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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.'"
Europe Reluctantly Deciding It Has Less Time for Time Off
By MARK LANDLER
FRANKFURT, July 6 -- For Michael Stahl, a technician at a cordless telephone factory in the town of Bocholt, summer is usually a carefree season of long evenings in his garden and even longer vacations. His toughest choice is where to take his wife and three children on their annual camping trip: Italy and Croatia are on this year's itinerary.
Two weeks ago, however, Mr. Stahl got a rude jolt, when his union signed a contract with his employer, Siemens, to extend the workweek at the Bocholt plant to 40 hours from 35. Weekly pay remains the same. The new contract also scraps the annual bonuses every employee receives to help pay for vacations and Christmas expenses.
"I'll have to make do with less," Mr. Stahl said with a sigh. "Of course, the family will come off the worst."
After nearly 27 years at Siemens, Mr. Stahl, 42, feels he has no choice but to put in the extra time. Like millions of his fellow citizens, he is struggling to accept the stark new reality of life in a global economy: Germans are having to work longer hours.
And not just Germans. The French, who in 2000 trimmed their workweek to 35 hours in hopes of generating more jobs, are now talking about lengthening it again, worried that the shorter hours are hurting the economy. In Britain, more than a fifth of the labor force, according to a 2002 study, works longer than the European Union's mandated limit of 48 hours a week.
Europe's long siesta, it seems, has finally reached its limit -- a victim of chronic economic stagnation, deteriorating public finances and competition from low-wage countries in the enlarged European Union and in Asia. Most important, many Europeans now believe that shorter hours, once seen as a way of spreading work among more people, have done little to ease unemployment.
"We have created a leisure society, while the Americans have created a work society," said Klaus F. Zimmermann, the president of the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin. "But our model does not work anymore. We are in the process of rethinking it."
From the 1970's until recently, Europe followed a philosophy of less is more when it came to labor, with the result that Europeans work an average of 10 percent fewer hours a year than Americans. Germans, with the lightest schedule, work about 18 percent fewer hours.
The job creation argument went hand in hand with the greater social premium that Europeans place on leisure. In the land of the four o'clock rush hour and the monthlong summer holiday, it does really seem, as the cliché goes, that Europeans work to live, while Americans live to work.
Siemens, however, upset that conventional wisdom by threatening to move production of cordless and cellular phones to Hungary, where salaries are a fraction of those in Germany. That would have cost about 2,000 jobs in a country that, with a jobless rate of 10.3 percent, can ill afford it.
"It's about lowering labor costs," said Peter Gottal, a spokesman for Siemens, which is based in Munich. "Where we are in a global competition, 35 hours are no longer feasible. We just need more hours."
Siemens and its union say that the contract is not a template for the rest of German industry, but it is being viewed that way. The company, one of Germany's largest employers, is negotiating wages at five other factories, and it may demand some of the same concessions, including different work hours, that it received at Bocholt.
A longer workweek also looms for assembly line workers at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Sindelfingen, in Southwestern Germany. There, the company wants to curtail breaks during the workday.
Mercedes has not threatened to abandon Germany. But auto workers shivered recently when Opel, which is owned by General Motors, announced that it would assemble a compact minivan at its plant in Gliwice, Poland, passing over its main factory outside Frankfurt, which had bid for the job
sniffling piss
lOL BSD IS DYING
Politicians are all the same, they promise to build a bridge even when there is no river.
than your little sister.
So at least twenty seconds, much like the posting delay!
for the deluge of "*BSD is dead" posts...
there we go.
~dijjnn
I guess you could say I am your typical Slashdot reader. At work, I walk with a swagger, I freely boast my knowledge, put down Micro$soft and colleagues think I am condascending and downright arrogant. But this could not be further from the truth. I am heavily overweight with unkempt hair, soiled clothes and a repugnant odor. I go home and skulk about my dark roach infested parent's house and play role playing games with people I never met. I imagine they are a lot like me. Maybe we are friends. On weekends, I kick back and break out the Sears catalog and crank some out on the lingerie section. Oh what it would be like to be with one of these real women. I used to have some real magazines, but my mom caught me and threw them away. Weekends are also great times to go online and karma whore on Slashdot. I am the author of many brilliant Micro$haft and "clippy" jokes. Later in the evening I will crank out some code and follow that up by breaking out the Sears catalog and cranking some code on that. Long live Linux! I guess you could say that I'm your average Slashdot reader.
