installing bsd with speech

[Tim Chase]

Depending on the flavor of BSD, there are some strong selling points
that you don't get under a Linux.

On FreeBSD, two of the biggest are Jails and native ZFS.  While Linux
has recently been adding containers, Jails have provided similar
functionality since FreeBSD 4.0 (released in 2000) so they've had a
long time to mature.  ZFS is also amazing as a file-system.  If
you've got the RAM to handle it, you get an unprecedented level of
file safety and performance.  So it makes for a great server where
each of your services runs in their own jail, backed by ZFS
protecting your data.

On OpenBSD, you get PF, the best firewall I've used (there's an
older version of PF available on FreeBSD, too, but it forked and
hasn't been kept up to date). It also has a lot of extra
security/hardening features that eventually make it into other
operating systems. Things like W^X (write-or-execute memory), the
"pledge" system call that prevents programs from doing things they
shouldn't.  There are also a lot of hardened servers available
(httpd for web and opensmtp for mail come to mind) and other fancy
networking things like CARP.

I've found the OpenBSD community can be a little brusque, while the
FreeBSD community is a bit friendlier.

Most things will feel pretty similar.  While my daily driver is
Debian on amd64, I've got FreeBSD on several machines including a VPS
out in the cloud, a laptop, and an SD card that boots on my Raspberry
Pi.  I have OpenBSD on an old PowerPC Mac iBook and a netbook, as
well as a free OpenBSD shell account on devio.us which is nice for
testing.

I've also tinkered with NetBSD and Minix, but those were more for fun
and experimentation.  I didn't end up keeping either install around.

-tim




On March 22, 2017, Jeffery Mewtamer wrote:
> I've never used BSD, but I find myself wondering if there's benefit
> in such a round about method or if this is a case of "doing it
> because it can be done". Are there any applications that would run
> on such a virtual BSD while being accessible to screen readers on
> the host Linux that either lack a Linux version or would run better
> under the virtual BSD than if you ran them natively on the host
> Linux?
> 
> -- 
> Sincerely,
> 
> Jeffery Wright
> President Emeritus, Nu Nu Chapter, Phi Theta Kappa.
> Former Secretary, Student Government Association, College of the
> Albemarle.
> 
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