Which do you prefer for running your web and other types of servers and why? What have your experiences been?

Thanks for sharing your opinions and experiences with these OSs.

Especially any downsides to either or things to watch out for besides that OpenBSD is pretty much a one processor OS.


Thank you very much!

Louis

I made that decision for myself about six months ago. I decided to use FreeBSD for the dedicated server that I colo'd at Tera-Byte. I use OpenBSD for my home firewall, so I thought a lot about using the same OS in both places.

But in the end, I stayed with OpenBSd for the firewall and used FreeBSD for my colo server. The main reason for FreeBSD was the larger ports collection and better third-party support, both software- and knowledge-wise.

So my preference for using the two is OpenBSD where security is paramount, FreeBSD where wider acceptance is needed.

Both are, IMHO, fine operating systems.

Thanks for your comment, Mike.

Hey everyone -- please share your thoughts and experiences too!


Thanks,

Louis

FreeBSD :) Someone gave me OpenBSD to make it a beta development server. Very limited support for software. Most of the popular software are not ported yet. :(

So switched it to FreeBSD :cool:

Hi,

So far, with 13 votes in, the voting is 100 % in favor of FreeBSD.

Could some of you, in addition to masood above, please share the reasons why? (Thanks again, masood!) There must be valid technical or operational issues affecting the choice.

I just want to learn a *BSD well...and want to best choose what to focus my learning time on with an eye to deploying well secured servers in a co-lo facility. I'm a senior mainframe (13 years) programmer/analyst -- but new to *nix and system administration stuff. I'm commited to learning sysadmin stuff really well with an eye to security; I realize it may take me quite a while to learn all I need to learn. That's why I want to make the right choice on what *nix OS to focus on. I really appreciate any comments or advice you may have.

I'm especially interested in any comments about the security of a properly locked down FreeBSD box compared to an OpenBSD box. While OpenBSD is considered by many to have greater security, I wonder in what ways a FreeBSD box would be less secure if properly locked down and administered.

I know there is the Bastile script for Linux boxes; don't know if there is something similar for FreeBSD or not. I know much more than a script is involved, of course; just wondering if there are any "best practices" type scripts or "world class" security info for FreeBSD.

Thank you for voting and sharing honestly!

Louis

Linux.

I posted why here:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33090

FreeBSD is an all around operating system; Before version 2.9 OpenBSD was much slower [no softupdates -everything had to be written to the disk] but now it is quite fast.

But OpenBSD is a single-processor OS [so I have read] and for power hosting FreeBSD may be the OS of choice.

As said it has wider range of ports collection and also much wider documentation and support products.

But that said, if you are running a mail server or DNS server, it may make a lot of sense to go the OpenBSD way

But security is only as good as the sys admin. Even Win2K hardened can be secure. The default installation of OpenBSD is secure because it doesn't leave many things open the way Windows does

You can take a look at this for tips on securing FreeBSD

http://draenor.org/securebsd/secure.txt

Cheers
Balaji

Hi Balaji,

Thank you very much for the link! That's the kind of info and links I'm looking for.

Take care,

Louis

P.S. Anyone else have similar links, please share!

Hi Mark,

I recall your post in that thread. Thank you for sharing your experiences and point of view. I did wonder -- what situation/programs/apps was FreeBSD not a viable platform for?

I'm not against Linux. I have it, along with other OSs installed on my home machine.

However, I do feel, at this point, that the BSDs would make more appropriate server platforms than Linux *for me* -- not necessarily for anyone else; after all everyone's situation is different.

I hope no one takes this thread or any of my comments as a slam on Linux; none is intented.


The question I have is which BSD -- Open, Free or Net? I'm wanting to learn when to use which tool for which job. I'm not a zealot for or against any OS.


I figure many here have real life production experiences with the various BSDs -- and thus am asking for folks to please kindly share their experiences and points of view on one BSD compared to another.

Thanks again,

Louis

a) I like OpenBSD because of the security. I have it on my home machine as a firewall.


b) I also like FreeBSD because of the wide support and ports collection.


I think FreeBSD once properly locked down would be almost as good as OpenBSD. Most software that is written almost always have a port to FreeBSD. In the hosting environment where you have to be flexible it would be best to start off with FreeBSD than to waste countless hours/days re-compiling something to run on OpenBSD.

Of course these are just my thoughts.

Hi,

Would anyone using OpenBSD as their webserver platform for hosting care to comment? Anything from why you like or picked it to how it fares compared to other OSs you tried for hosting.

I'm currently leaning to FreeBSD; but want to be sure I'm not passing up something as good or better.

Thanks! I very much appreciate your sharing your thoughts and experiences.

Take care,


Louis

Originally posted by stlouislouis
Hi,

Would anyone using OpenBSD as their webserver platform for hosting care to comment? Anything from why you like or picked it to how it fares compared to other OSs you tried for hosting.

I'm currently leaning to FreeBSD; but want to be sure I'm not passing up something as good or better.

Thanks! I very much appreciate your sharing your thoughts and experiences.

Take care,


Louis

I use OpenBSD for personal webhosting. I can't really comment fairly on the performance compared to other OS's. I've never really stressed any servers I've run. In my opinion, as much as I like OpenBSD, I doubt it would outperform FreeBSD. FreeBSD is designed for the i386 platform. For me, I'm interested in security so OpenBSD is the best choice. It does what I need it to do and it's the OS I'm most comfortable with.

Originally posted by stlouislouis
...

Thanks! I very much appreciate your sharing your thoughts and experiences.
...



In the time you've spent on this thread, you could have installed OpenBSD, runs some tests; then installed FreeBSD and run some tests; then posted your results for all to read. :D

Hi Mike,

I have to respectfully disagree if you mean the results from a quick test would be a conclusive answer of which one to choose for a web server.

The reason I'm asking here is because I very much value the insights and experiences folks with a lot of production experience actually running OpenBSD or FreeBSD in 24x7 production environments could share.

What shows up -- or doesn't -- in a short term test on one's desktop machine might not correlate to what would or would not show up in a 24x7 data center environment handling the heavy loads that a data center's network could dish out to the machine over time -- nor the various cracker attempts and other assorted "real world" conditions that realistically only occur over a long period of time in a production environment just for starters.

I'm interested in how these two OSs compare to each other over time in a 24x7 production environemt as web, mail, DNS or database servers.

Again, those with such info for either OpenBSD or FreeBSD, please share.

Thank you all very much!

Louis