*** Warning *** Long post alert ***
Ok, let's get the necessary hardware specs and requirements out of the way first. I'm going to be rebuilding my server soon, so it will have a Gigabyte GA-7ZXE motherboard (KT133A chipset) with an 800MHz Duron and 640MB of PC/133 SDR SDRAM. A D-Link DFE-530TX+ (Realtek 8139 chipset NIC) and the basic assortment of hard drive, CD-ROM, and floppy will round out the mix. This is going to be for development, with Apache, PHP, MySQL, SSH, and maybe a few other things. Eventually, once I can get a decent external modem, it will probably be a router, too.
Anyway, I'll admit to being kind of deceptive by using a BSD vs. Linux subject line, when in reality I've pretty much made up my mind to go with BSD at this time (unless for some strange reason I can't get it to run Folding@Home via the Linux emulation, as that is another requirement for me). The only question that remains is which BSD to run. The main point of that subject was to grab the attention of all those folks who might be able to give me some advice on this topic. :Q
[rant] Linux has been my open source OS of choice for some time, but I've never really appreciated how much crap almost all distros (except LFS, but that's not exactly a distro, and it's not really low maintenance, either) install with by default. Even Debian's default install just seems to me to be installing stuff that it shouldn't need to be installing. Yes, I know there are probably ways to unselect the extra bloat, but I don't really feel like bothering with that again. Also, the unstandard folder tree and almost totally incompatible package management systems aren't the greatest. [/rant]
Aside from all that which I've vented above, I just have this desire to try something new, different, exciting, and unusual (well, BSD may not be the last any more). So now that I've covered why I'd rather not do Linux on my "new" server, I'll get on to my BSD questions.
OpenBSD has a reputation of being very secure in the default install. However, that may not be much of an advantage at this time, because the security of whatever is installed in the end will possibly be compromised by my installation of a webserver, database server, et. al. OpenBSD also supposedly is kind of spartan, but that wouldn?t necessarily be a disadvantage for me. It appears to have some very cool technologies, but my intentions of running this on an i386 platform, along with my utter lack of knowledge about how to utilize such things as those spoken of in said link kind of negate that advantage.
And then there is NetBSD. Well, it does seem to have a good reputation for having clean code, which supposedly makes it very stable (that is A Good Thing ?). However, any stability advantage that it might have over OpenBSD would probably not be noticeable to me, since living in rural Indiana means that power outages are not an unknown occurrence, and the chances of my server staying up long enough to hit any limitations of either OS in regards to stability are virtually nil.
At this point, I don?t have much more to say, except that I?m open to suggestions on either. Some little corner of my instinct tells me that this is probably going to turn into a big argument with n0c telling me to use OpenBSD, and BBWF telling me to use NetBSD, but maybe I?ll learn something useful or interesting in the process.
Anyway, I?m posting this under the influence of tiredness, and I need to get some rest, so I?ll check back in the morning and see if there are any new developments. Goodnight.
Ok, let's get the necessary hardware specs and requirements out of the way first. I'm going to be rebuilding my server soon, so it will have a Gigabyte GA-7ZXE motherboard (KT133A chipset) with an 800MHz Duron and 640MB of PC/133 SDR SDRAM. A D-Link DFE-530TX+ (Realtek 8139 chipset NIC) and the basic assortment of hard drive, CD-ROM, and floppy will round out the mix. This is going to be for development, with Apache, PHP, MySQL, SSH, and maybe a few other things. Eventually, once I can get a decent external modem, it will probably be a router, too.
Anyway, I'll admit to being kind of deceptive by using a BSD vs. Linux subject line, when in reality I've pretty much made up my mind to go with BSD at this time (unless for some strange reason I can't get it to run Folding@Home via the Linux emulation, as that is another requirement for me). The only question that remains is which BSD to run. The main point of that subject was to grab the attention of all those folks who might be able to give me some advice on this topic. :Q
[rant] Linux has been my open source OS of choice for some time, but I've never really appreciated how much crap almost all distros (except LFS, but that's not exactly a distro, and it's not really low maintenance, either) install with by default. Even Debian's default install just seems to me to be installing stuff that it shouldn't need to be installing. Yes, I know there are probably ways to unselect the extra bloat, but I don't really feel like bothering with that again. Also, the unstandard folder tree and almost totally incompatible package management systems aren't the greatest. [/rant]
Aside from all that which I've vented above, I just have this desire to try something new, different, exciting, and unusual (well, BSD may not be the last any more). So now that I've covered why I'd rather not do Linux on my "new" server, I'll get on to my BSD questions.
OpenBSD has a reputation of being very secure in the default install. However, that may not be much of an advantage at this time, because the security of whatever is installed in the end will possibly be compromised by my installation of a webserver, database server, et. al. OpenBSD also supposedly is kind of spartan, but that wouldn?t necessarily be a disadvantage for me. It appears to have some very cool technologies, but my intentions of running this on an i386 platform, along with my utter lack of knowledge about how to utilize such things as those spoken of in said link kind of negate that advantage.
And then there is NetBSD. Well, it does seem to have a good reputation for having clean code, which supposedly makes it very stable (that is A Good Thing ?). However, any stability advantage that it might have over OpenBSD would probably not be noticeable to me, since living in rural Indiana means that power outages are not an unknown occurrence, and the chances of my server staying up long enough to hit any limitations of either OS in regards to stability are virtually nil.
At this point, I don?t have much more to say, except that I?m open to suggestions on either. Some little corner of my instinct tells me that this is probably going to turn into a big argument with n0c telling me to use OpenBSD, and BBWF telling me to use NetBSD, but maybe I?ll learn something useful or interesting in the process.
Anyway, I?m posting this under the influence of tiredness, and I need to get some rest, so I?ll check back in the morning and see if there are any new developments. Goodnight.
Facebook
Twitter