"With all of the BSD variants available for download, it's easy to incorrectly assume all of them are pure, incompatible forks from each other. Actually, there are more shades of BSD out in the world than just separate forks. One in particular made the news a couple of weeks ago when it was commercially acquired. The BSD in question is PC-BSD. The company that bought it is iXsystems, a systems deployment and integrator firm out of San Jose that has pretty strong experience implementing *BSD, Unix and Linux systems for its customer base. So, why did the company up and buy PC-BSD?"
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Member since:2006-08-01
True statement. I have also installed OpenBSD on many systems over the last few years and it has always worked. Last night I decided I would try out PC-BSD again and downloaded 1.2 and 1.3. I couldn't even get either to boot on two different boxes or Qemu. Not sure whats going on with the project but something is broken. Last time I tried it was 1.1 and it worked ok, not great, but it at least booted. Again, I know I'm beating a dead horse, but OpenBSD does have more hardware support than the other BSD's and more integrated security. And I'm not just talking about CPU support, yes I know what everyone is going to say "But NetBSD will run on a toaster", yes it will, but there isnt a whole lot going on in a toaster. If said toaster had a Wifi card or ACPI you'd be screwed.
Member since:
2005-08-18
"So don't give me the cookie-cutter argument, because it won't wash."
Funny then how I have been installing OpenBSD systems for a living for 6+ years on all kinds of brand and whitebox systems yet I have never had any major piece of hardware not be supported. Sure, there have been devices that wasn't initially supported because they where new or really oddball but this has always been fixed in newer versions. You know, just like how Linux (or any OS other than maybe Windows) doesn't magically support every new or existing piece of hardware 2 seconds after it is released or discovered.
So sorry, but "BSD has bad hardware support" is a blanket statement that doesn't wash.