Alternatives to OpenBSD logo

Alternatives to OpenBSD

FreeBSD, Linux, pfSense, CentOS, and Debian are the most popular alternatives and competitors to OpenBSD.
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What is OpenBSD and what are its top alternatives?

It is a free and secure UNIX-like operating system that emphasizes portability, standardization, correctness, proactive security & integrated cryptography.
OpenBSD is a tool in the Operating Systems category of a tech stack.

Top Alternatives to OpenBSD

  • FreeBSD
    FreeBSD

    An operating system for a variety of platforms which focuses on features, speed, and stability. It is derived from BSD, the version of UNIX® developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It is developed and maintained by a large community. ...

  • Linux
    Linux

    A clone of the operating system Unix, written from scratch by Linus Torvalds with assistance from a loosely-knit team of hackers across the Net. It aims towards POSIX and Single UNIX Specification compliance. ...

  • pfSense
    pfSense

    It is an open source firewall/router computer software distribution based on FreeBSD. It is installed on a physical computer or a virtual machine to make a dedicated firewall/router for a network. ...

  • CentOS
    CentOS

    The CentOS Project is a community-driven free software effort focused on delivering a robust open source ecosystem. For users, we offer a consistent manageable platform that suits a wide variety of deployments. For open source communities, we offer a solid, predictable base to build upon, along with extensive resources to build, test, release, and maintain their code. ...

  • Debian
    Debian

    Debian systems currently use the Linux kernel or the FreeBSD kernel. Linux is a piece of software started by Linus Torvalds and supported by thousands of programmers worldwide. FreeBSD is an operating system including a kernel and other software. ...

  • Ubuntu
    Ubuntu

    Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It also means ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. The Ubuntu operating system brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers. ...

  • Alpine Linux
    Alpine Linux

    Alpine Linux is a security-oriented, lightweight Linux distribution based on musl libc and busybox. ...

  • iOS
    iOS

    It is the operating system that presently powers many of the mobile devices, including the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. It is designed to make your iPhone and iPad experience even faster, more responsive, and more delightful. ...

OpenBSD alternatives & related posts

FreeBSD logo

FreeBSD

244
190
28
An operating system used to power modern servers, desktops, and embedded platforms
244
190
+ 1
28
PROS OF FREEBSD
  • 8
    Excellent as Server
  • 6
    Very Stable
  • 4
    Helpful community
  • 2
    Free to use
  • 2
    Extremely simple updates and compiles of kernel and use
  • 2
    Good for Cloud - Nextcloud
  • 2
    Ports and packages system is mature and well-supported
  • 1
    Easy to install
  • 1
    Supported by major cloud platforms
CONS OF FREEBSD
  • 1
    Slower to adopt non-server hardware than Linux
  • 1
    Poor support for laptops, especially wireless cards

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Linux logo

Linux

2.9K
2.3K
41
A family of free and open source software operating systems based on the Linux kernel
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2.3K
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PROS OF LINUX
  • 17
    Open Source
  • 11
    Free
  • 8
    Reliability
  • 5
    Safe
CONS OF LINUX
    Be the first to leave a con

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    Rogério R. Alcântara
    Shared insights
    on
    macOSmacOSLinuxLinuxGitGitDockerDocker

    Personal Dotfiles management

    Given that they are all “configuration management” tools - meaning they are designed to deploy, configure and manage servers - what would be the simplest - and yet robust - solution to manage personal dotfiles - for n00bs.

    Ideally, I reckon, it should:

    • be containerized (Docker?)
    • be versionable (Git)
    • ensure idempotency
    • allow full automation (tests, CI/CD, etc.)
    • be fully recoverable (Linux/ macOS)
    • be easier to setup/manage (as much as possible)

    Does it make sense?

    See more
    John Calandra
    Data Manager at The Garrett Group · | 8 upvotes · 355K views

    There is a question coming... I am using Oracle VirtualBox to spawn 3 Ubuntu Linux virtual machines (VM). VM1 is being used as a data lake - just a place to store flat files. VM2 hosts Apache NiFi. VM3 hosts PostgreSQL. I have built a NiFi pipeline that reads flat files on VM1 and then pipes the data over to and inserts it into the Postgresql database. I left this setup alone for a while, and then something hiccupped on VM3, and I had to rebuild it. Now I cannot make a remote connection to Postgresql on VM3. I was using pgAdmin3 on VM3, but it kept throwing errors - I found out it went end-of-life in 2018 and uninstalled it. pgAdmin4 is out, but for some reason, I cannot get the APT utility to find/install it. I am trying to figure out the pgAdmin4 install problem and looking for a good alternative for pgAdmin4 that I can use to diagnose the remote database connection problem. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

    See more
    pfSense logo

    pfSense

    107
    94
    0
    An open source firewall/router computer software distribution
    107
    94
    + 1
    0
    PROS OF PFSENSE
      Be the first to leave a pro
      CONS OF PFSENSE
        Be the first to leave a con

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        TwingateTwingatepfSensepfSense

        Hi, can and could/should you use pfSense and Twingate together?

