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OpenBSD 3.6 Live

Posted by michael on from the keep-on-plugging dept.

An anonymous reader writes "There is a mounting excitement for the upcoming OpenBSD 3.6 release, as it is the first release that supports multiprocessor systems. To celebrate the event, ONLamp.com published an interview with several developers to discuss new features, tools, and future plans."

4 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Damn by NekkidBob · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well if you have enough to spare one, I'm sure a developer could use a multiproc sun box, check their wanted hardware list about donating one to further smp for sun.

  2. Apache on OpenBSD by jpkunst · · Score: 5, Informative

    Apache on OpenBSD always had a lot of security-related patches compared to the regular Apache (chroot for example), but it seems that Apache on OpenBSD can now be considered a real fork:

    After the 1.3.29 they decided to muck with their license, introducing stupid patent terms without understanding what they turned their license (that used to be a BSD-derived one) into with that, so we cannot import new versions unless they fix their license. It is not a big loss tho'. The Apache people have mostly given up on 1.3 anyway, and all that happened over the last years was bug fixes, documention work (actually, mainly translation), and some stupid code shuffling, that only made diffs bigger without improving anything. Now that it is certain that we don't have to worry about syncing to them any more, we can start making the mess of code readable tho'.

    JP

  3. OpenBSD 3.6 released by dhartmei · · Score: 5, Informative

    The official release has just happened. Here are the official announcement, the undeadly.org thread and a torrent for the i386 binaries (149MB, matching MD5 which might beat some of the mirrors). Cheers ;)

  4. Re:On this note by setagllib · · Score: 4, Informative

    The other BSDs have security levels. OpenBSD has a lot of things they don't, still, a large part of which is that it randomizes practically everything, making it very difficult for even a local attacker to know what the kernel is going to do next. They also yank out any external software that isn't getting properly treated against exploits, so their base package is still as firm as possible, and even ports are treated with great care.

    In practice, FreeBSD and NetBSD are about as hard to exploit remotely, but they don't take care of every possible exploit, so in theory there are still some holes. NetBSD is still a lot faster than OpenBSD (unless some miracle happened and I missed it) so a 'real world' server might benefit more, but for a stronghold of impenetrable security that doesn't need every last drop of performance, OpenBSD is the choice.

    Linux is nowhere near any of this. The code is sloppy and dirty (no, nobody can argue this, don't even try, just go read some yourself) and few distributions actually take security seriously. It does happen to perform better in many synthetic tests, and definitely on SMP, but the difference for most cases is so minimal that it's hard to understand why anyone would run Linux on a server and not a BSD.

    I put it down to hype. Business love to advertise their adoption of Linux and their entrance into open-source, because that's what customers want to hear, especially Linux zealots. The businesses (hell, even governments now) certainly aren't scientific about it, using an "operating system" (I still call Linux a kernel, up to you) mashed together from seemingly infinite and inconsistent projects and parents'-basement-developed hacks. The source shows this, hell even configuration shows this, but they seem to be okay with this so long as it sounds good. Or, and I wouldn't be surprised, they've never heard of BSD.

    --
    Sam ty sig.