I'm asking because i have not touched any BSD for over 2 decades...and I'm getting the itch to try some out...and was wondering if for server-type use cases (like you noted) whether OpenBSD is preferred over FreeBSD or the reverse, and why? Thanks in advance for any feedback you might provide!
NetBSD is small and simple. It's a lot like an old-school UNIX. It makes a decent platform for small services. I run bind and dhcpd on a NetBSD machine. The source code is very pleasant to read. It uses the pkgsrc software repository. It's my preferred platform for writing POSIX code.
OpenBSD still carries much of the general feel of NetBSD and can fill a similar niche on a network, but the security focus stands out in their documentation, subprojects (OpenSSH, LibreSSL, OpenNTPD, etc.), APIs (see pledge(8)), and policies. It makes for a great firewall. I'd say it also requires the most know-how.
All of them have excellent documentation (especially compared to Linux distros) and the base system is developed alongside the kernel, giving you a very consistent experience compared to Linux distros where everything is developed in isolation. If you write C, it's worth keeping a BSD system around just for the manpages and to make sure you're not letting Linuxisms creep into your codebase.
Just to clarify. It's not emulation in the sense it's slower or something. They call it compatibility layer, which is better, but also nobody knows what it means.
This is simplifying a bit, but it's essentially "Linux is just a kernel" so the interface is just Linux syscalls, so the FreeBSD kernel when executing a Linux binary simply answers like Linux (so it has those system calls). How this is used in practice is that on your file system you have Ubuntu/RedHat/... "installed" (so the files and the file hierarchy are lying there) and you either directly or in a FreeBSD jail execute things in there or the binary you have.
I don't know how well it works in the present but in the past that means you could simply download the Unreal Tournament 2004 multiplayer demo or Enemy Territory or other games and just play them as if you were running Linux, 3D acceleration and all, without VM without real emulating, just the kernel providing what a Linux kernel would provide.
Also "heavy" is very very relative and subjective. You can totally have a tiny FreeBSD and a huge OpenBSD and one could argue OpenBSD is "heavy" because it comes with three window managers, an HTTP server, a full blown SMTPD server, ACME client and a ton of stuff that eg a server install of Debian or Ubuntu doesn't come with. But also if you run eg. ZFS things are heavy of course. FreeBSD has however had a time when it tried to strip a lot of stuff from the default install and make stuff either optional or make things available through ports/packages only.
And also there are surprises to be had with such overviews: Eg. your Lenovo laptop likely will give you a more "out of the box" experience on OpenBSD compared to FreeBSD with things like simple wifi setup, sound often doing the right thing (work, come out the right place, etc.) compared to FreeBSD. Also with stuff like HTTPD with ACME being available in a simple way after install I'd say OpenBSD is easier than FreeBSD.
FreeBSD to me feels a bit more like "it can be everything you want it to be". Ports and packages can be complicated if you just start out, compared to OpenBSDs "just use packages" stance. On OpenBSD things in my experience are more of a "it works or doesn't" and when it works often out of the box and/or with docs, while on FreeBSD it's more like it throws some tools into your direction you can build stuff (poudriere, jails, a build system with many options). So it's really cool if you want flexibility but a bit more like you have to figure out if it's possible and how. But that might simply be because of the use cases I used it for.
That said all of them are real general purpose systems, unlike eg. some Linux distributions. So it's not like "OpenBSD is for routers" even though it often seems like it. There are time when the GPU support is better on OpenBSD than FreeBSD's. But also FreeBSD has official NVIDIA drivers, so it's all not that clear cut.
I will defend my "heaviness" argument, though. Sure, you can run OpenBSD on large hardware, but it's not going to be able to take advantage of it like FreeBSD can. Which makes sense if you think about it - FreeBSD optimizes for heavy workloads. Conversely, if you set up minimal installs, OpenBSD will be smaller. Again, that makes sense, since OpenBSD focuses on security over features (plus the only truly secure code is the code that doesn't exist). There's a lot of overlap in the middle, of course.
I wouldn't use OpenBSD for a NAS, and I wouldn't use FreeBSD for a diskless firewall. Not because they can't do those things - they just each have their strengths and weaknesses.
OpenBSD on the other hand is perfectly happy to leave oodles of performance on the table for security. They were the first OS to completely drop Hyperthreading support for example, years before spectre/meltdown.
So with these things in mind, FreeBSD is a lot more performant.
And, I mentioned NetBSD for embedded stuff...but really, i *think* its that NetBsd is simply installed on tons of different hardware....so not only embedded....i kinda remembered that about NetBSD.
