Switch to BSD.?

[L0aD1nG]

OpenBSD is more inherently secure, by design. That's the point. It's used more than many realize, in lots of embedded systems and such. But of course any Linux or BSD can be hardened (or softened!) to make it more (or less!) secure.

This ^ is true. OpenBSD is the most secure and free operating system available  at the moment in my honest opinion.

I will say this: the BSD-sphere makes Linux look pretty weak in many ways. With OpenBSD, for example, proper documentation is a HUGE deal. Haha, reminds me of this:
https://raindog308.com/linux-vs-openbsd-documentation/

A good answer on this ^ lies would be.....

Well I gotta say arch has one of the best docs around, gentoo is pretty awesome aswel.

....this ^ answer. Did you take a look on Arch docs mate? You could even find useful stuff  for BSD really.

Frankly, most Linux distros seem like crap beta-ware to me, other than Slackware, Gentoo, and CRUX.

Debian for example is beta-ware...? I will take this as a terrible attempt of being funny.
If you speak seriously then give as an explanation, it would be really interesting.

As for slackware, I like them for the security-stability they provide and for the as Unix-like as possible philosophy. But what about the kernel...? What kernel did you run before like 3-4 months mate? Let me guess... 3.4.x. Now after 14.1 release you will run 3.10.x for more than 1 year. Well Debian provided 3.16.x customized as stable since 4-5 months now. And the new stable release will most possibly come out with 3.17.x  soon enough, so you can see the difference here. Every distro in Linux world has its positives and its negatives. Some are fairly better than others, but nothing is perfect.

Thats the crap with stuff like debian/fedora/centos the docs are just not written that well , often lack concepts.

Now as for the documentation, Debian provides all the documentation needed. If you tried to find something and you couldn't, let me know I will provide all the information you need in no time really... If you consider yourself Debian end-user (so you have mastered the apt suite) you really don't need documentation at all. All you really need is your terminal... I will make myself more clear on this in the near future. Now if you installed Debian for like 1 week or something and you were thinking you will find something like Arch wiki... well no. Arch is the best on docs, but there is a reason for that. Arch has pacman as its package manager, Debian as I 've said before provide you apt suite. Making proper use of it and combining it with man <command> docs... you will really be beyond documentation.


Of course this is just an opinion, its my point of view. This is a really interesting thread, I would like to hear more from someone who actually uses openBSD as its main-everyday desktop system(if there is anyone around). It would be really cool.

[bones]

^ No, you are correct of course, Debian is solid, I used it for years before switching to Slackware. Sad though that they are going down the systemd rabbit hole, but that's easy enough to remedy; hell, I even have a friend that uses openrc (from Gentoo) as his init on Debian.

And I agree, also, on the documentation for Arch and Gentoo, both wikis are excellent and I have them bookmarked for quick access.

As for kernel version in Debian vs. Slackware, I give zero fucks about this sort of thing. I can run Slackware -current if I want, or roll my own custom kernel. I usually use older hardware anyway, so I don't need or care about the latest and the greatest.

Also, I do use OpenBSD as my main-everyday desktop (and laptop) system. Old x86 desktop, and ThinkPad T61 laptop. And then Slackware on an old x86 desktop. And I also have Mac OSX on a fucking 2014 iMac, hahaha.

[L0aD1nG]

As for kernel version in Debian vs. Slackware, I give zero fucks about this sort of thing. I can run Slackware -current if I want, or roll my own custom kernel. I usually use older hardware anyway, so I don't need or care about the latest and the greatest.

Well in this argument, I didn't wanted to be meant like a Debian vs Slackware thing. I just wanted you to realize that each distro has its pros and negs...

Now the thing that you can install manually (so do I) which ever kernel you want. It does not change the fact that the Linux distro you are using is providing you an old kernel as its main-stable one, on its latest release.


Now can you tell us objectively if there is any other downfall on openBSD as a desktop system other than the lack of hardware support(as you said that you use it for your main distro)?

