“Well, I’ve been reading a little about MicroBSD. So I decided to quickly give it a try. This article talks about installing MicroBSD, what features make it special, troubles and successes I encountered, and the beauty of the BSD license. So I retrieved the MicroBSD 0.5 mini ISO image and burned a CD.” Read it at BSDNewsLetter.
Taking MicroBSD for a Test Run
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Can someone point out the diffs between picoBSD and microBSD ?
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http://homepage.mac.com/softkid/
so its a bit of a broken mix of openbsd + freebsd 5.0… and when obsd merges (if..) the freebsd/trustedbsd MAC/ACL stuff.. where will microbsd sit?
on the other hand its good that someone is still experimenting and merging bits and peices across
This looks like a really useful project… but what a pity that it has to be done by forkin *BSD yet again. It seems that MicroBSD will have modern security features, while OpenBSD will have properly audited source code. If only the two groups could cooperate.
Who cares if it forks? History has proven that when one of the BSDs fork it is to the better of _all_ of them.
Take OpenBSD & NetBSD for example — had OpenBSD not forked off NetBSD then we wouldn’t have the same level of security consciousness we do now.
Forking is only bad when the forks are all similiar and none of them add anything new to the code pool. A good example of this is the 194(bad guess?) not too different linux distros — sure you can try and tell me they all share the same kernel — but that doesn’t change the fact that you have 194 incompatible distros which all strive to achieve the same thing. New linux distros pop up everyday faster than weeds in my garden. Everytime I read about a new linux distroy I can’t help but ask myself “Why? Is this filling some void?”
Ahh, but Mr Anonymous, the linux advocates would tell you that this was “choice” and choice is a good thing, no?
Well, it would be great to have a *BSD that has both modern security features *and* fully audited source code. I guess the problem is that, there is a limited number of talented and motivated developers, and it is a pity that they are spread across so many distinct code bases. When the skill sets are complementary as in this case (code auditing in OpenBSD vs creation of new security features in MicroBSD), it seems a pity that they can’t work more closely together.
You are right however that ideas and code do migrate between the different BSDs.
The OpenBSD project seems to be relatively opposed to any special security features–their philosophy being that you don’t need any extra features if the code is well-audited and verifiably exploit free, and additional features like ACLs and capabilities merely create more code, adding possible points of exploitation and more work for auditing. Though I disagree, I can’t help but admire their determination.
On a rather unrelated note, does anyone know if OpenBSD’s dynamic loader supports Mozilla yet? =)