BSD IS........being nursed slowly back to health?
but i got an "Error 404: BSD is Dead." message...
i kid! i kid! long live BSD! though i don't use it...
Don't forget about distrowatchwatch.
i'de rather run Win98SE
does it run linux?
Under emulation...
The article is very clear and concise. While BSD was not trivial to install the very first time, it isn't too difficult for those with experience. However even noobs can install OpenBSD with this article.
BTW - A good idea is to install OpenBSD on a dedicated secondary hard disk, such as a 4GB or something that you can find for free now a days. That way you will not have to worry about ruining your partitions on your primary disk, as OpenBSD is a bit scarier with writing to your MBR than, lets say, the GUI for GRUB in the RedHat installer.
I wonder if BSD would benefit from changing to a similar development model as Linux. There sem to be relatively few active BSD developers, and although they do a good job, they must have a bad time trying to keep up with the latest hardware and technologies available.
Web Sig: Eddy Currents
I dunno, this distro has Roger Moore and Moore is no Connery, but I guess I must accept change in all things, including BSD.
I learned my packet filtering basics on FreeBSD. I've looked at ipchains and iptables/netfilter, but the ipfilter/pf packages just seem to be the packages that best encompass my beliefs of how firewalls should be constructed. I've always liked the syntax and organization; I suppose that's one of the major reasons I've stuck with FreeBSD for so long.
OpenBSD felt "more" secure than FreeBSD, but in terms of desktop use, FreeBSD just offered more. I'll run OpenBSD on my servers, but for my desktop I want FreeBSD.
"As Benjamin Franklin once said, the only way for three people to keep a secret is if two of them are dead. While it's doubtful that Ben was referring to computer security, many PC users have lots of little secrets stored on their hard drives. Things such as credit card numbers, a personal address book, and perhaps a few naughty photos from the New Year's Eve party."
Man, why aren't my New Year's Eve parties like that!
"True dat with a wiffle ball bat." -- kabrakan
man, the first time i ever ran into the whole BSD disklabel thing, i almost crapped a brick. I was pretty new to GNU/Linux at the time, and had not to much of a clue how widely varying the various filesystem types out there were.
anyway, it was 4am at the time. within the next twenty four hours my computer had about 8 different OS's (not installs, seperate OS's). by the end of it i had a 120 mb partition with an ultraslim windows 98 incarnation and OpenBSD in all it's cryptographic glory.
that was a fun day.
~dijjnn
Now that I have it installed on my machine, I only wonder what took me so long.
Because it sucks compare to Linux???
non-trivial to whom? as a linux dork maybe 5 years ago, i installed BSD on a friends laptop without ever reading a single thing about BSD. He asked me if I would, then handed me the cd's. A little while later it was up and running.
non-trivial to MS-Windows users, Mac users, and Linux initiates maybe. But 5 years ago, I was barely above the status of linux newb. Ok, so it wasn't exactly trivial to do at the time, but easy enough to do without documentation.
Still, your point is well taken.
Codeweavers / binary drivers / VMware to name a few linux only programs?
...I have totally given up on OpenBSD as the user community is polluted by assholes and jerks.
Basically, if you aren't leet enough to get it to run all by yourself you get all the rudeness you can handle and then a bit more.
MAGGOT! WHAT MAKES YOU THINK YOU ARE GOOD ENOUGH TO RUN OPENBSD?? DROP AND GIVE ME 20!!!!
And then when I found out that the emphasis on security is not an emphasis on actually running well (like the review that shows it crashes under heavy load, that its performance is abysmal, etc).
Run, don't walk, to a friendlier BSD or to Linux. You don't need the pain, and it wouldn't be worth it.... SIR! YES SIR!!