[bones]

Now can you tell us objectively if there is any other downfall on openBSD as a desktop system other than the lack of hardware support(as you said that you use it for your main distro)?

Downfalls? Not really for me, personally, but my needs are probably different than most. I don't game, so that's not an issue. Everything works OOTB on my ThinkPad, no worries there.

Oh, I do have another T61 that I experiment with other stuff on, currently this. Newer kernel! 

[scamp]

Speaking of Kernel's "Hybrid" one's caught my eye of late, the only problem with regards to security is that vendors of products that make revenue from advertising would rather you didnt have any. I mean just look at the guy's listening to the idiots, putting backdoors everywhere, something that will have people reeling for the next decade, Bug's in Bash, Bug's in SSL and Bug's in X11 (24 to be precise!) an of late Linux itself on the recieving end as being an extremeist platform, save the children (pfft) hardly any of the idiots putting backdoor's into those system's have even stopped to consider that the very thing getting attacked is there own UNICOS. The systems, they rely upon for most of the digital forensics and decryption, if in doubt go look-up UNICOS online and read... It's the CRAY super-computer chosen platform, SUSE Enterprise Extremeist Linux! Then to make it better, there was contraversy surrounding BSD too with people offering idiots backdoors into it - case in point Gregory Peck!

If in doubt you've only got to go see what the former intelligence analyst leaker leaked to everybody.. Capabilities against Fat32 - Ext 3 - Ext 4 and UFS <-- that last filing system belongs to BSD BTW...

The way I see it is that platforms have been getting more and more secure as time goes by, this has resulted in the guys who've enjoyed thieveing information from everybody finding it hard and harder to do it and I dont doubt thats going to get even more tough as time goes by, people are not as stupid as they look, claims that it's only been happening since Bush are lies, it's been going on since the early 80's case in point 95, 98 and NT with _NSAKey in the Microsoft CAPI. Microsoft as a company along with there partners at Apple and Google are pretty much finished as a company, due to open source pushing them out the door, the result is they do what they do best and try to attack the very system they view as a threat to there business model with little regard for the fact that what they're attacking has further reaching implications than they can fathom. Case in point - Zimmermann himself said that attempting to thwart cryptography used to secure online commerce and banking leaves us all vulnerable to cyber criminals, when you buy stuff online, what is it you think keeps your banking details out of the hands of the crooks?

Not so easy to break into systems where the philosophy is many eye's make all bugs shallow but then you have to wonder about that when they leave the bugs going for as long as four years and dont tell anybody!!! Was it North Korea's fault Sony got pwned? I doubt it, I think the blame for that should rest squarly with the company that knew there product was shoddy security to begin with and then probably sat on the vulnerability in the first place.

Do you believe that all systems are vulnerable? I dont, because I took the time to go look up the standards and so should you. Ever heard of TYPESAFE? ANSI-C? Those are the standards that only one operating system has in abundance with rock solid security and it's not BSD although BSD is based on it! Research Unix 10.5 more bullet proof than fort knox an do you know why nobody use's it much?!? Because it's not designed for some imbecile with "pointy and clicky!". When Linus cough's the line that "Hybrid" Kernels and "Hybrid" filing systems are a "Marketing Gimmick", it's time to take a seat and shake your head, pointing out that custom "Hybrid" kernels and custom filing system's are the primary reason everybody is getting pwned because of one nation-states desire to spy on everybody else! Go research HFS+ and JFS and then go examine the HJFS filing system and see if you can figure out why someone would want to merge a file splitting protocol with the properties of JFS and you might be closer to the truth than you realise, especially when you type: man maps on the command line and read about how it download it's telemetry map data from the CIA database! Firewalls are so passe, it upset's people to find out, you never needed one in the first place!

http://ninetimes.cat-v.org/

250'000 CPU's x 2 due to duel core = 500'000 CPU cycles
1.7 Billion "Hacked" victims to date!
That's some serious "PwNaGe!" Power!

[Killeramor]

The best security is no computer. Makes my knowledge solid and secure. End of story.

