Slashdot Mirror
OpenBSD 3.7 Released
pgilman writes "It's official: OpenBSD
3.7 has been released.
There are oodles of new features, including tons of new and improved wireless
drivers (covered
here
previously),
new ports for the Sharp
Zaurus and SGI,
improvements to
OpenSSH,
OpenBGPD,
OpenNTPD, CARP, PF, a new OSPF daemon, new functionality for the already-excellent ports & packages system, and lots more. As always, please support the
project if you can by buying CDs and
t-shirts, or grab the goodness from your local mirror."
buy the CD. Dedicate 1 HDD to OpenBSD. Then follow the printed instructions. i avoided OpenBSD for a lond time because of FUD like this. Found out that it is probably one of the best *nix distros there is. Simple, well documented, and WORKS. Also the pors tree is clean and smooth. Almost as easy as apt-get.
Perhaps you should widen your experience beyond i386 and Linux. It's confusing because the same word partition (on i386) is used to refer to both DOS partion (fidsk) and filesystem (disklabel).
Pronounceable acronyms are rediculous (almost as much so as the multitude of worthles acronyms).
I want to MURDER people who say "Sequel" instead of S-Q-L, "Say-Taa" instead of S-A-T-A, and especially "ERRRRRK" instead of I-R-C.
If the acronym was intended to be pronounced, the author would have done something like the SAMBA project, where SMB was the acronym, but they filled in the blanks to actually MAKE it a word.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
I'm primarily a Linux user who does some OpenBSD on the side. I don't use GUIs that much, I configure everything by hand, and I do a lot of coding. I've written kernel stuff.
I can tell you that it is clear that OpenBSD is simpler, more consistent, and just plain makes more sense than Linux. Coming from Linux, OpenBSD is more than a joy to work with.
Linux is very ad-hoc. It just sort of "grew." It was developed in many places by many people, few of them working together with the big context of "the Linux system" in mind. The pace of development is very rush-rush-rush, and for example many times, the approach of the kernel developers is "let's shove this out to userland and let distributors worry about writing a script to make sense of it."
OpenBSD is the opposite. People working on OpenBSD core packages have a specific kernel, userland, config script, etc., etc. in mind. There is a concept of "the OpenBSD system" and it is fairly consistent. People are working together to acheive that goal. The pace of development is more relaxed, and the people working on the userland are some of the same folks writing the kernel. So you don't get the sort of ad-hoc interfaces that make no sense to anything but a shell script (i.e. iptables), you get something which at every level, the user can get an idea how it works (i.e. pf).
Or take wireless. Until recently I had a Linux box set up as a wireless access point. To do that I had to play around with different kernel modules, some of them shipping with the kernel, some of them not, ad nauseum until something worked. This was very annoying.
Awhile ago I put the very same wireless card in an OpenBSD box whose software had not been updated in a few years. The card just worked! Without rebuilding or changing any config files, the card was detected.
Then, I put a 2-line file in
The fact is, OpenBSD just does things the Right Way. People say OpenBSD's big strength is security, but that's slightly missing the point. OpenBSD's strength is correctness. From correctness yields stability, security, and all around ease of use.
You can call me a fanboy, but I say OpenBSD wins hands down against any Linux distribution, with the only exception being that Linux generally supports more hardware, quicker.
It's not FUD. There are plenty of cases where dedicating a HDD is not an option, requiring a separate disk is unacceptable. I installed slackware from zero non-windows experience, hadn't used any disk partitioners at all, ever. When I nuked that (that was my learning not to run as root stage, but that's another story) I had an openbsd cd around, so I tried to install it. Had a windows partition on the disk I couldn't get rid of, but enough free space if I could figure out how the hell to partition it. Never managed to.
I am trolling
MOD PARENT UP!!! The parent makes a very good point. Correctness is an often-overlooked quality that should exist in every piece of widely-accepted FOSS. I hope for the day that high muckety-mucks in the FOSS community actually start caring about correctness.
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
But OBSD is more problematic on my web/mail server. The ports collection is nowhere near as comprehensive as FreeBSD's (or Debian & Gentoo for that matter) and so you'll likely scrounge for upstream versions of more obscure packages.
Worse, OBSD's Apache is stuck at version 1 (Theo has issues with the Apache 2 license) and more and more software wants Apache 2. I guess you can fix that, but it's back upstream you go me bucko. Oh, and OBSD's default Apache installation is chrooted, which you'll probably defeat after your first CGI integration experience.
I like OBSD a lot, and I don't mean to suggest that it's only good for embedding in a router. But if your application requirements are remotely bleeding edge (and you want to save yourself some work at the risk of some unquantifiable security exposure) then you might want to look elsewhere.
It's only "hard" if you don't understand what you are doing.
:)
Of course, OpenBSD is not for people who don't understand what they are doing.
Read the docs so you understand properly, and it is no longer hard
The moving cursor writes, and having written, blinks on.
I think the point is to get "lamers" (MSCs maybe?) to be willing to install OpenBSD. They have to be willing to try it first, then you can criticize them.
Reasonable people actually mix the two. I'd never say "sequel" instead of "ess-que-ell", but everyone I know will say "eerrk" (not "erk", I live in Norway where we actually pronounce the letters properly, i.e. roughly like the Romans did). "Koomm port" for "COM port" is pretty common. "Ledd" for "LED" as well, or "Mooss-fett" for "MOSFET". I find that people generally treat pronouncable initialisms as acronyms, and I find it perfectly acceptable. I'd want to strangle someone if they went "dunaah" instead of DNA or "hittippp" instead of HTTP, but people don't do that, so I'm content.
The first time I installed it, it took a few attempts. Had to figure out the networking, etc. (I had problems with Redhat 6.2 as well, the installer was great, but no tools that I could find to edit them until I learned my way around the text files).
:)
However, after 3 attempts when we got the hang of it, I looked at my partner (it was our first webserver for our little company) and we were like COOL. Once you get the handle of the installer and ports, its a DREAM, much EASIER than the Redhat what do I want and where is it problem.
That said, RHEL 4 is pretty slick, but nowhere near as impressively simple as OpenBSD + Ports. The installed OpenBSD system is SO FUCKING clean its not funny, and then you add the few ports, nice and customized, that you want.
One day I build 4 OpenBSD machines. Build the (customized) packages on one and distributed, and it was REALLY, REALLY, REALLY nice).
It's a great system, but you gotta really be a Unix-lover. If you want the click-click install, the Linux distros are great, but with OpenBSD I understand what is going on with my system.
That said, you can just TRY to get my OS X Powerbook away from me...
Alex
He didn't bother to check what the torrents are. They are a mirror of what is on the official ftp sites. I just downloaded them and verified their MD5 checksums with the MD5 file on a second level mirror.
I don't even understand why you're fighting with this guy. I use OpenBSD, you use OpenBSD, we both think it's great. If they want to troll in OpenBSD related slashdot threads that's their social problem, not ours. I'd prefer if the trolling/negative crap went ignored and got modded into oblivion.
-If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.