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Overview of OpenBSD

  • Jan 21, 2005
Most people do not use OpenBSD as a desktop OS, though there are some people who swear by it. This chapter provides an overview of OpenBSD, including its development, features, and the tools available in this operating system for your business.
This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book

Secure Architectures with OpenBSDSecure Architectures with OpenBSD

Learn More Buy

This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book

Secure Architectures with OpenBSDSecure Architectures with OpenBSD

Learn More Buy

OpenBSD is one of the most secure and well-designed operating systems available today. It has its roots in countless hours of research and development based on some of the best UNIX flavors of the past, and it boasts all the features of modern operating systems. The OS is widely considered one of the most secure general-purpose operating systems available today and it supports many key parts of the global Internet infrastructure.

2.1 A Brief History of OpenBSD

Although the roots of OpenBSD go all the way back to the 1970s and the early days of UNIX development, OpenBSD has since evolved into a leading UNIX system that has a strong following and is deployed in many places around the world. UNIX first forked off into BSD in the late 1970s and then again into FreeBSD and NetBSD in the early 1990s. Theo de Raadt, still the current project leader, split NetBSD into OpenBSD in October 1995 and released the 2.0 version of OpenBSD in mid-1997. This new flavor was designed to be ultra-secure and elegant in design.

OpenBSD shares a great deal with FreeBSD and NetBSD, and the development team has added many well-known packages for use on systems such as OpenSSH and pf. OpenBSD is a different system from Linux, but most UNIX applications that work under Linux are or will be available for OpenBSD systems.

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