[scamp]

The best security is no computer. Makes my knowledge solid and secure. End of story.

Yeah, there is that aspect to it too... Unplug + Brain = Win!

Or suddenly figure out that the reason all your stuff's got bug's in it, is because they where put there on "Purpose" and no amount of replacing your operating system is going to fix or address the problem, if you dont tackle it at the source!

Oracle + Google + Microsoft + Yahoo + Apple + Facebook!

For years all the far left privacy guys have been presuring going "ok what's going on?" now you know, that if you'd wanted a secure operating system to begin with they could have done it from day one, but they opted for the back-door method, because that make's stuff so "bug" proof!

An OS built around JAVA well "Javascript" has always been so SECURE...

It's not like people write Javascripting Viruses that infect multiple platforms eh? Or lets look at the Windows Scripting Host or the Visual Basic Scripting elements, that any sane security minded person would want gone!

An as for it all being in or around internet explorer, well there's nothing new.. All the hacking guy's an gal's have been having a go at them about that issue for how many years??? We've all been saying it for years that we dont exactly like having an Operating System modelled around a locked in Browser with CRAP at the core for over half of the 20th Century, so who know's maybe one day, they might actually listen! Instead of trying to create a new type of locked in desktop on Gnome centered around Nut-Scrape (Mozilla).

If your desktop come's with a Browser that doesnt respect your freedoms to remove it, then that is a piece of code that should be burned until it no longer appears anywhere! If your wondering what I mean, try to remove Firefox and watch whilst it offer's very kindly to take half of your Gnome desktop with it! Browsers should be banned - they encourage advertising penis's!

I mean it's not as if it's that HARD to get security of the CORE OS right the first time around is it?

Firewall on by DEFAULT - poke the anti-virus where the Sun doesnt shine, get the libraries all secure by DEFAULT dont leave it to the end user to sanitise there SQL query, get SQL to sanitise it to begin with, then that way if they want to use unsafe functions or install third party propritary CRAP that's down to them and on there own damn head be it!

Cookie's + Java = Being nice to advertisers!

How about no Cookie, no Java? I bet they wouldnt feel too good about that? But where in God's name does it say, you must have Cookies and Javascript enabled? Oh it doesnt! God damn Sammy Kumar and his God damned ever-cookie! Coupled with Secure Sockets invader (SSLstrip) = Java & Cookie whore!

Oh look kid's it's (fire)fox-acid = http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/acidpaper.html

If Gnu/Linux & OpenBSD are used by extremists then what does that make UNIX?

The King of Bot-NET?

Question: by Jacob Applebaum "Either these guy's dropped a lot of ACID, or they read a lot of Phillip K. Dick!"
Answer: "they probably did Both!"

One day that little fluffy bunny rabbit is going to take over the entire world and when that day finally comes, Oracle, Microsoft, Apple & Google (formerly Novell) will be nothing but a bad memory on the pages of history!

        _     _
        \`\ / /
         \ V /               
          /. .\       
       =\ T /=                 
         / ^ \     
       /\\   //\
    __\ "  "  /__           
  (____/^\____)

The whole philosopy around open source is a 'GLOBAL' collaboration amongst friends and developers around the entire world all sharing a common goal, but when one side of that community decides to head off and do it's own thing, thinking screw everybody else, then yes, that creates disharmony and disolves the entire principle of open sharing and collaboration as a whole. An the final result's speak for themselves, pissed off people around the globe! An you can alomst hear the retarded war-cry of "CYBER - CYBER-COMMAND!" here it come's, spread your butt-check's, it want's in and it doesnt care if it pisses everybody all off in the process!

If your determined to try BSD - then try DragonFly as I hear it's pretty good, it split from FreeBSD after the maintainer disagreed with the direction FreeBSD took with it's Kernel and unlike most of the BSD variants does not use UFS for it's filing system, but rather one based around Zune called "HAMMER".

Dont go here if you use Javascript, because what happens is all thanks to HTML5 web-standards!

www(dot)filldisk(dot)com/

But the music is cool! If you know a fag with Android OS you should send them the link for sure!

