Nice read. It’s always enjoyable setting up a new machine, regardless of the OS or platform you’re using.
I’ve never used BSD or any of its derivatives - is the main difference between OpenBSD and FreeBSD just the focus on security?
I’ve never used BSD or any of its derivatives - is the main difference between OpenBSD and FreeBSD just the focus on security?
https://www.openbsd.org/innovations.html
If it helps to put things into perspective, NetBSD is closest relative to OpenBSD, the latter having forked over 23 years ago. The last time FreeBSD and OpenBSD shared the same tree was at Berkeley. In fact, NetBSD, FreeBSD and OpenBSD independently merged the final release from Berkeley, 4.4BSD-Lite2 in 1995.
Linux users generally don't understand what it means for each major BSD being fundamentally distinct operating systems, including separately developed kernels, drivers, userland utilities, with their own developer/user communities.
A lot of stuff does get ported between them though, and many people use multiple of them.
Personally, I find OpenBSD much nicer and simpler. The performance isn't impressive though.
OpenBSD does almost require you do the every 6 month upgrade, but it really isn't that much of a bother. The syspatch utility has made patches a lot easier. Packages are often delayed, but if it has what you need its pretty simple.
I typically upgrade a couple of months after a new release comes out. That way there's been time for any post-release issues to be shaken out and patched. (There rarely are any, but I'm usually not waiting on any new features, and prefer to be a little conservative).
The project supports the current release, and the prior release, so you're not at risk of missing any critical updates with that strategy.
FreeBSD, I feel it mostly works like Linux if you can absorb some minor differences.
I wish OpenBSD drop supporting desktop and focus on stuff that matters that are server based usage to fix all the little edge cases.