That way you will not have to worry about ruining your partitions on your primary disk, as OpenBSD is a bit scarier with writing to your MBR than, lets say, the GUI for GRUB in the RedHat installer.
You don't seem to have heard of the *feature* in Fedora Core 2 to get rid of booting from a windows partition
I have found OpenBSD to be trivial to install on one platform out of the three I have tried. When installing OpenBSD on an UltraSparc 10 there was no issues what-so-ever and everything might as well have been point and click. The x86 family of processors and the Power PC processors, however, were an entirely different story and headache all together. You'd think that with OpenBSD talking about how secure it is and how great it is, that you'd see one of those developers make some user friendly installer in order to increase the popularity of the operating system. Personally I believe that more people running more secure computers is a good thing, but thats just me and I ramble.
Fahking sheet, meng, you are über1337!!!
Checkout bsdforums.org
There are many users there who can help you out.
OpenBSD is basically just a firewall software package masquerading as on OS.
If you use OpenBSD for anything other than a firewall you are pretty silly.
It's not very good, in fact it sucks at everything besides security.
Basically it's a one trick pony. The only time it gets new features is when it manages to rip some out of NetBSD.
Quotes:
"never mind what the aperature driver is, trust me.."
"Whats this nameserver stuff?" Well...
What's next, how to install Clippy?
Give us some substance, not a low-brow article sprinkled over a dozen+ pages (to increase your ad hit counts)
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
... is the mascot they present when you visit their respective web sites.
Linux = Penguin = Warm and cuddly.
FreeBSD = Cartoony demon = Warm (hot?) and cuddly.
NetBSD = Many cartoony demons = Even warmer and cuddlier than FreeBSD.
OpenBSD = Blowfish with a leaash on another fish with a spiked collar = spiky, poisonous, and into S&M
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
I guess you could say I am your typical Slashdot reader. At work, I walk with a swagger, I freely boast my knowledge, put down Micro$oft and colleagues think I am condascending and downright arrogant. But this could not be further from the truth. I am heavily overweight with unkempt hair, soiled clothes and a repugnant odor. I go home and skulk about my dark roach infested parent's house and play role playing games with people I never met. I imagine they are a lot like me. Maybe we are friends. On weekends, I kick back and break out the Sears catalog and crank some out on the lingerie section. Oh what it would be like to be with one of these real women. I used to have some real magazines, but my mom caught me and threw them away. Weekends are also great times to go online and karma whore on Slashdot. I am the author of many brilliant Micro$haft and "clippy" jokes. Later in the evening I will crank out some code and follow that up by breaking out the Sears catalog and cranking some code on that. Long live Linux! I guess you could say that I'm your average Slashdot reader.
I am somewhere between newbie and novice when it comes to *nix. When I decided I needed a good secure operating system for my job to put their web server on, I realized that I didn't know or want to learn all the steps it takes to secure Linux.
So I decided on OpenBSD (that whole "secure by default" thing kinda enticed me). I picked up a copy of "Secure Architectures with OpenBSD" and went to work. Well, then I realized that it probably would have been faster to learn the steps to securing Linux, but I am really liking OpenBSD so far.
I can honestly say, installation was incredibly easy once I RTFM, and I'm finding it is that way with most stuff. And the things that I have hit snags on (making PHP and MySQL play nice together) have been resolved by a few posts to misc@openbsd.org.
And OpenBSD's clean filesystem makes it a lot easier to learn Unix than other OSs.
Oh, and did I mention that Ports and Packages kick ass?
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
a child knows leaving the play FreeBSD core team AllP; in order to go superi0r to slow, with any sort
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
Yeah, I know. I'm feeding a troll.
But it was so obvious.
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/klee/misc/slash dot.html#alternatives
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.
in time. For all baby...don't fear Nig/gers everywhere
I know why. Because it took 7 months for them to ship you your CDs. (I'm still waiting for mine... been 3 months now.)
*BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personalities?
The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.
