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Originally Posted by kinglear
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Greetings, I'm a nooby Ubuntu user, but I like .pbi waaay more than .deb so I'm thinking of switching to PC-BSD. I just have some general questions and things I need confirm can be done on PC/BSD.
1) Is it possible to encrypt the partition/drive PC-BSD is installed on, and decrypt it on the fly? Ubuntu lets you do this using the alternative text installer. I know several other distros allow you to this in the installer as well. However, even if they don't there's usually a procedure that can be followed to accomplish this. So, if the PC-BSD installer doesn't give this option is it still possible to encrypt the OS after installing it?
2) I know truecrypt has no port on BSD. A linux kernel is required to run truecrypt. Has anyone been able to get it running anyway or is anyone working on an unofficial port? If no, than does gnupgp and Kgpg let you encrypt an entire drive on the fly? Is there any encryption software available for BSD that can be installed on PC-BSD, even if there isn't a .PBI, that will allow me to encrypt disks on the fly?
3) Is ndiswrapper available for PC-BSD? As I understand it, ndiswrapper comes with PC-BSD. Can anyone confirm this for me?
4) Is it possible to mount, read, and write to an NTFS partition in PC-BSD (Either out of the box or by installing software like ntfs-3 config)?
5) Is it possible to install apps ment for other BSD operating systems if there is no .PBI for the app you want?
6) What filesystem does PC-BSD use?
That pretty much covers it. The most pressing issues for me are 1) and 2). I would think 1) can be accomplished even if there's a complicated procedure to follow...
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My answers
1. Do not really know what are you talking about. Is your question related to security or partition?
By the way PC-BSD is not a distro of GNU/Linux but of FreeBSD which is entirely different operating system.
2. Again I am not sure what are you talking about. Cryptography is possible but I have more experience in using cryptography in OpenBSD than in FreeBSD. I can crept everything in OpenBSD.
3. Yes but FreeBSD version of Ndis is not as good as Linux. It seems that there is just not enough interest in FreeBSD community for such desktop oriented things.
4. YES
5. pbi are really alternative to real FreeBSD packaging system which is ports. I personally would not use it. Ports are essentially make files which enable you to download source file, compile and install with all dependencies. That might be a
lengthy procedure. Alternatively you can install binaries with pkg_add -r package-name
but real FreeBSD people would not mix those two and binary packages are most of time available many months latter.
Debian RPM packaging system is excellent and if you like binaries (which is faster) probably better than FreeBSD packages.
Ports are ports. Either you like them or FreeBSD or Gentoo(Linux) are not really for you.
They do get you optimal performance though and you can choose compilation option unlike
binary packages which are pre-compiled with very conservative options and intended to be used on as many systems as possible.
I have no idea why would you need any OpenBSD package (currently only available 4300) or
NetBSD packages (around 8000) as FreeBSD has 18000 packages and the Debian is only
Linux Distro that has more packages. I have never asked this question. I have
however tried to run FreeBSD packages on OpenBSD and that is non-trivial thing.
Running Linux packages is possible on FreeBSD. Many are ported but there are some issues due to the fact that Linux has switched to 2.6 kernel. FreeBSD still uses Linuxinator
compatible to Fedora 4 or 5 I forgot which is 2.4 Linux kernel.
I had recently issue trying to compile Linux-Sype on one of my FreeBSD boxes as new version 1.4 uses Linux kerenl 2.6. I chose easy solution to downgrade port to 1.2 version of Skype instead of manually tuning kernel for packages which are made for 2.6 Linux kernel.
6. UFS (Unix File System) of course.
It is not the same as Linux ext2fs
If security is your number one priority your choice should be OpenBSD. The only thing that comes close to it in Linux world is SELinux. Everything else in Linux world seems to OpenBSD people almost like Windows.
For optimal performance and great security the choice is FreeBSD. In particular if you want to run Workstation with X.
If you just want to run Appache server without X or PF you might want to use OpenBSD but it is overkill.
You can use OpenBSD on the Desktops (I have just out of curiosity) but getting all I have
in FreeBSD is just too painful.
Noob Ubuntu User thinking of Switching to PC-BSD
Linear Mode
