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I’ve been running OpenBSD as my daily driver for the past few months and I like it. Turning my laptop into a little fortress appealed to the same part of me th

I’ve been running OpenBSD as my daily driver for the past few months and I like it. Turning my laptop into a little fortress appealed to the same part of me that loved the Tesla Cybertruck for being built like a tank. How does NetBSD compare with OpenBSD? What would be the strongest reason for me to switch over?

bch 6y ago
If you like Open, I wouldn’t switch; Keep enjoying it. Seems to me Net and Open are remarkably similar- relatively simple implementations with an eye to traditional Unix and standards. OpenBSD is more conservative, in the name of security, at the cost of “neat things”. Seems to me they eschewed MP kernels for ages on that basis, and won’t ever have (eg) PAM for authentication. Make of it what you will. In the meantime, enjoy OpenBSD!
- non-entity 6y ago
  > Seems to me Net and Open are remarkably similar- relatively simple implementations with an eye to traditional Unix and standards. Well OpenBSD was originally forked from NetBSD and iirc, NetBSD was the first of the "modern" BSD's forked from 386BSD.
  - bch 6y ago
    You’re right on both counts. But to throw a wrinkle in this, DragonFlyBSD was forked from FreeBSD 4 more recently than Open from Net, and is quite a remarkably different beast; it doesn’t necessarily follow they need to be remarkably similar.
LeoPanthera 6y ago
Well. NetBSD supports bluetooth. (!) But in general, the reasons to run one or the other don't overlap all that much. People already happy running OpenBSD are unlikely to want to switch.
Grimm665 6y ago
NetBSD was my favorite OS to run on a Raspberry Pi. Raspbian (at least back in the RPi 2 days) felt like a stripped down Debian squeezed into something that can run on the Pi, while NetBSD seemed to feel right at home. Not very scientific of a response, but meh, give it a try if you've got a Pi lying around!

bch 6y ago

If you like Open, I wouldn’t switch; Keep enjoying it. Seems to me Net and Open are remarkably similar- relatively simple implementations with an eye to traditional Unix and standards. OpenBSD is more conservative, in the name of security, at the cost of “neat things”. Seems to me they eschewed MP kernels for ages on that basis, and won’t ever have (eg) PAM for authentication. Make of it what you will. In the meantime, enjoy OpenBSD!

non-entity 6y ago
> Seems to me Net and Open are remarkably similar- relatively simple implementations with an eye to traditional Unix and standards. Well OpenBSD was originally forked from NetBSD and iirc, NetBSD was the first of the "modern" BSD's forked from 386BSD.
- bch 6y ago
  You’re right on both counts. But to throw a wrinkle in this, DragonFlyBSD was forked from FreeBSD 4 more recently than Open from Net, and is quite a remarkably different beast; it doesn’t necessarily follow they need to be remarkably similar.

LeoPanthera 6y ago

Well. NetBSD supports bluetooth. (!) But in general, the reasons to run one or the other don't overlap all that much. People already happy running OpenBSD are unlikely to want to switch.

Grimm665 6y ago

NetBSD was my favorite OS to run on a Raspberry Pi. Raspbian (at least back in the RPi 2 days) felt like a stripped down Debian squeezed into something that can run on the Pi, while NetBSD seemed to feel right at home. Not very scientific of a response, but meh, give it a try if you've got a Pi lying around!