Dear All,
I don't usually write an email for the mailing list. But when I hear
your situation I decided to write. :)
First of all, I completely support the comments of Bayard Bell. I'm also
MS of Information Security student at CMU and I'm really sorry behalf of
your professor if everything was true. From my point of view BSD would
never die, because it is too powerful. Many modern operating systems
borrowed their base code from BSD. Also the Jail's new TCP/IP stack that
implemented in FreeBSD 8 is the most powerful isolation solution with
high performance.
I want to add few more comments on Bayard's comments. I want to you
to look into following links just for the reference. It is telling
something even for the dummies isn't it? I don't want to say anything more.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/05/kylin_new_chine.html
http://www.freebsdnews.net/2009/05/29/china-chooses-freebsd-basis-secure-os/
I think the problem is not anyone can use BSD that easily. It requires
from you higher level of knowledge. But in the other hand Linux is more
user friendly. That's why the people argue nobody use BSD, I think. If
nobody uses and it would be sooner die then Apple wouldn't port BSD port
management system into the Mac OS X right? Also BSD still making Unix
world moving forward, good examples is Solaris.
Especially, BSD performs lot better in networking point of view and for
me PF is the one of the best firewall solution you could go for freely
if you understand what you are doing. I've used and tried almost all
major distribution from Linux and my final choice became again BSD. We
all know that Linux is started as a just kernel and later it became full
operating system, but I don't argue with Linux is a good project in
fact. I don't think that your professor used and tried BSD, I guess.
Maybe it's difficult for the starters and the best thing is if you want
to do something really valuable then go for BSD. If your professor is
really fond of Linux person then you could do your work in BSD under
Linux kernel emulation mode. In BSD you could easily run almost all
Linux applications without any hassle and some benchmarks showing some
application performs under BSD better than Linux native environment.
http://people.freebsd.org/~kris/scaling/mysql.html
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/explaining-bsd/why-is-bsd-not-better-known.html
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/explaining-bsd/comparing-bsd-and-linux.html
Cheers Eric
On 2/14/2010 8:03 AM, Bayard Bell wrote:
> I'd venture that your professor isn't particularly well-educated if he
> thinks BSD is dead or dying from either a commercial or a pedagogical
> perspective. A considerable amount of literature on the subject of
> networking is written using the BSD codebase as reference (e.g. the
> Richard Stevens TCP/IP books), and I don't expect that anyone is going
> to turn around and tell you that the Linux people got to where they
> are by ignoring all of that literature and the code base around which
> it was written. Second, beyond the base of open source host networking
> stacks, the BSD code base has been extensively grafted into
> proprietary Unix implementations, not to mention serving as the
> foundation for dedicated network devices such as Junos. You might
> argue that Junos isn't as prominent in the market as Cisco, but there
> are a fairly considerable number of arguments against teaching using
> IOS implementation pedagogically, except perhaps as a long series of
> "gotcha" lessons. Third, BSD networking continues to be grafted into
> other systems. A perfectly good example of this is that Sun has ported
> BPF into the Solaris kernel to support firewall portability as one of
> recent extension and refactoring initiatives to improve its network
> performance and provide an alternate set of interfaces for portability
> of networking code (e.g. for kernel code, or as an alternative to
> write directly to DLPI or through libpcap for anything that can't be
> implemented via [*cough*] Berkeley sockets).
>
> The crux here is that the wisdom of acting as though *nix networking
> is a monoculture completely dominated by Linux (which in my opinion
> can both fail to be a monoculture in the way it needs to be and
> succeed in being a monoculture in ways it needs to curb) or will
> become one doesn't seem the only possible conclusion from examining
> the history or contemporary dynamics (and that's setting aside the
> rather material question of whether such a monoculture would be
> desirable in any case, given how important cycles of divergence and
> convergences have been to making *nix what it is qua dynamic and open
> systemnot to say that Linux is a monoculture... or as dynamic and
> open as ). Sure, Linux can have its value as teaching material, but
> it's far less credible to do so if the premise is that this is the
> only open source implementation worth teaching. There may be valid
> reasons for focusing on a single implementation in course design, but
> dismissing the value of a comparative approach or of subsequent
> independent study of other systems strikes me as pissing away
> credibility as an instructor and being dishonest about course design
> decisions.
>
> As for the instructor, you can lead a horse to water and all that.
> Perhaps the more important thing to learn here is how and why he's
> mistaken rather than that he is or to push him to such concessions. If
> you can't push him so far as to change his decision, but you can
> perhaps offer sufficient judicious counter-arguments to make other
> students want to learn more and build some continuing study groups on
> top of that.
>
> Cheers,
> Bayard
>
> Am 13 Feb 2010 um 08:06 schrieb TS Lura:
>
>> Dear OpenBSD community,
>>
>> I'm a student for a MSc Advanced Networking degree.
>>
>> I have a little situation maybe you guys could give me some feedback
>> on.
>>
>> The issue is that my module leader is refusing even to consider
>> mentioning
>> OpenBSD, or any BSD in introductory Linux course where the focus is on
>> network services. DNS, iptables, Apache.
>>
>> It is a introductory course, with limited time. So it's
>> understandable that
>> one has to be level-headed on what's to go in as material in the
>> course. My
>> argument is only to have a reference to OpenBSD, PF, and maybe the
>> jailing
>> of named, when we go through the topics of iptables, and DNS.
>>
>> My professor (the module leader) argue that almost no one is using
>> BSD, and
>> those that does is probably 70+ and so it will soon die off, in a
>> humours
>> tone. In more serious tone, lack of applications.
>>
>> I'm a bit resigned by this attitude, because we are at a master
>> level about
>> networking. We learn about all the technologies surrounding routers,
>> switches, wan, security, etc. As such I think that OpenBSD is
>> really a bean
>> to be counted when we learn about open/free software. So in relation
>> to
>> this, I would argue that OpenBSD is a excellent platform for
>> networking
>> services.
>>
>> I have said so in writing, and verbally only to be brushed off.
>>
>> I feel it's game over, at this point. But maybe you guys have some
>> suggestion about good arguments that might persuade my professor?
>>
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> TSLura.
>>
>> PS.
>>
>> This might be the wrong crowd, but I also argue for the documents on
>> the
>> internal web-learning facility to be published in PDF (ISO 32000
>> standard)
>> (he insist on doc), and that Linux at least once should be mentioned
>> as
>> GNU/Linux.(system-tools/Kernel, to pay tribute). This is also met in
>> the
>> same way as my BSD arguments. Which I find strange, since my
>> professor has
>> developed a bit of stuff for the GNU/Linux platform.