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        CentOS logo

        CentOS

        13.6K
        8.8K
        53
        The Community ENTerprise Operating System
        13.6K
        8.8K
        + 1
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        PROS OF CENTOS
        • 16
          Stable
        • 9
          Free to use
        • 9
          Reliable
        • 6
          Has epel packages
        • 6
          Good support
        • 5
          Great Community
        • 2
          I've moved from gentoo to centos
        CONS OF CENTOS
        • 1
          Yum is a horrible package manager

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        Marcel Kornegoor

        Since #ATComputing is a vendor independent Linux and open source specialist, we do not have a favorite Linux distribution. We mainly use Ubuntu , Centos Debian , Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora during our daily work. These are also the distributions we see most often used in our customers environments.

        For our #ci/cd training, we use an open source pipeline that is build around Visual Studio Code , Jenkins , VirtualBox , GitHub , Docker Kubernetes and Google Compute Engine.

        For #ServerConfigurationAndAutomation, we have embraced and contributed to Ansible mainly because it is not only flexible and powerful, but also straightforward and easier to learn than some other (open source) solutions. On the other hand: we are not affraid of Puppet Labs and Chef either.

        Currently, our most popular #programming #Language course is Python . The reason Python is so popular has to do with it's versatility, but also with its low complexity. This helps sysadmins to write scripts or simple programs to make their job less repetitive and automating things more fun. Python is also widely used to communicate with (REST) API's and for data analysis.

        See more
        Shared insights
        on
        UbuntuUbuntuOpenStackOpenStackCentOSCentOS
        at

        Hello guys

        I am confused between choosing CentOS7 or centos8 for OpenStack tripleo undercloud deployment. Which one should I use? There is another option to use OpenStack, Ubuntu, or MicroStack.

        We wanted to use this deployment to build our home cloud or private cloud infrastructure. I heard that centOS is always the best choice through a little research, but still not sure. As centos8 from Redhat is not supported for OpenStack tripleo deployments anymore, I had to upgrade to CentosStream.

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        Debian logo

        Debian

        15.8K
        10.8K
        164
        The Universal Operating System
        15.8K
        10.8K
        + 1
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        PROS OF DEBIAN
        • 54
          Massively supported
        • 50
          Stable
        • 21
          Reliable
        • 9
          Aptitude
        • 8
          Customizable
        • 8
          It is free
        • 8
          Turnkey linux use it
        • 6
          Works on all architectures
        CONS OF DEBIAN
        • 10
          Old versions of software
        • 2
          Can be difficult to set up on vanilla Debian

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        Labinator Team

        At labinator.com, we use HTML5, CSS 3, Sass, Vanilla.JS and PHP when building our premium WordPress themes and plugins. When writing our codes, we use Sublime Text and Visual Studio Code depending on the project. We run Manjaro and Debian operating systems in our office. Manjaro is a great desktop operating system for all range of tasks while Debian is a solid choice for servers.

        WordPress became a very popular choice when it comes to content management systems and building websites. It is easy to learn and has a great community behind it. The high number of plugins as well that are available for WordPress allows any user to customize it depending on his/her needs.

        For development, HTML5 with Sass is our go-to choice when building our themes.

        Main Advantages Of Sass:

        • It's CSS syntax friendly
        • It offers variables
        • It uses a nested syntax
        • It includes mixins
        • Great community and online support.
        • Great documentation that is easy to read and follow.

        As for PHP, we always thrive to use PHP 7.3+. After the introduction of PHP 7, the WordPress development process became more stable and reliable than before. If you a developer considering PHP 7.3+ for your project, it would be good to note the following benefits.

        The Benefits Of Using PHP:

        • Open Source.
        • Highly Extendible.
        • Easy to learn and read.
        • Platform independent.
        • Compatible with APACHE.
        • Low development and maintenance cost.
        • Great community and support.
        • Detailed documentation that has everything you need!

        Why PHP 7.3+?

        • Flexible Heredoc & Nowdoc Syntaxes - Two key methods for defining strings within PHP. They also became easier to read and more reliable.
        • A good boost in performance speed which is extremely important when it comes to WordPress development.
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        Tim Abbott
        Shared insights
        on
        DebianDebianUbuntuUbuntuFedoraFedora
        at

        We use Debian and its derivative Ubuntu because the apt ecosystem and toolchain for Debian packages is far superior to the yum-based system used by Fedora and RHEL. This is large part due to a huge amount of investment into tools like debhelper/dh over the years by the Debian community. I haven't dealt with RPM in the last couple years, but every experience I've had with RPM is that the RPM tools are slower, have less useful options, and it's more work to package software for them (and one makes more compromises in doing so).

        I think everyone has seen the better experience using Ubuntu in the shift of prevalence from RHEL to Ubuntu in what most new companies are deploying on their servers, and I expect that trend to continue as long as Red Hat is using the RPM system (and I don't really see them as having a path to migrate).