But, its the other BSDs - in particular FreeBSD vs OpenBSD - that i always forget the differences...but got it now. Thanks!
openbsd = security
netbsd = portability
freebsd: performance, features, drivers, software compat - closest to linux in utility & usability though unlike linux in execution
openbsd: safety for exposed services
netbsd: portable across many cpu & hardware platforms - big-endian powerpc sun, hitachi sh3 jornada, etc, easiest to port to a new arch
But it's not a matter of surface area that makes openbsd solid, it's the priorities while writing that affects how every little thing has been written over time.
You can write 10 different versions of a function that all work and are all nominally perfectly free of security gaps.
Yet they will all still be 10 different levels of robust. Some versions will fail as soon as some assumption is violated, and some make fewer assumptions and remain safe even when varying amounts and forms of "that can't happen" happens.
It's not just cosmic ray bit flips either, or a hacker trying to do power glitch attacks or rowhammer etc, stuff that makes the hardware violate it's promises. But stuff like a different developer updating something 15 years later who is not the original and does not realize every single facet of how it works and just how the current implimentation covers all possible edge cases, and so doesn't realize how their change opened up an edge case that was covered before. With fragile code, the new code simply has the new security gap until someone discovers it the hard way. With robust code, it's more likely to still be safe. The edge case maybe makes it fail to function, but not in a way that anyone can use productively.
Not that freebsd is exactly swiss cheese. These are all relative. I would and do rely on freebsd any day.
The way that the BSDs differentiate cannot be reduced in this way, not least because there is a lot of what Justin C. Sherrill (of the DragonFly Digest) calls 'cross-pollination' amongst the BSDs.
A case in point:
Superficially, and erroneously, one might observe that OpenBSD, NetBSD, and FreeBSD have nvi, and only DragonFlyBSD has nvi2. In fact there was a three-way fork of actual Bostic nvi, all of them making revisions and leaving the original behind, and then things got really complex with nvi2 taking from OpenBSD's nvi, and FreeBSD's nvi taking from nvi2; not even getting into the existence of nvi-m17n along the way and how there are nvis in base and nvis in ports. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48132452) One cannot divide the BSDs up into those that have nvi2 versus those that have nvi.
The split is complex in other areas, too.
You know even though I said the execution is unlike linux, in fact, there are many many details that are just like linux! What a freaking ignorant liar eh? There's like 100 things like that you could say. No wait, no way it's exactly 100. There's obviously some other number like 105 or 612 things like that. So superficial and wrong!
NetBSD is, however, the gold standard for an OS that runs on just about anything. Their (maybe unofficial) slogan has been “Of course it runs NetBSD!”. Their logo has a flag in it because they “plant their flag” on so many platforms.
Very salient comment there! And, while not the only reason for me, but what you noted is sort of one reason that's triggering the itch in me to go back to playing with the BSDs. Don't get me wrong, I still do love fiddling around with some areas of linux once in a while....but then, there are other uses/areas where i just want a server to do its thing, and for my maintenance to be a little less (at least less than some linux distros require). So maybe i'm not the only one? :-)
As a teen I had infinite time to compile Linux and debug stuff. Now I just want to spend time with family/outdoors and not be stuck in a windowless room negotiating with a black box. ;-P
And, wow, do i miss the old X-window workstations...well, i should clarify that i LOVED those (I think they were Sparc?) workstations that ran Solaris or SunOS back in the day! Man, that takes me back some years...but i really loved those machines! :-)
No 32-bit sparc anymore (only UltraSPARC, aka sparc64).
No SunOS compatibility (despite Theo de Raadt inventing it for NetBSD, before being copied by other BSDs).
https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=161435521906992&w=2
> Technically there's a niche flavour of 68k that still is supported because of a very dedicated man in Japan
luna88k, while related, is not 68k.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btwiiZw3B2s
Kenji Aoyama truly is aligned with the best of the hacker spirit. As for getting your hands on a luna88k, I have no clue. The only thing I managed to find was a broken one that sold for ~USD 750 at an online auction.
http://miod.online.fr/software/openbsd/stories/m88k.html
One interesting bit of trivial is Luna-88k workstations were heavily used to implement CMU Mach (which would eventually be used by Apple).
>luna88k, while related, is not 68k
I misremembered it as being similar to the relationship between the 6502 and the 65C816
Another part of my nostalgia with those old workstations (besides the core OS) was the desktop environment, i think CDE or motif or something like that. Something about the look and feel of that DE i always thought was cool!
We've run into instability issues with the newer Linux kernels (starting with 6.x, I think) and have had to stop upgrading.
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2026-03/msg00100...
In the end Hyperbola BSD will be more free than OpenBSD and the former GNU maintainers themselves...
Now, is LLM code in the hurd a good thing? No, absolutely not. Ignoring the licensing limbo of LLM output that still isn't settled , LLMs make pretty bad code often enough that I wouldn't trust it to work on something as niche and relatively undocumented as the hurd.