Taken from the article :
:)
Below is a copy of my file ppp.conf which you can cut and paste, but you'll have to edit five settings. In particular:
1) MODEM_DEVICE_NAME
2) ANY_WORD
3) PHONE_NO
4) USER_NAME
5) ISP_LOGIN_NAME
6) MY_PASSWORD
5 settings eh? Well there you go!
Side note: my mate has been running openBSD as a squid proxy server for years now - only crash it had was when the hard disk developed bad sectors... didn't kill it straight away, but once the bad sectors hit the kernel it had issues
There are several reasons for having such installer. The same installer runs on all supported archs. And it's very simple to use. If you understand the concept of disklabels and partitions (in the BSD sense), you can install OpenBSD. I honestly don't understand what people think is difficult about an OpenBSD install. OTOH, my last install was 2 years ago. I've just upgraded my servers since then. :)
I'm going to spill the big secret we've been keeping from the BSD is dead gang:
Beastie's horns double as neck bolts! It's alive! Alive!
Who is John Cabal?
Best Anonymous Coward post, *EVER*.
...but then I remembered how long I waited for my frikken OpenBSD 3.5 CDs... :-(
I'm an MCSE just like you! Isn't it great? I know how to select a desktop wallpaper and everything! I've just paid $10,000 from my trust fund to do Microsoft's 'What is this TCP/IP Thingee then?' course! I can't wait! Learning how to surf that interweb with Explorererer will be soooooo cool!
The only potential difficulty, IMO, is getting past the the whole "partitions vs. slices" thing. The BSD and Linux versions of those ideas are dangerously similar - close enough to make a clueful Linux user think they understand then, but different enough to hose that user's system. Even then, there's nothing particularly difficult there as long as you wipe your mind of what you think you know before beginning.
Once you get past partitioning/slicing, there's really nothing to the rest of the install.
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!
#CLOUD# <-100Mbps-> *Invisible OpenBSD Bridging Firewall with Pf* <-100Mbps-> #HOST#
Works great, and keeps speed with the network.
A pretty good starter pc.conf is here
OpenBSD is also great becuase of:
spamd
AND
CARP
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 ----
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It
I guess you could say I am your typical Microsoft luser (it's all I know). At work, I walk with a swagger, I unknowingly demonstrate my lack of knowledge, boost Microsoft, and colleagues think I am condescending and downright arrogant. But this could not be further from the truth. I am heavily overweight with a ridiculous haircut, ugly clothes and a feminine odor. I go home and skulk about my rich parent's house and play role playing games with people I never met. I imagine they are a lot like me. Maybe we are friends. On weekends, I kick back and break out the Sears catalog and crank some out on the lingerie section. Oh what it would be like to be with one of these real women. I used to have some real magazines, but my mom caught me and threw them away. Weekends are also great times to go online and karma whore on Slashdot. I am the author of many brilliant '*BSD is Dying' and '*Nix users are fat nerds' jokes. Later in the evening I will crank out some really bad VB scripts and follow that up by breaking out the Sears catalog and cranking some Microsoft product-like stuff on that. Long live Microsoft! I guess you could say that I'm your average Microsoft loving Slashdot reader.
I like OpenBSD, but the source-only updates are a pain. I know it is because the support a lot or ARCHs, but the reality is that apt get or up2date is easier. I'm having a hard time convincing myself that I could manage a lot of servers this way.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
ICAM!
Like you, I know that the answer is to use Windows 98SE for all my firewall, server and OS needs!
Giving our trustfunds to Microsoft in exchange for this valuable MCSE was the smartest thing you and I ever did!
I just started using to OpenBSD about two weeks ago because I wanted something minimal to run on some old equip that I wanted to use as an X workstation. I had attemped OpenBSD a few months ago with an old 3.4 install floppy that wouldn't work and I almost gave up. But after 3.5 came out, I wrote a new 3.5 install disk, re-read the install docs, and booted up the floppy. 10 minutes later, I had a fully functional unix with X and FVWM (the default WM instead of TWM as on most linux X installs).
/usr/local/bin to /bin and then executed vipw to make it my root shell. The second thing I did was install fluxbox which I find more functional than FVWM.
