Re: How would I get debian unstable?
On Thu, Jun 05, 2008 at 10:44:01AM -0400, hendrik@topoi.pooq.com wrote:
> I believe Berkeley BSD is free. I'm told Apple chose it over Linux as
> a basis for OS/X because it didn't have all the restrictions of the
> GPL that required it to remain free, though. I'm also told it is
> developed less aggressively, does not support all the latest hardware,
> and is more stable than Linux. Not that anyone can really call Linux
> unstable.
The BSD license allows distribution of binaries only for commercial use.
Apparently if you install something called unix services for Windows and
run strings on all the Windows binaries, you'll find a whole slew of BSD
license copyright statements. This is a good thing since if TCP/IP
wasn't licensed under BSD, there would be no internet; there'd be some
microsoft network; there'd be an IBM net, an HP net, until someone did
it under the BSD. Luckily, DARPA in effect hired USC-Berkley to write a
network stack that could be used by different computers.
I think the FreeBSD and OpenBSD people would argue with the "developed
less aggressively" stance. OpenBSD folks do their development on new
laptops. They release every 6 months but their -current (our Unstable)
is never supposed to break and is perfectly fine in production; the only
downside to -current is that there are no pre-built binary packages (use
still use pkg_add but it ends up compiling the port instead of
installing the package). NetBSD does seem to be developed at a slower
pace. The big difference between FreeBSD and OpenBSD are that OpenBSD
runs on more hardware and will not put binary-blobs or non-BSD code in
the kernel whereas FreeBSD will do both. Hense, some drivers in FreeBSD
are written by the hardware vendors (or others after non-disclosure
agreements are signed) whereas OpenBSD (which often supports the same
hardware as well or better) writes its own drivers via
reverse-engineering the hardware if all else fails.
As for stability: look at the debian packages it would take to make
OpenBSD base install. At least a kernel, apache, shells, Xorg, standard
tools, compilers, perl, lynx, ssh, ftp server, shorewall, various
archivers, etc. Plus all their dependancies. Now look at the list of
security updates to Debian Etch (yet alone Testing or Unstable) in the
past six months. Now compare the number of security updates to OpenBSD
in the same time-frame.
Note that the reason that OpenBSD can claim only two security holes in
the default install in the past 10 years is that there are no services
active in a default install (you have to add commands to the startup
script to enable them).
People reoutinely built appliances like routers using OpenBSD and e.g. a
Soekris box and put it on the shelf. They may only update it when a
security bug happens (rarely). Since there are simple HOWTOs for making
OpenBSD on a CF card, updating the appliance consists of swapping the CF
card.
I would call a box with a kernel security hole at least potentially
unstable. Its been 10 years since OpenBSD had one, its been what, 2
weeks, since Etch last had one? On this basis alone, I'd call OpenBSD
more stable.
> By the way, there may well be other systems that should be mentioned,
> and I'd appreciate corrections if anything I've said is wrong.
I hope my corrections and amplifications are generally correct.
Doug.
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