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OpenBSD Review at DistroWatch
jpkunst writes "Robert Storey at DistroWatch com has written an in-depth and favorable review of OpenBSD: OpenBSD - For Your Eyes Only. 'The first OpenBSD memento I ever saw was a T-shirt with a picture of a cop chasing a script kiddie. That image remained etched in my mind for well over a year before I finally got my hands on a copy of this fine OS. Now that I have it installed on my machine, I only wonder what took me so long.'"
If you feel that you haven't had any security issues for that long, maybe you have and just don't know about them or, perhaps you haven't had those computers connected to the internet....
That's because everyone's sick of fucking hearing it!! No, you're not funny. No, you're not original. Every single thread has a post about how BSD is dying, and now every single thread has a post about how there's going to be posts about BSD is dying. It's old, it's offtopic. Just shut up.
what do i do, oh slashdot moderators, to please you in your infinite wisdom?
Stop worrying about moderation and stop whining about karma. Thanks in advance.
The short answer is NO!
The fact is, the BSD development model is what leads to the quality of BSD systems. If you want the Linux mode, well, thats what Linux is for. We WANT the BSD model.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Just read the man pages. Amazing how down to earth and straightforward things can be if there's a group focus on simplicity. Everything is laid out in plain English. Setting up my OpenBSD box as a DHCP server took less time than doing the same thing using the GUI on my Linksys wireless AP. That's including reading the man page.
This guy is way out there
The development models (it would be more accurate to refer to them as "developer management styles") are, in practice, quite similar. For all the talk of "the bazaar" model, the core of Linux is largely created by a small number of highly skilled developers. The BSDs just formalize this fact by publicly identifying "core" teams. Both have a cloud of lesser developers contributing. By identifying a core team the BSDs seem to have more control over the cloud, everybody knows where patches are supposed to go, patches are accepted and rejected, etc.
So much of this comes down to psychology so I could be way off base. In my opinion the more formal approach of the BSDs has lead to higher quality, with only a small delay in hardware support.
Serve Gonk.
I'm reading this on an openBSD system now. This is also the first time I managed to get on the internet using this system. I don't have much documentation other than the man pages. I'm hedging my bets a little on the whole SCO thing. I love linux, but if I must use BSD because of SCO, so be it. I am in general, pleased with the system, but I know my way around linux much better. The openBSD is on a dual boot machine, with the other os being Slackware. The OpenBSD install was somewhat of a stressful thing, as I didn't want to screw up the Slackware, and the install was a good bit different than a linux install.
I'm not seeing the problem here.
OpenBSD = Blowfish with a leaash on another fish with a spiked collar = spiky, poisonous, and into S&M.
And that's the way we like it baby...oh yeah...OH YEAH...!
The man pages on BSD simply rock. As opposed to the man pages on most Linux distros, many of which say, "This hasn't been updated since the dawn of time, you should be using our proprietary hypertext system 'info' to get your information, dumbass." Not including the ones that were taken (as is allowed under the BSD license) directly from the BSD folk, of course. And most tools written by people influenced by their system provide equally usable man pages. Its a great cycle of documentary bliss! Or something. Either way, its pretty cool.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Part of what makes the BSD's what they are is the surrounding 'development model'.
If you change it to be more like Linux, you would have a product more like Linux and loose what makes BSD, BSD...
Neither is right/wrong, just different.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
And it's rude jerks like this who keep regular people away from BSD.
Are BSD users really that prickly?
Yes. And so are the Linux users, and the Mac users, and the Windows users, and the BeOS users, and the Amiga users, and the OS/2 users and the AS/400 users, and the...
Did you just land on Earth or something? Everyone down here thinks thinks their idea is best and feels the need to tell someone about it.
# emerge clue-human
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Yes, because we all know that the more developers we throw at a project, faster it gets done.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
Bull! OpenBSD is not just for firewalls! That's a *myth*! OpenBSD is a fully functional general-purpose OS, just like any other Unix. I've found this out after 5-plus years sticking with Debian, only to get tired of their slowing-to-a-halt release cycle and arrogant mentality. The difference being, OpenBSD are very conscious of the dangers of C programming, and strive for best programming practices, preventing the weekly buffer overflows Linux users are so used to. Plus, a proactive security stance. What you get is a bunch of realistic, rational developers and a powerfull, functional, secure OS.
It's kind of sad how any mention of BSD degenerates into a "is it dead yet?" discussion here on /.
Seriously folks, BSD is a lot older than Linux, it has survived the rise and fall of quite a few inferior as well as superior OSes, it will survive Windows and it might even survive Linux. My point is: Who cares? It works, it is stable, it is fast, it is really free and it is available right now.
Oh, and let's not forget the fact that when you download a BSD you download a complete OS, designed from the bottom up, not a kernel with a collection of userland programs from all over the place.
Best of all: In the BSDs you don't end up tripping over the kitchen sink when all you wanted was to install a fast, secure and reliable server.
Enough already. Read the review, take OpenBSD or one of the other BSDs for a test drive and make up your own mind.
G
I got OpenBSD running the first time I tried it (2.x); I'll let everyone here in on my secret - I READ THE INSTRUCTIONS THAT POPPED UP ON MY SCREEN.
That's it. When your computer asks you a question, read the paragraph above it explaining the question before you just hit 'Enter' without thinking. This tip actually works for every OS. When my mom can't figure out how to use her email or something, I make her actually read the questions her app pops up before she impatiently hammers the 'enter' key to get through. And she realizes that nearly EVERY app is user-friendly enough to use.
Ironically, about 90% of you skipped half of the above text and just went on to the next post.
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
Well, it depends on what you mean by "a good desktop system". I think OpenBSD is a great desktop system pretty much straight out of the box (use it as my desktop at work and home). Pretty much everything you need you will find in the ports tree (most will have pre-built packages on the CDs). I've used Linux and OpenBSD side by side for some time and the only things I can do with Linux that I can't do with OpenBSD are: hardware 3D acceleration (no OpenBSD drivers) and running certain binary only Linux apps. I think the high security of OpenBSD is at least as important on the desktop as in firewalls these days. Imagine how much less spam and worms we would have floating around if everyone had nice hardened desktops.
Here's what I do for my OpenBSD desktop:
- install the msttcorefonts package (from ports tree) for nice fonts
- install Mozilla (again, ports tree)
- install my mp3 and ogg utilities (ditto)
- install mplayer (ditto ditto)
I really don't need much else. To see a full list of my packages look here. If you want a pretty desktop I recommend installing the latest FVWM (2.5.?) and FVWM Themes from fvwm.org. Then hand tune your fvwm rcfiles.Serve Gonk.
One of the things I like about OpenBSD is their policy of not accepting things with half-assed licensing into their base distribution.
-- All that's left of me, is slight insanity, whats on the right, I don't know. -- Bob Mould