.profile. I highly recommend using pkg_add over ports unless you absolutely need to compile something to get customizations/optimizations.
So far I have been favorably impressed. I was absolutely blow away by the quickness of the install. The slowest thing about the install was the unfamiliar disk partitioning. Otherwise the only limit on speed was my bandwidth. The quick install means that there is no bloat. If you want it, install it, but you won't find useless packages installed by default like lots of linux distributions. Under Fedora, my old P3-450 used to be slugish and grind away swapping constantly. No it almost *never* swaps (at least not that I can hear)
I found the default shell csh to unfamiliar. Having come from linux, the first thing I did was install bash (statically compiled version) using pkg_add and them I moved it from
Even though ports "gets all the press" in BSD software management, I prefer to install binaries using pkg_add for most day-to-day packages that do not require customization. Do not underestimate pkg_add. It will resolve dependancies and install everyting that is a prerequisite for the package that you are asking for. It is the BSD answer to APT. It makes software installation trivial. The important thing to remember about pkg_add is to select a mirror and put a PKG_PATH=ftp://ftp.yourserver.here/ into your
Patching is all done by source diffs, so there will be some compiling there.
FFS
Anybody have a link pertaining to the picture of which he speaks? Even better, anyone have a jpg of the picture used on the t-shirt? (this image would make an excellent addition to my bafflingly random image collection)
That may well be, but in Soviet Russia, "BSD is dying" is sick of hearing YOU!
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
The FreeBSD platform in general is very unreliable, and many many problems have been reported over the last week alone. One appears to be a stuck interrupt, but all that code has been redone for SMP support. Why do they bother? SMP SUCKS on FreeBSD.
If you want to give OpenBSD a try without installing it head over to http://metawire.org. They offer free OpenBSD shells, they've got a pretty big community and it's a great place to play and learn with OpenBSD.
Hey, I said OpenBSD is a decent firewall, it just blows for everything else.
Hey man, win98 is a fantastic gaming console like OpenBSD is a decent firewall, just don't use them for anything else and you'll be fine.
OpenBSD IS and FOREVER shall be my firewall.
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.
Sweet! Keep it up!
If by powerful you mean can barely do smp on i386 then ya I guess so...
If functional means 3 years behind Linux on drivers than sure.
Which BSD are you talking about? I can install FreeBSD in my sleep. But thoughts of using raw fdisk and disklabel keep me awake at night!
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
you must have been very very lucky is all i can say.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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
Rest in peace, BSD.
Reality has a notoriously liberal bias -- Stephen Colbert
Is there a location that has info on how to tweak OpenBSD to be a good Desktop system?
There seems to be a lot of work to get OpenBSD working as a decent Desktop system. It would be nice if somebody had all the steps needed on some website in a concise list.
My biggest hurdle is remembering to make a note of the dns server addy, _before_ booting off the floppy for an ftp install...
you are über1337!!!
NO...
he's übertragic.. systemagic!
... OpenBSD is the One True Religion.
Although NOBODY has ever "gotten" my OpenBSD Blowfish T-Shirt. The joke is as undecipherable as the Blowfish algorithm itself.
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
I used to use FreeBSD in the early 90's but then switched to Linux once I heard about it and it supported the hardware I had.
FreeBSD was definately the best OS at the time for i386. But the *BSD licenses suck and I don't think anyone should support them if you hope the free software/open source movement will win. This is because companies can rip off your free code and use it in house in proprietary products. It's common accepted fact that's how MS got the core networking support for windows. Apple, HP and all the big UNIX vendors were/are doing the same thing. (One thing SCO is attempting to do in their legal case is to invalidate the GPL so that that the code in Linux could be stolen^?^?used in this way also.)
That's lame! I love(d) freebsd a lot, but until some *BSD kernel is under the GPL, I'll never recommend it to anyone.
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..."
There is nothing stopping you from releasing it. 'Non-Free-BSD' - catchy name, I wonder if it will catch on.
