MESSAGE
| DATE | 2004-03-09 |
| FROM | From: "Inker, Evan"
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] The Berkeley Software Distribution operating systems have much to
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Open Source OS
The Berkeley Software Distribution operating systems have much to offer
by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
Sometimes, we get a little full of ourselves in the Linux community. We
portray ourselves as the elder statesmen, the users of the oldest open
source operating system around. Except, of course, we're not. The oldest
open source operating systems are the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD)
operating systems, including FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, the commercial
BSD/OS, and Apple's BSD-based MacOS X.
What's so great about BSD? Plenty. The old daemon might even teach the
penguin a thing or two. Read on, neophytes.
A Brief History of All Things Berkeley
Back in the 1970s, BSD was developed at the University of California at
Berkeley. At the time, it was the cutting edge of Unix operating systems.
Indeed, it's due to the BSDs that Unixes widely support TCP/IP. This network
protocol would first lead to the creation of the Internet, and today, to
almost all local and wide area networking.
In the early 1990s, though, BSD had run into a situation that we in the
Linux world know well. Then, a major company, AT&T, via its Unix Systems
Laboratories (USL) subsidiary, claimed ownership of most of the BSD source
code. Specifically, the USL was going after Berkeley Software Design,
Incorporated (BSDI, now owned by Wind River), makers of what's now called
BSD/OS. Then, as now, the Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) flew fast and
furious. The result of that case was that first BSDI beat the initial USL
injunctions. Afterwards, Novell bought USL, and rather than continue to
pursue the case, then Novell CEO Ray Noorda famously declared that he'd
rather compete in the marketplace than in court.
(Ironically, Noorda would help fund the creation of Caldera Systems, which
in time, would once more end up with the Unix source code, and change its
name to SCO. While SCO has made threatening noises at BSD, they've devoted
most of their time to making Linux users unhappy. Alas, there's no way that
that SCO CEO Darl McBride will compete in the marketplace instead of the
courthouse.)
Afterwards, the BSDs split, going in several different directions. You can
spend hours arguing over exactly why this happened, but the "Reader's
Digest" version is that the creators of BSD all had different ideas on the
next, best direction for the operating system. So, today, we have five
mainstream BSD variants.
The BSDs share superior security, scalability, and networking. From a
distance, except for MacOS X, the variants look very much alike. But close
up, each one has its own strengths.
Unfortunately, many people, even those who are operating system savvy, don't
know the BSDs. Obscurity doesn't mean a lack of success, though. BSD has
become a quiet success. MacOS X is the ultimate Unix-style desktop, and the
BSDs are found pushing network requests at some of the biggest Web sites
around. Indeed, Yahoo, one of the biggest of the big, runs on FreeBSD.
Apple MacOS X
For some reason, many Unix/Linux/BSD users seem slightly ashamed of MacOS X.
Perhaps it's because Apple built a great desktop Unix by going their own
way. You'll find none of the KDE/Gnome debates that eat up bandwidth in
Linux discussion lists in Apple circles. Why should there be? The very best
Linux interfaces pale besides the glory that is Aqua, the MacOS X user
interface.
MacOS X, of course, is the leading Unix desktop operating system of all
time. It may not look like a Unix variant to you, but underneath its glossy
exterior lays an operating system based on the 4.4BSD-Lite2 Open Source
distribution and the Open Software Foundation Mach 3.
MacOS X, while based on open source, isn't open source itself. Darwin, its
core operating system, is open source. You can download one version of it
from the Gnu-Darwin home page at http://gnu-darwin.sourceforge.net. However,
for MacOS X proper, there are many layers of proprietary software such as
Cocoa, Quartz 2D, QuickTime, and OpenGL implementations for graphics, so you
simply cannot download Gnu-Darwin and start running MacOS X on an x86
system.
BSD/OS
Wind River's BSD/OS 5.0 Internet Server Edition
(http://www.windriver.com/products/bsd_os/index.html) is a BSD open source
operating system that's meant mostly, as the name says, for Internet
services. As such, it includes built-in IPV6 support and hardened security.
It also includes support for Linux applications.
The technical strong point of BSD/OS is its Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP)
capability. The other BSDs do far less well with multiple processors. It is,
however, confined to the x86 CPU family.
BSD/OS 5's real advantage is that it's the only server-oriented BSD
distribution that comes with commercial support. Support is available for
the others, but you'll have to hunt around for it. Thus, if you're in a
company that won't even consider an operating system unless it has corporate
support behind it, BSD/OS is the BSD variant for you.
FreeBSD
FreeBSD 5.1 (http://www.freebsd.org) is the most well known of the BSDs, and
there's a reason for that: it's one of the operating systems of choice for
web site administrators across the world. Besides Yahoo, major web hosters
like NTT/Verio, InfoSpace, and DataSync rely on FreeBSD. Using FreeBSD, even
more so then in Linux, a single administrator can run tens of thousands of
sites.
Another FreeBSD plus for the "net set" is its extremely fast TCP/IP stack.
FreeBSD delivers TCP/IP-borne network services faster than any other
operating system on the same hardware.
