I [heart] BSD

Okay, I’m going to warn you right off the bat that this is probably the most over-the-top geeky thing I’ve written so far. Go ahead and skip on over it if that scares you. I promise to get back to my standard whinging about Melbn (or some other related fluff) with the next entry.

About four months ago, I moved my office from a Windows NT4 server to a Samba server named yarra. For mostly political reasons, I chose to run this server on RedHat Linux 9. So I’ve been slogging through Linux and the bizarre places it chooses to put things.

Yesterday afternoon and this morning, I set up derwent, what is to become our new firewall. This time, I chose OpenBSD. Say what you will about Rizzo deRaadt, that’s a damn good operating system. Lean and mean, veryveryvery secure (only one remote hole in the default install in the past 7 years), and, unlike Linux, it makes sense . There aren’t any weird “what the hell do these do” processes running. The config files are where they should be. Programs are where they should be. Security is set up the way it should be. Everything in its right place. I used to run FreeBSD everywhere because it was a good balance between speed, security and logical design, and I hope to run it again here. My laptop runs Darwin MacOS X. Having to use Linux was confusing and painful, like using Windows. Things don’t work the way they ought to. Going back to a BSD-based system after having to cope with Linux and Windows for so long is like sitting back in a favourite armchair with my feet on an ottoman, a perfectly poured pint in my hand and good music in the background. In the sun. With happy people around. And no computers.

Flamebait: Using whatever-BSD is like laying drunk and happy in the sun. Using Linux is like using Windows.

Before you run to check, because I know you’re like that (hah), jurgen.ca is running FreeBSD thank you very much, Retrix.