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OpenBSD 3.0 Release, Interview with Theo
mvw writes: "Here is an interview with OpenBSD's Theo de Raadt. Interesting is his comment on Soft Updates and the comparison to the rivaling Journaling file systems technology. Further he links to a very interesting paper by some Soft Updates researchers." And although OpenBSD 3.0 has an "official" release date of December 1 for whatever reason, it seems to be available by FTP or CD already. Lots of changes since 2.9.
And although OpenBSD 3.0 has an "official" release date of December 1 for whatever reason, it seems to be available by FTP or CD already.
Probably because they want to avoid a fiasco like the last tremendous release mess that michael caused.
It's not uncommon for "official" releases to be after the initial release. It's like when a large department store has a "GRAND OPENING". In many cases, the GRAND OPENING is about a week after the store actually opens. Or if the store opens during the week, the GRAND OPENING will be on that weekend.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
The installer can still ask the same questions, but in a more user friendly manner.
Why does a "more user friendly" installer have to be a GUI? What is there about a GUI that makes things easier? I've asked this question before in other forums, but I've never gotten a straight answer.
To be sure, there are many advantages to a GUI, but I don't see where "user friendly" has anything to do with it.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Besides, adding GUI doesn't necessarily represent a "dumbing down" of the product. The installer can still ask the same questions, but in a more user friendly manner.
I see that as being a pointless waste of effort.
Why would it be good to work on a graphical installer (which entails difficult and failure-prone things such as video device detection) that does exactly the same think as a console installer?
The only benefit is that it would look prettier - installation would still remain just as "difficult"[1].
The utilitarian console installer works fine, and I see no reason waste man-hours on changing it, when that same time could be spent improving important things.
Cute graphical installers are just frippery.
C-X C-S
[1] Difficult in quotes because I've done several OpenBSD installs and never found it to be any more difficult to install than Linux or NT.
One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How
enthusiastic is our support for UNIX?
Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many
years ago. Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines.
Ten percent of our VAXs are going for UNIX use. UNIX is a simple
language, easy to understand, easy to get started with. It's great for
students, great for somewhat casual users, and it's great for
interchanging programs between different machines. And so, because of
its popularity in these markets, we support it. We have good UNIX on
VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s.
It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will
run out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and
will end up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming.
With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and
quickly check that small manual and find out that it's not there. With
VMS, no matter what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of
documentation -- if you look long enough it's there. That's the
difference -- the beauty of UNIX is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS
is that it's all there.
-- Ken Olsen, President of DEC, 1984
I read that T.Deraadt email thread when I first looked at OpenBSD, and my initial impression was that Theo had a real baaaaadddd attitude. I do know for a fact that a lot of the NetBSD folks were upset to see him leave and fork off his own version of the OS, and to lose him as a developer. But in reading his email he obviously has a problem with taking any criticism, and had no problem with jumping down someone's throat with a flamethrower and foul language. Denial, its not just a river in Egypt...
Not that I wouldn't use OpenBSD, or any other operating system that met my technical needs, whatever the personality of the people involved. I've dealt with enough bad attitudes from commercial OS vendors in my years in the industry to be able to deal with it if I have to. It just seems that *BSD has an extra heaping helping of bad attitudes that make commercial vendors look like pikers.
If you *really* read that email thread, you would see the attitude loud and clear. "We don't think that it helps anything for you to tell someone he's a f**khead when he's posting a message trying to help with the OS development." "F**K YOU, *I* want control of the source and if you don't like it I'll fork my own off!"
That's my impression of it... He sounded like an immature little upset kid to me. The development of any of the O.S. OS's is a group effort, and having one person think they have all the answers and have to be the one in control is dead wrong. So, now he *has* control of his own fork of BSD, and lost the ability to maintain many of the various platform ports because he has no developers. Thus, the OpenBSD page says that for a VAX port, for instance, "support can be easily ported over from NetBSD". Why these problems are so prevalent under FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD remains something of a mystery. These systems seem to be self selective in their attraction to weirdos and big egos.
The split had nothing to do with the quality of his coding work, and everything to do with his nasty attitude towards people... and NOT just the people of NetBSD Core, but other people who were just civilians trying to help out, or looking for help. No wonder BSD has lost.
yum. sorry, I can't resist.
1) logging to paper; so the cracker can't totally erase his trail
2) backup to paper; so you have some recourse if your system config is massively hosed AND your magnetic media is toast
and, wait for it...
3) SWAPPING to paper; because you can! (just point your swapfile at
The Autonomous Cow. Moo.