[Midnightbsd-users] MidnightBSD vs GhostBSD

[Lucas Holt]

On 2/13/24 6:19 PM, Jason Long wrote:
> Hello,
> I have two questions:
> 1- I want to know what is the advantage of MidnightBSD compared to 
> GhostBSD?
>
> 2- Can MidnightBSD provide all the features of FreeBSD? For example, 
> can it be used as a server?
>
MidnightBSD is a bit different than GhostBSD in how we manage the 
project, and how the OS is built.  With both use code from FreeBSD, but 
in different ways.  Many of the FreeBSD features are available in both 
operating systems.  However, GhostBSD is primarily a bunch of scripts 
and custom installer to create a distro of FreeBSD with a desktop 
environment.  It's a bit easier to install and setup than MidnightBSD 
currently.   With MidnightBSD, we've customized the OS from the kernel 
and userland on up.  There are areas we haven't finished to our 
satisfaction yet, particularly installation and updates.   Many defaults 
are more desktop friendly though.  We also have a number of additions to 
the base system to make life easier such as a mksh, mined, spell(1), 
batt(1), mDNSresponder, ipfw with firewall enabled by default, and 
handle the desktop install phase after the initial boot.  We have our 
own package manager, graphical package manager app, security tools, etc.

MidnightBSD can be used as a server and we do use it that way. The 
project actually runs on a mix of MidnightBSD and FreeBSD based 
servers.   Most of the core infrastructure is running on MidnightBSD 
including sendmail, dns, bind, apache, dovecot, rsync, php, python, 
perl, this mailing list, jenkins, postgresql, mysql, redis, etc.   We 
have a mix of bare metal and VMs.

We use FreeBSD for bhyve VMs, however, MidnightBSD does have an older 
version of bhyve included so it's possible to run VMs of MidnightBSD, 
FreeBSD, Linux, etc.

MidnightBSD also has 2 different ports collections / packages available: 
mports (from our project) and Ravenports.  You can download and install 
packages from either and mix and match.


-- 
Lucas Holt
Luke at FoolishGames.com
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