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.
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
There’s no ZFS support in OpenBSD is there?
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.
But there is zfs support in netbsd… https://wiki.netbsd.org/zfs/
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.conffile to build the ZFS drivers.
“I just threw a dead squirrel in a shoe box and installed NetBSD on it.” is one of the bash.org quotes I still remember.
And damnit we did it too
From “back in the day” the big claim was that NetBSD would run on anything. Portability seemed to be their major goal.
Somewhat confused this is in a linux community when none of these OS are linux based. Are we lacking on BSD communities?
We don’t have BSD communities and even if we did they probably wouldn’t be big enough to get a decent answer.
So I asked here cos there’s a high chance that some Linux users will also know something about *BSD.
You’d probably get better conversations at selfhosted I know some folks there run *bsd network appliances. NASs, firewalls, etc.
That doesn’t mean we want it here. Missing the community you are looking for? Create it.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
It’s not like the interests are not aligned.
They aren’t.
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.
Pretty much like all Debian forks. They’re all forked from Debian because of conflicts between developers / different ways of seeing things. :P
I think the point is network appliances but it seems mainly used by hobbyists from what I’ve seen.
If you look at the supported platforms you kind of get an answer here. There’s support for the m68k Macintoshes and other similar ancient devices still.
The main point was always portability, and the ability to run NetBSD on basically ANYTHING.
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And then you have NomadBSD if you need an OS in a usb stick :)
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.
This entire comment is incorrect
Then why are Xi systems and a bunch of other companies moving away from BSD.
They aren’t? XI aren’t at least. Having two products doesn’t mean they’re abandoning one.
I though they were thinking about dropping support for TrueNAS core
Nope
Well fuck.