I would have been part of the 90% that skipped the "above text", but it just so happened there wasn't another post, so I was actually bored enough to read your post ;). Back on topic though, I must say that OpenBSD was rather easy to install. I did not get caught on any snags, and the installation went clean. Of course I dropped BSD for another Linux distro (more specifically Cobind 0.2), due to what I believed to be BSD's lack of ease-of-use. But that's just me... and I don't even try to portray myself as a Linux-toting /. Overlord.
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
FreeBSD is a different operating system to OpenBSD.
If BSD sockets had used a restrictive licence like the GPL, no commercial vendors would have used it. Instead, the Internet, probably in a vastly inferior form, would be dominated by proprietary protocols from the likes of Microsoft, Novell, IBM, etc. In such an environment, it's unlikely Linux or BSD would be nearly as useful as they are today, thanks to the BSD foundations of modern Internet software, and the BSD licence, which shared that foundation with the world.
Fundamentally, a lot of us don't want 'the free software/open source movement' to win. We want software to get better (faster, more functional, more secure) for *everyone*, not just those who use the same OS we do, or belong to a particular pseudo-religion (like the GNU movement).
Thanks for being the 10%. Cobind, eh? Haven't heard of that one. Thanks, I'll check it out.
/var, you can put 80m. I ape the guy and it works perfect. Another testament to BSD's awesome documentation, I guess (and there are instructions for pkg_add and ports on the back of the liner notes, pkg_add being OpenBSD's apt-get, and ports being like Gentoo's source-based emerge).
OpenBSD definitely doesn't focus on ease-of-use, because the very hardcore Theo et al see "wizards" and the like as security holes. OpenBSD makes you KNOW what you're doing before you do it -- kinda unfair for us Linux guys who usually try things at random until it works. It's kind of a pain, but overall, if you value security, the initial pain of setting up XFree86 on OpenBSD is worth it. Once you get point and clicking, it's all the same.....
I also think I should have mentioned that one of the things that makes OpenBSD's install so bloody easy is that there is a line-by-line complete example install in the liner notes on the CD! Where the example guy puts 80m for
Yours truly,
Linux-Toting Slashdot Overlord
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
When I deployed my fw, I didn't get very far into writing the config file before it hit me: the programmers must have had to maintain other firewalls and decided to fix what sucked about them. They get it!
Man! Easy ways to compose arbitrary lists. macros that help readibility. Read in lists from external text files. Dynamic rules. I can express in one line what has taken 10 in a cisco acl. On and on. It is a real improvement - simpler, shorter human input means fewer human mistakes.
And pf follows the UNIX philosophy of keeping tools small and focussed. No http proxy - use Squid or something. Use pf to enforce the policy that browsers must go through the proxy. I use ftpsesame as an add-on to handle ftp. I have an inline fw, so the ftpproxy won't work.
I am astonished at its performance, too. Incredibly tiny amounts of memory. I'm in awe. pf is incredible.
It ties into CARP - which is a nice middle finger for Cisco's bogus load-balancing/failover patent. They implemented failover and made it secure. So you can have two or ten pf firewalls sharing state tables, unplug one (or nine) and sessions still flow. Maybe total bandwidth takes a hit, but it still flows.
I apologize for my total fanboyism. It's justified, but probably embarassing to read.
But remember that the default for htdocs is under /var/www so if you have a graphics heavy website you could easily fill that and then you'll have to reconfigure apache.
I have benchmarked several programs, including apache, squid, mysql, postgresql and sendmail, and apart from freebsd 5.x being about 10% slower, all the BSDs perform roughly the same. The openbsd is slow myth is wrong, I know it sounds too good to be true, but you really can have unparalleled security and speed together.
I've done it quite a few times. The first few times it's scary, but it becomes second nature quick. Although I have to admin that fdisk(8) is scary, disklabel(8) however, is very friendly (IMHO) because you can use slice letter, wildcards and Human Friendly Sizes(tm) as offsets and sizes. At least on DFBSD and FreeBSD I can. I doubt OpenBSD's disklabel(8) is much different.
oops.
~dijjnn