FreeBSD or OpenBSD for Python?

[Eddie Corns]

Patrick Useldinger <p at trick.lu> writes:

>Hi All,
>I am looking for alternatives to my current Linux OS, and am currently
>evaluating both FreeBSD and OpenBSD.
>Has anyone got a strong point for or against one of these OSes,
>specifically regarding Python? I am especially interested in 
>- the ease of compiling CPython
>- the thread support (both for Python and in general)
>- running Twisted.

I went through this recently, BSD is much nicer in many ways.  I loaded both
OpenBSD and FreeBSD.  FreeBSD seems easier in most respects and I've pretty
much settled on that.  If only I could do the same at work and get away from
this RedHat crap :(

So, for FreeBSD: If you're network connected, keeping up to date with
ports/packages is easy, I'm still trying to find out about non network
connected machines.  For python, everything seems to work as expected.  I
I haven't tried twisted yet (it's on my todo list - I'll get round to it about
the same time they explain it !) but I wouldn't expect any problems.

However, if you wanted the extra security of OpenBSD, my experience was that
it was only a little extra work (sometimes none) for OpenBSD.  Unless you want
the very latest versions of something, in which case you could either be in
for a wait or a lot of work.

There are definitely pros and cons on both sides though, for instance, I seem
to have a flaky motherboard that locks up my shiny new drive (see below).
OpenBSD just quietly downgraded the connection (something I didn't even know
was possible) and allowed me to carry on working, with other systems I have to
manually downgrade it in the bootup sequence.

Actually, what I did for my home PC was buy a 120Gb drive (they're pretty
cheap now - cheaper than a copy of Windows for example) and partition it into
4 holding: OpenBSD (which must be 1st), FreeBSD, Debian and a space for Hurd.
Along with RedHat 8.? on the original disk.  This gives me a lot of
flexibility for trying things out in different systems.  It's rare for me to
not use FreeBSD.

Cheers,
Eddie