: OpenBSD 3.2">
Executive Summary: OpenBSD 3.2
| Usability |
Good |
| Capability |
Good |
| Performance |
Fair |
| Interoperability |
Good |
| Manageability |
Fair |
| Scalability |
Fair |
| Security |
Excellent |
Organizations that lack the hardening skills to lock down a mass-market operating system and those that use hardware firewalls will find OpenBSDs small footprint and secure-out-of-the-box approach attractive.
COST ANALYSIS
Purchase price is obviously not a barrier, since OpenBSD is free. The costs of the system are in maintaining it, especially when updates are released, because applying them is not a point-and-click operation. However, with hardware firewalls costing tens of thousands of dollars, OpenBSD can really save on capital expenditures.
(+) Secure by default; built-in packet filter provides powerful firewall abilities, traffic forwarding and network address translation features; centralized configuration settings; updates issued quickly when vulnerabilities are found; large collection of prepackaged applications.
(-) No software update agent; older versions usually are not maintained for more than one year; gets little attention from software developers or big system vendors, so software is often not tested with or supported on OpenBSD; doesnt support SMP.
EVALUATION SHORT LISTLinuxFirewall hardwareOther BSD-based operating systemswww.openbsd.org 
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Purchase price is obviously not a barrier, since OpenBSD is free. The costs of the system are in maintaining it, especially when updates are released, because applying them is not a point-and-click operation. However, with hardware firewalls costing tens of thousands of dollars, OpenBSD can really save on capital expenditures.
(+) Secure by default; built-in packet filter provides powerful firewall abilities, traffic forwarding and network address translation features; centralized configuration settings; updates issued quickly when vulnerabilities are found; large collection of prepackaged applications.
(-) No software update agent; older versions usually are not maintained for more than one year; gets little attention from software developers or big system vendors, so software is often not tested with or supported on OpenBSD; doesnt support SMP.