        The experience with Ubuntu and Debian stable releases is pretty similar: A solid release every 2 years that's supported for a few years. (While Ubuntu in theory releases every 6 months, their non-LTS releases are effectively betas: They're often unstable, only have 9 months of support, etc. I wouldn't recommend them to anyone not actively participating in Ubuntu the development community). Ubuntu has better integration of non-free drivers, which may be important if you have hardware that requires them. But it's also the case that most bugs I experience when using Ubuntu are Ubuntu-specific issues, especially on servers (in part because Ubuntu has a bunch of "cloud management" stuff pre-installed that is definitely a regression if you're not using Canonical's cloud management products).

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        Ubuntu logo

        Ubuntu

        77.6K
        56.5K
        468
        The leading OS for PC, tablet, phone and cloud
        77.6K
        56.5K
        + 1
        468
        PROS OF UBUNTU
        • 230
          Free to use
        • 96
          Easy setup for testing discord bot
        • 57
          Gateway Linux Distro
        • 54
          Simple interface
        • 9
          Don't need driver installation in most cases
        • 6
          Open Source
        • 6
          Many active communities
        • 3
          Software Availability
        • 3
          Easy to custom
        • 2
          Many flavors/distros based on ubuntu
        • 1
          Lightweight container base OS
        • 1
          Great OotB Linux Shell Experience
        CONS OF UBUNTU
        • 5
          Demanding system requirements
        • 4
          Adds overhead and unnecessary complexity over Debian
        • 2
          Snapd installed by default
        • 1
          Systemd

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        Tim Abbott
        Shared insights
        on
        DebianDebianUbuntuUbuntuFedoraFedora
        at

        We use Debian and its derivative Ubuntu because the apt ecosystem and toolchain for Debian packages is far superior to the yum-based system used by Fedora and RHEL. This is large part due to a huge amount of investment into tools like debhelper/dh over the years by the Debian community. I haven't dealt with RPM in the last couple years, but every experience I've had with RPM is that the RPM tools are slower, have less useful options, and it's more work to package software for them (and one makes more compromises in doing so).

        I think everyone has seen the better experience using Ubuntu in the shift of prevalence from RHEL to Ubuntu in what most new companies are deploying on their servers, and I expect that trend to continue as long as Red Hat is using the RPM system (and I don't really see them as having a path to migrate).

        The experience with Ubuntu and Debian stable releases is pretty similar: A solid release every 2 years that's supported for a few years. (While Ubuntu in theory releases every 6 months, their non-LTS releases are effectively betas: They're often unstable, only have 9 months of support, etc. I wouldn't recommend them to anyone not actively participating in Ubuntu the development community). Ubuntu has better integration of non-free drivers, which may be important if you have hardware that requires them. But it's also the case that most bugs I experience when using Ubuntu are Ubuntu-specific issues, especially on servers (in part because Ubuntu has a bunch of "cloud management" stuff pre-installed that is definitely a regression if you're not using Canonical's cloud management products).

        See more
        John Calandra
        Data Manager at The Garrett Group · | 8 upvotes · 355K views

        There is a question coming... I am using Oracle VirtualBox to spawn 3 Ubuntu Linux virtual machines (VM). VM1 is being used as a data lake - just a place to store flat files. VM2 hosts Apache NiFi. VM3 hosts PostgreSQL. I have built a NiFi pipeline that reads flat files on VM1 and then pipes the data over to and inserts it into the Postgresql database. I left this setup alone for a while, and then something hiccupped on VM3, and I had to rebuild it. Now I cannot make a remote connection to Postgresql on VM3. I was using pgAdmin3 on VM3, but it kept throwing errors - I found out it went end-of-life in 2018 and uninstalled it. pgAdmin4 is out, but for some reason, I cannot get the APT utility to find/install it. I am trying to figure out the pgAdmin4 install problem and looking for a good alternative for pgAdmin4 that I can use to diagnose the remote database connection problem. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

        See more
        Alpine Linux logo

        Alpine Linux

        2.1K
        394
        37
        Security-oriented, lightweight Linux distribution based on musl libc and busybox
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        394
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        PROS OF ALPINE LINUX
        • 10
          Secure
        • 9
          Good in containers
        • 8
          Fast
        • 1
          Supports armhf, aarch64, x86, ppc64, armv7,s390x
        • 1
          Does not run glibc binaries
        • 1
          Minimal dependencies
        • 1
          Widely used in docker containers everywhere
        • 1
          Musl based
        • 1
          Choice of init system
        • 1
          Excellent Package Manager
        • 1
          Small footprint
        • 1
          Small install footprint
        • 1
          Small memory footprint
        CONS OF ALPINE LINUX
        • 2
          Cannot install metasploit
        • 1
          Does not run glibc binaries
        • 1
          Not for inexperienced users

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        iOS logo

        iOS

        1.9K
        1.5K
        4
        A mobile operating system by Apple
        1.9K
        1.5K
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        PROS OF IOS
        • 2
          Integrated with other Apple products
        • 1
          Privacy
        • 1
          Apple
        CONS OF IOS
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