Or copy the .JS and remove the STOP button, because what fills up your Hard Drive with Cats can probably read it's contents too. You probably remember that *trick* from back in the 80's displaying the contents of your Windows C:\ Drive in internet explorer over the web thanks to *Javascript!* ~ "silly rabbit tricks are for Kids!"

[bones]

One day that little fluffy bunny rabbit is going to take over the entire world and when that day finally comes, Oracle, Microsoft, Apple & Google (formerly Novell) will be nothing but a bad memory on the pages of history!

So, are you using plan9/9front, then? I've been interested in trying it out, haven't made the jump yet.

[scamp]

To be honest, I've looked at it, but it does say in Ken's resume your better off compiling your own version because you never know if someone will be tempted to do something "Stupid!" and to be honest, looking at filing systems and filing protocol's there's quite a range to choose from, there's OpenAFS, theirs ReiserFS <-- that ones a little funky, actually got hacked using that! Then there SFS from good ole Peter Guttman, which stands for Secure Filing System, then there's FreeDOS, so the choices are really out there for the picking! I'm quite partial to good ole black and white DOS prompt's with Arachne for a file manager, you've just got to remember to turn off the bit that says allow "Cookie" and as for PGPi back in the day PGP version 5 for MSDOS was quite all the rage and to date it's still got no vulnerabilties or at least that was the case until Symantic got there filthy little hands on it!. If encryption is outlawed, then only outlaws will have encryption ~ Phil Zimmermann. Oh and Windows 3.1 for workgroups used to be good, until it became 32 bit and they started shipping it with Explorer iexplore.exe & explore.exe by default. or as some people call it Shitty Shell! If you've got your phone handy you might want to run the ShellShock bash-bug vulnerability checker, because the last time I looked at the latest version of Lollipop aka: Android 5, thats still in there!

Way to cause global paranoia amongst a community of developers, Bash-Bug "what in that crappy Bourne Shell?", argh!!, lets eradicate bash! Somehow I dont think that the original Bash was the issue! But yeah looking at Ext 3, Ext 4 and UFS thinking, hmm, nice, so thats why my filing system has a "Lost & Found" folder!

Time to swap back to using browsers like: Lynx and Dillo, now I totally understand why Stallman doesnt browse the web ~ it makes your eye's bleed & it's bad for your brain!

You know when you go browsing the Job's section looking for Web-Developer wanted the last thing you expect to come across is USED PANTIES 4 SNIFF!

But somehow, I dont think putting a meglomanic "Kill Switch" in everybody's PC is the answer!



If TOR & Privacy is such a big issue because it attract's morons, then that's an issue that the TOR developers should solve, by closing TOR - I mean do people really believe that TOR is the be-all and end all of privacy and anonimity? Please! That just show's there ignorance! An if it's such a big problem, then parhaps, the TOR and Onion network's should be reserved exclusively for ADULT's that use real Unix & dont want to see Kiddo porn! Although it's kind of amusing that they would waste so many resource's on attacking the TOR network's when it would appear that there are still loads of site's in Foreign countries that host that crap openly!

Normally, in a normal world, what you as the poor recipiant would do, is contact support at abuse@host-name.com and then the provider tackles the problem, not some secret spy agency that want's to harvest it all.

It could all be solved so easily by adding a button that says report this node for "CRIME" and then that's the end of the issue! It's really not much to ask for, a way to black-list certain TOR exit's so they flash up in the clear to everybody for hosting either "Drugs - Guns - or Porn!" then everybodies happy and we can all get on with our lives! A black-list button that submits the site back to the TOR developers, then they can call the shot's on what to do about it!

I love that photo: "Will be sent in Zip-Lock bag for freshness!" ewww, nasty!

The wonders of Gumtree "Buy and Sell your Items and search the classifieds to find a Job in your local area!

Almost as good as the one on e-Bay that said "Buy my nagging wife!" only $20'000!

