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Re: [tor-talk] best distro to use Tor



BSD is great, but its does not have the same level of hardware support as
Linux.

That's correct, BSD has less buggy, fuller and faster support of some hardware
than Linux ;) If you've got rare, fad, small, mobile or closed hardware, expect
to have to read the hardware list of many OS before choosing.

While I agree that BSD is great with stable old BIOS-based hardware, it is not catching up to modern UEFI-based firmware, so is becoming less useful on modern hardware. So, I'd probably say "any modern hardware", not just "rare, fad, small, mobile or closed hardware". :-(

BSD distros don't support UEFI-based firmware yet. So BSD is great if you have a legacy BIOS system, but not on a UEFI-based system. If your OEM built a usable class2 hybrid UEFI system with BIOS CSM, then maybe you can boot BSD in Legacy Boot mode.

Compared to BSD, Linux has much better EFI support. Corp-controlled distros run by RedHat, SuSE, and Canonical -- all of whom are UEFI Forum members -- work well with UEFI. Community-based distros have varying levels of UEFI support, no other Linux distros are UEFI Forum members. Of the privacy distros, I think Liberte was first to support UEFI, and perhaps Tails may work now.

Of the BSDs, it appears FreeBSD at least has a plan for UEFI support, but it AFAICT it isn't working.

BTW, UEFI-based systems have a full IPv4/IPV6 network stack, with PXE remote boot and WS-Management remote admin/control, and tools like Perl and Telnet baked-in, so make sure your firmware isn't spewing packets before Linux and Tor loads. :-)

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