On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 4:06 PM, Dewey Hylton <dewey.hyl...@gmail.com> wrote: > if you feel this is a tired and worn-out question, then please just move along. > > two systems on which i'm happily running openbsd on are: > alix and mac mini. alix for firewalls/thin clients, and the mac mini can handle pretty much anything i throw at it. both are relatively cheap (new alix and used minis) and function well. in addition to firewalls/thin clients, my needs do not include anything high-performance or high-bandwidth - mostly infrastructure services such as dns/dhcp/web for small companies. > > so what i'm looking for is something small like (or smaller than) these two systems, and just as stable, while being cheaper. and i'm looking for recommendations, not just suggestions - if you haven't tried it and loved it, don't bother mentioning it. > > i'm hoping the raspberrypi will eventually be supported on openbsd (if the hardware proves to be stable, $35 sounds GREAT) but i don't have the skills to go there myself. >
Alixes are pretty cheap. Not Sheevaplug or RasberryPi cheap, but cheap for the capabilities they have. I mean, at the end of the day, your clients are relying on these devices for potentially business-critical services. How much do they really want to skimp? Personally I've lately been moving upmarket with this kind of device. You get better performance (e.g., faster CPUs, Intel GbE rather than Via, etc.), a more solid build, and I've never had to solder my own surface mount caps on one to fix a clock oscillator issue as I did with my home Soekris once :) All that said, one day when I retire and want to stretch my brain to keep from getting senile, I'll probably try to port OpenBSD to a couple of embedded-ish devices I currently use. The hardware is generally decent from the outside, but I can't help but believe they'd be better, faster, and more secure with OpenBSD than the iffy Linux+vendor "enhancements" that they typically come with. Corey