You sure as hell do not need the dark-web to buy "Drugs - Gun's or Porn!" most of those online pharmacetical companies and legitimate weapons stockist's will actually sell it to you with one phone call - it's called a "legitimate buisness transaction!" but it's funny because we all get to have a good laugh, watching them go this solves everything! Funny, how if I go for a ride on the Bus into the local town I can buy any variety of out-door weapon a budding survivalist lunatic could want, directly over the counter! No question's asked!

"Hi, there, yes I'd like to buy that really big sheath knife in the window! Oh and I see you sell razor sharp collectable swords and high energy bolt weaponry that goes through chainmail too!"

It's so epic to read on the news that after they read everybodies mail and after they perv over people on there camera's now they deploy armed guards fearing for there own safety!

Saying an attack is highly likely, pfft, what they mean is everybody's gone dark and started using the stuff of there worst nightmare's and started talking with each other in private and they cant thieve and perv over what they're saying to each other!!

Doesnt it make your heart-bleed!

[scamp]

Here's a little list for you of operating systems that appeal to "Hackers"

Bobcat & FreeDOS
jNode - with Snow & the latest version of JRE!
Plan9 (sadly not available in Farsi, Cantonese or Urdu!)
UnixV7 - Jolix BSD
Windows XP - the only version you can still RIP explorer.exe out of with ease!
VirtualBox & VMWare

It's kind of ironic that after you boot your chosen BSD or Linux OS and have to bypass the Bootloader password, then decrypt the main LVM and then parse your password to gain access to root - an all that was for nothing, because the browser has been screwing you over!

The fact there is no ICON's or point and click on on at least about 4 in that list is the whole part thats appealing, it's not something someone will suddenly just pick up and become awesome with over-night! I seriously doubt anyone would even know how to setup the security permission's if they'd never delved into either Linux or BSD or spent anytime around a command line interface, something we call the CLI which is missing from Android, iOS and Blackberry to begin with! Whilst loads of people will probably download 9front and give it a whirl, you might want to read up a bit first! Because it's all well and good seting up a password in the Non-Volatile Memory but did you acticate the authentication? Did you delve into Local.complicated and setup which host's can connect and which one's are restricted? If not, you might find yourself Pwned! Always help's, to read more than just the wiki & more than once!

Nothing more painful than realising the fact sheet your reading was for the old Fossil filing system and you've just dismounted your disk-drive cylinder heads - permanently!

It's not as simple as just typing in one password and that's it!

Ho-ho-ho-ha-ha-har if only everything was that simple!

It should be obvious to everybody by now, who's got experiance with Open Source and experiance of propriatary rubbish where the issue's are at and it's no mistake that the Certificate Key Chain and that web of trust is not pretty much in bit's, but not for long - China's got the right attitude, "mind showing us your source-code?". Something tell's me they might have a bit of a wait, everybody else has been saying the same thing for the last 20 years!

You might ask yourself well why XP and not OSX - the simplest answer is it has so many active scripting components - its a virus writters heaven!

[bones]

Installed Plan9 (well, 9front) yesterday. Very compelling, I like it. So fast, so simple, so clean. You could compile the whole system from source in less than half an hour. Definitely need to play with this one some more.

[cyberdrifter]

Installed Plan9 (well, 9front) yesterday. Very compelling, I like it. So fast, so simple, so clean. You could compile the whole system from source in less than half an hour. Definitely need to play with this one some more.

You will get bored with this little venture pretty quick... 9front isn't a viable operating system in this daynage from what I've seen...

[bones]

You will get bored with this little venture pretty quick... 9front isn't a viable operating system in this daynage from what I've seen...

I suspect you are right, definitely a hobbyist venture. But curiosity got the best of me.

[cyberdrifter]

I suspect you are right, definitely a hobbyist venture. But curiosity got the best of me.

That's why I always try to satisfy my curiosity with youtube first

[bones]

That's why I always try to satisfy my curiosity with youtube first

I do that, too. But then I still need to get my hands dirty, anyway. I do like it, but probably wouldn't use it on a long-term basis.