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hpr4388 :: BSD Overview

norrist describes how you can be a real hacker and run BSD

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Hosted by norrist on Wednesday, 2025-05-28 is flagged as Clean and is released under a CC-BY-SA license.
bsd, freebsd, openbsd, netbsd. (Be the first).

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Duration: 00:42:56
Download the transcription and subtitles.

general.

Intro

  • How I know BSD
  • Very minimal NetBSD usage
  • I'm am leaving out Dragonfly BSD
  • Previous episodes
  • Several by Claudio Miranda and others - check the tags page.
  • hpr3799 :: My home router history
  • hpr3187 :: Ansible for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
  • hpr3168 :: FreeBSD Jails and iocage
  • hpr2181 :: Install OpenBSD from Linux using Grub


History and Overview

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Berkeley_Software_Distribution The history of the Berkeley Software Distribution began in the 1970s when University of California, Berkeley received a copy of Unix. Professors and students at the university began adding software to the operating system and released it as BSD to select universities.


Comparisons to Linux

  • Not better or worse, just different.
  • BSD is a direct descendant of the original UNIX
  • Not distributions - Separate projects with separate code bases.
  • Permissive vs Copyleft
  • One Project vs Kernel + User land
  • Most Open Source software is available on BSD
  • ports and packages
  • Network Devices and DISKS will have different naming conventions. BE CAREFUL


Distinctives

FreeBSD

  • Probably most widely used
  • Base OS Commercial products
  • Tightly integrated with ZFS
  • Jails
  • OS for Firewall appliances - PFSense and Opensense

OpenBSD

  • Focus on Code Correctness and Security
  • Often First to develop new security methodologies - ASLR and Kernel relinking at boot
  • Home of OpenSSH, ...
  • Base includes Xorg and a minimal Window Manager
  • The Best docs - man pages

NetBSD

  • Supports the most platforms
  • pkgsrc can be used on any UNIX like.


How I use BSD

Home Router

  • Recently migrated from FreeBSD to OpenBSD
  • Better support for the cheap 2.5G network adapters in Ali express firewalls

Workstations

  • OpenBSD Dual boot laptop - missing some nice features - Vscode and BT audio
  • OpenBSD for Banking

NAS

  • FreeBSD
  • Was physical by migrated to Proxmox VM with direct attached drives
  • Jails for some apps
  • ZFS pools for storage


My recommendations

  • Router
  • OpenBSD - Any BSD will work
  • Opensense - similar experience to managing DD-WRT
  • Thinkpads - OpenBSD
  • Other laptops / PC - FreeBSD desktop focus derivative. ghost or midnight
  • Servers/NAS FreeBSD
  • ZFS
  • Jails
  • BSD is worth trying
  • Dual booting is supported but can be tricky if unfamiliar.

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