Switch to BSD.?

[proxx]

Sup evilzone.

I am interested in some opinions here.
Last year linux has been under fire for being not as secure as we would like it to be.
Perhaps the arch is inherently more secure than say windows , but I am worried.
Thinking about making a full switch to BSD , point is that I am not sure if I would be better off.
Only thing I don't like is the lack of 'new hw' support and less software to play with.
I played around with BSD's before and know my way around for the most part.
Any thoughts?

[madf0x]

besides the points you already made, I personally dont like the drama that surrounds BSD. Too much cloak and dagger, he said she said type of things going on. Supposed cases where founders of BSD distros backdoored distributions but was never verified, etc.

To me, I feel like itd take less effort to secure a linux box then to have a 'more secure' BSD box that has such a shitty culture and asshat developers. Of course this ain't universal, some pretty good hearted people out there, just not my style.

As far as linux security goes, almost all of its issues are easily solved by simply knowing what the fuck youre doing. You could say that about other OSes, but I feel like with linux its security is really up to you. In windows and other OSes you can easily get fucked by obscure features and complex systems. Sure linux can fall victim to that too but it tends to be the norm for other OSes. Linux intrusions almost always depend on the guy running the box to be an idiot. Not patching a 5 year old service. World writable configs, etc. Not to mention you can make memory exploitation REALLY hard on linux with a little bit of time.

Just some of my thoughts.

[proxx]

besides the points you already made, I personally dont like the drama that surrounds BSD. Too much cloak and dagger, he said she said type of things going on. Supposed cases where founders of BSD distros backdoored distributions but was never verified, etc.

To me, I feel like itd take less effort to secure a linux box then to have a 'more secure' BSD box that has such a shitty culture and asshat developers. Of course this ain't universal, some pretty good hearted people out there, just not my style.

As far as linux security goes, almost all of its issues are easily solved by simply knowing what the fuck youre doing. You could say that about other OSes, but I feel like with linux its security is really up to you. In windows and other OSes you can easily get fucked by obscure features and complex systems. Sure linux can fall victim to that too but it tends to be the norm for other OSes. Linux intrusions almost always depend on the guy running the box to be an idiot. Not patching a 5 year old service. World writable configs, etc. Not to mention you can make memory exploitation REALLY hard on linux with a little bit of time.

Just some of my thoughts.

Thanks for the input, I agree that the simplicity is one of its key components.
Whatever I do I will probably move to  a nonsystemd distro in the next year.
It is interesting to see that most of the garbage has been there for such a long time.

I agree that the linux community is quite different from BSDish ppl , also I think most of those backdoor stories are not true, there was this big fuzz about jails being completely flawed, the story however was a hoax of some sort.

[Axon]

Consider trying other major linux distros than the one you previously used.

[d4rkcat]

I don't know much about OpenBSD, but I do know that security is their number one priority, they value it above all other attributes. Hence not getting the latest hardware working quickly ect.
The idea that their OS could be backdoored by their own developers is farcical at best to me.
I'm also interested in the OS, would love to hear more if you give it a go proxx.

[Syntax990]

To be honest my friend. If Linux does what you want it to then there isn't really a need to switch. Unless BSD has something that Linux cant offer then stick with Linux. As madf0x said, the majority of security flaws within Linux usually are due to stupid mistakes. I much prefer the Linux communities than that of BSD personally, but that's just my experience.

If you have another device to install BSD on then try it. I was tempted to switch a while ago due to the ports package management, but Gentoo also offered a very similar way of installing packages.

[madf0x]

ah I was thinking of this: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/12/openbsd-code-audit-uncovers-bugs-but-no-evidence-of-backdoor/

Which turned up nothing(unless maybe the bugs were the backdoor? sneaky sneaky). I also remember some controversy of Theo de Raadt supposedly hacking some other developer for some reason, it was never proven though and I can't seem to find it anymore.

[MGS1Snake]

Sup evilzone.

I am interested in some opinions here.
Last year linux has been under fire for being not as secure as we would like it to be.
Perhaps the arch is inherently more secure than say windows , but I am worried.
Thinking about making a full switch to BSD , point is that I am not sure if I would be better off.
Only thing I don't like is the lack of 'new hw' support and less software to play with.
I played around with BSD's before and know my way around for the most part.
Any thoughts?

I don't know if I read that correctly but... if you liked Arch Linux you could always look into Arch BSD. When I worked at the bank I had a lot of spare sit down time and from the information I collected I would tell you to at least take a shot in the dark with BSD.

[HexEngineer]

http://www.ossec.net/ and keep calm! I really don't like BSD mainly because I always have lack of drivers on it....

[shome]

I enjoyed this thread, as well as all of the feedback that was received. I like the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" advice as well. I enjoy many flavors of Linux, the software that's available, as well as the developers and different channels of information that is available. I don't know much about BSD, but that side of the development team just doesn't seem as prominent to me as the GNU/Linux part of things.

I fired up Free BSD on a VM a couple weeks back, and was playing around with it, maybe try that out for awhile and see how things work ? Just a thought.

[bones]

There's no reason why you can't use both (well, unless you're limited hardware-wise). I use both Slackware and OpenBSD, and love them both for different reasons.

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/

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

[proxx]

There's no reason why you can't use both (well, unless you're limited hardware-wise). I use both Slackware and OpenBSD, and love them both for different reasons.

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/

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

Crux/Arch are things I fell in love with , same with gentoo . Slack is something I did try but never for extended periods.
I have a openbsd partition atm which is working for me ,as you pointed out have some troubles with hardware but its not too bad.
Maybe when I get the HW right I will migrate my linux install to containers or KVM and work from there.
Well I gotta say arch has one of the best docs around, gentoo is pretty awesome aswel.
Thats the crap with stuff like debian/fedora/centos the docs are just not written that well , often lack concepts.
Yeah you are right , there is no reason to bail out on linux, which would be hard for me anyway

[Matriplex]

Well is the switch worth it? The chances of your box, especially with your knowledge, being exploited in any should be low. Are there any particular things that you're worried about? I'm wondering now, because I use Arch daily and never really gave too many thoughts to security as I never take it out of my local network or browse with it.

[cyberdrifter]

Sup evilzone.

I am interested in some opinions here.
Last year linux has been under fire for being not as secure as we would like it to be.
Perhaps the arch is inherently more secure than say windows , but I am worried.
Thinking about making a full switch to BSD , point is that I am not sure if I would be better off.
Only thing I don't like is the lack of 'new hw' support and less software to play with.
I played around with BSD's before and know my way around for the most part.
Any thoughts?

BSD is arguably better suited as a server than linux for reliability/security reasons, but I'd stay with linux as a desktop personally. There isn't as much variety and support for all the bells, and whistles for it as there are with Linux.


And again... bsd isn't more inherently secure... what you see is security through obscurity... the more people that use bsd the more it will be targeted... which will expose more of those flaws... that's true of every distro...


In any case... if linux does what you want, then why switch?

[bones]

And again... bsd isn't more inherently secure... what you see is security through obscurity... the more people that use bsd the more it will be targeted... which will expose more of those flaws... that's true of every distro...

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.