On Tue, Aug 01, 2006 at 08:37:04PM +0100, Ian bell wrote:
Brett Parker wrote:
On Tue, Aug 01, 2006 at 07:24:54PM +0100, Ian bell wrote:
Security.
Now, there's an interesting angle, what in particular are you talking about security wise? If it's software, then, err, well, dude... I don't know if you'd noticed, but debian has a rather nice security repository for stable and now testing, there are also DSAs which also generally cover unstable - this is the same source as used in the *BSD distributions on a whole. So I can only assume that you've fell for the marketing that OpenBSD has for its *base* system, which claims to be secure - you know how the default install is so secure? (1) nothing is enabled and (2) nothing is damned well installed.
Er, no I am using NetBSD.
Ah the distribution that concentrates on *portable* (not neccessarily secure) code... that'll run on anything from a toaster to the washing machine. I see.
So, if it's purely the kernel you're talking about, then one of the debian BSD projects may be right up your alley... personally, I quite like having a kernel that can actually cope with my hardware.
Indeed; NetBSD for example has had a native Ralink RT 2500 chip set driver for a long time yet most Linux distros still struggle with ndiswrapper.
Ah ha! *Finally* - the one piece of hardware that I know actually does have better hardware support in *BSD than in linux (that's the card they use in the newer soekris boxes too, hence I've actually got one working in OpenBSD...). Weirdly however, there is support and documentation on making them work in linux available from their *official* website... weirder still, the driver is GPL'd... So I expect it to make it in to a linux kernel some time RSN.
Better yet - there's the http://rt2400.sourceforge.net/ link on their website (http://www.ralinktech.com/supp-1.htm) which is a step in the right direction... and debian has a bunch of source packages that can be compiled against the kernel headers - so, err... yeah - maybe some people just need better sysadmins?
"Cheers",