Stephan A. Rickauer wrote: > Currently, our Institute investigates alternative operating systems > compared to Linux. Apart from technical issues we are also concerned > about lifecycle management as well. We simply don't want to > reinstall/upgrade an entire OS all half year, which is the main reason, > why we will no longer use half-commercial system like SuSE (= 2 year > lifecycle for 'free' version). > > The question is how you OpenBSD guys handle the upgrade issue. From the > website I learned that -STABLE is maintained for only one year (= two > releases). Given that upgrading by skipping one release is not > recommended, does that mean one needs to upgrade the entire OS every > half year? I couldn't get that from the website. > > Thanks for helping, > Stephan,
I am a 3 year Debian Linux user and recently started using OpenBSD. I like and use both systems. But If you are concerned about easy upgrading, I would recommend Debian GNU/Linux (no flamewars please ;-) ). It is a very stable system that it is upgraded slowly, about 2 years (they whant to speed it in the future to 18 month cicle). You will not need to learn new things. OpenBSD is another different flavour of Unix (true Unix) and presents many differences with Linux. You will have to learn new things. Debian has got more "ready to use" packages than OpenBSD has. I found more applications for my engineering work and amateur radio hobby. Upgrades are a simple "aptitude dist-upgrade" command. On OpenBSD, you usually have to reinstall everything when you upgrade (or compile). Debian upgrade is an easier and automated task. This is not a problem if you are going to build a server, a firewall, a database server or something related, that is based on a few packages added to the base system. If you want a desktop with hundreds of packages installed, I find Debian more practical to upgrade. Both systems allow you to tweak the internals as you want. Both come with the base system and the remaining applications. Anyway, I am getting in love with OpenBSD because of its securyty, simplicity, stability, clarity, superb documentation and coherency. If I would have to build a server conected to the dangerous Internet, I will undoubtlely use OpenBSD. Just my 2 cents. Ramiro.
