds me a lot of the BSD's. It was actually by using Slackware that I got comfortable with the idea of using OpenBSD. Thus, for Internet servers, I tend to choose either Slackware or OpenBSD, depending on the on-site folks's expertise and comfort. For workstations, I tend to choose LTSP whenever possible, on Slackware (and sometimes Red Hat with K12LTSP), due to the easy ability to re-use old Pentium I's as essentially free Xterms.

    Thus, with Slackware, I get what is, for me, the best of both worlds--the simplicity of BSD, with the very broad hardware and software support of GNU/Linux.

    --TP

  21. By toxa (62.89.204.62) on

    For me, FreeBSD is the OS of choice on high load servers, and OpenBSD - on firewalls/bridges. I wish I have MacOSX on laptop, but Apple hardware is too expencive for me, so I have a regular x86 laptop rinning FreeBSD 6-CURRENT on it.

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward (69.197.92.181) on

      First of all, there is no freebsd 6. Second, why would you use freebsd on a "high load" server instead of openbsd? Do you seriously believe the fairy tales about how much faster it is?

  22. By Anonymous Coward (82.182.149.44) on

    Plan 9, because...

    "Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell really bad." -- -- Rob Pike circa 1991

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