Besides all the other usual BSD/Linux goodies, such as your choice of the
KDE or Gnome interfaces, FreeBSD comes with an interesting concept called
jails. A jail is a virtual machine that runs insecure Unix services. So, for
example, you can run Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND), OpenSSL, or
sendmail in individual, private jails. Then, if things go wrong with any one
of those servers, a cracker's ability to use them to attack the rest of the
system is seriously limited. Jails are a novel concept that's remindful of
trusted computing (TC) initiatives, but it doesn't come with the
extraordinary hardware and software costs of most TC schemes.
FreeBSD also has the most public support of the BSDs. One excellent source
of FreeBSD books and information is the FreeBSD Mall
(http://www.freebsdmall.com/cgi-bin/fm), formerly known as the Walnut Creek
CD-ROM.
NetBSD
NetBSD's 1.6.1 (http://www.netbsd.org) claim to fame is that it runs on
anything. No, seriously, almost anything. Amigas? No problem. NetBSD ran on
Playstation IIs long before Linux got there. AMD Opteron? Yeah. NetBSD was
ported there back in 2001 when the chip was barely alpha. If you know the
operating system business, you can probably guess where this is going. Yes,
NetBSD is the BSD of choice for embedded systems.
While you can run NetBSD as a desktop operating system -- indeed, there was
a commercial NetBSD desktop offered for a brief time -- or as a server, the
real name of the NetBSD game is that you an use it on almost any platform to
write to almost any other platform.
NetBSD, as you might guess, is also very easy to port to other
architectures. NetBSD designers manage this trick because of its Modular
Portability Layer (MPL). The MPL serves as a hardware abstraction layer
(HAL) that completely isolates drivers from the underlying hardware
platform. Programmers can write to the MPL instead of the hardware for much
faster operating system ports. NetBSD developers claim that NetBSD can be
ported in a quarter of the time of other operating systems.
Also, like OpenBSD, NetBSD's developers have focused in security, but not to
the same extent. Portability is their Holy Grail, and then security.
NetBSD isn't the easiest BSD to install. While an old Unix hand will have no
trouble with it, if you think Red Hat 9 requires attention to install
properly, this isn't the operating system for you.
There is, however, a commercialized version of NetBSD from Wasabi Systems
(http://www.wasabisystems.com) that's easier to manage. The Wasabi version
is meant -- no surprise -- for embedded system developers. With it, you can
install NetBSD and an application on systems with as little as a 400K memory
footprint.
OpenBSD
If security is first and foremost in your mind, OpenBSD 3.3
(http://www.openbsd.org) is the operating system for you.
Unlike other operating systems that try to create security by constantly
adding patch band-aids, OpenBSD was built from the start to be secure. How?
By constantly auditing the source code for potential security problems.
For example, buffer overflows, the proximate cause of most Windows problems,
are constantly audited for in OpenBSD. As another example, take OpenBSD's
basic install: most operating system default installs add
everything-and-the-kitchen-sink. In stark contrast, OpenBSD takes a "secure
by default" approach: all non-essential services are disabled. Other
operating systems, such as Windows Server 2003, finally took up this basic
security step, but OpenBSD led the way.
OpenBSD is also the only operating system that incorporates encryption at
every step possible in the operating system. It also makes use of many
encryption chips and devices to improve overall system security.
On the other hand, OpenBSD probably has the least support of the BSDs. That
may be in part because it's hard enough to build an operating system; it's
harder still to keep constantly re-enforcing security at every possible
level. Nevertheless, if you want security in your operating system, OpenBSD
is your best choice, no ifs, ands, or buts.
Licenses and Other Issues
Developers' main reason for considering BSD is the license. Unlike the GPL,
which forbids you to make changes to the source code unless you release it
to the community, you can customize BSD source code, keep it to yourself,
and just sell the binaries. Thus, for developers who like the traditional
software sales business model, BSD, not GPL, is the open source license of
choice.
Users who've never felt quite at home with the GPL also tend to feel more
comfortable with BSD. They feel that there's less chance of them going
astray with BSD if they make minor changes to the source code for in-house
only use.
With all this going for BSD, why haven't you heard more about it?
There are several reasons. For starters, Linux has always had a strong,
centralized group of developers with Linus at the helm. In contrast, the
BSDs have all gone in separate directions, and both individually and
collectively haven't attracted a tenth as much attention from either
developers or the public. BSD fans hate this, but it's simply the truth.
There are dozens of Linux print and online publications and barely any for
BSD. After all, you're reading Linux Magazine and not BSD Magazine.
As time's gone by, the Linux advantage has snowballed. Linux, because it has
far more developers, simply beats out the BSDs when it comes to native
device and independent software vendor (ISV) support. In short, you know
that Linux will almost certainly run on your machine, and that you have a
wide assortment of programs to choose from. With BSD, you must be much more
aware of hardware compatibility, and have far fewer programs to choose from.
This is especially true of desktop applications.
Best on Servers
On the other hand, on the server side, you have all of the typical office
and ISP programs at your beck and call. Like Linux itself, except for MacOS
X, the BSDs work best as servers rather than desktops.
Technically, the BSD authors argue that their operating system is superior.
And, while arguing that point is largely a waste of time, there can be no
question that BSD has some distinct advantages. When it comes to security,
the open source BSDs, especially OpenBSD, are the best in the business. When
it comes to the desktop, MacOS X is the créme de le créme.
For other purposes, though, Linux remains the open source operating system
that most people still choose first.
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