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OpenBSD 4.0 Pre-orders are Available
fuzzyping1 writes "Pre-orders for OpenBSD 4.0 are now available in the online store. Five architectures on three CDs in a soft-shell DVD case. Check out the highlights of OpenBSD 4.0. This new release includes support for many new wireless chipsets, the UltraSPARC III platform, a new load-balancing feature for network trunks, and much, much more."
OpenBSD is actually turning into a very usable OS. I find it funny when I hear criticism of OBSD, it usually comes from people that have never tried using it. If you have never tried OpenBSD I suggest you start here: http://www.openbsd101.com/ Then make your judgements.
One thing that bothers me about hardware RAID support in linux is the lack of a single set of management/monitoring tools that will work with every driver. With OpenBSD 4 you can just use sensord.
OpenBSD doesn't have quite the hardware coverage Linux does in this area, but who wants to use stuff like aacraid anyway when you have to troll the net for closed-source Dell tools to check your array status?
Anyway, thanks again, OpenBSD team. Good work.
Hands in my pocket
They like to get a bunch of preorders so the guy burning the DVD's knows whether to go buy a 50 DVD spindle or a 100 DVD spindle.
GNU RCS has been replaced with OpenRCS.
Interesting. the GNU RCS code is kind of an ugly mess (one reason it's stagnated, one reason it's had so many vulnerabilities). For local stuff, RCS is nice and simple, but I don't know why anyone would use CVS when much better alternatives now exist.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Why isn't the BSD section no longer listed on the left hand Sections menu? The Slashdot bias against BSD has gone on far too long. Editors, bring back the BSD section!
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
My guess? The people who actually have VAX machines and care about them, made the changes. Not some guy who has one or two alphas.
Lots of other folks wrote new bits that work fine on x86, etc. It's not like the VAX updates were the only ones made. Why complain about people writing additional features for machines they use just because you don't use them?
Not every architecture they support can take a DVD drive. Also, can you imagine trying to get a single DVD that is bootable on PPC, i386/amd64, and sparc/sparc64? A lot of us run OBSD on Sun gear.
Wow. Seriously, wow. That MUST be deliberately misleading.
The BSD licence means that the authors can't, even if they wanted to, withhold security patches from you and nobody else. You can just get the patch from someone else who has it.
Furthermore, OpenBSD asking for donations is no difference from Mozilla getting donation, OpenOffice getting corporate support or MySQL having a corporate company employing its development team. In fact OpenBSD's model is probably less influenced by profit agenda than all of the abovementioned projects.
What's more, they manage to keep up with OpenBSD's reputation of begin perhaps the most secure operating system available to consumers, bar none. And all this in their spare time, putting up with FUD like what you've just spouted, and not getting half the recognition they deserve. If you ask me, they are the knights of the open source world. Or something.
I hate printers.
That's ok - it's not uncommon that software is priced cheaper in third-world countries.
Aside from the joy of it for those that are so inclined, the main reason for working on other architectures is because it often brings to light subtle errors in code--particularly in the compiler--because of the differences in the hardware's instructions and such.
In the case of the VAX and Alphas, both out-dated platforms to many people, they've both been quite good at making coding errors surface, so they're very useful for that if nothing else.
If memory serves in fact, one of the OpenBSD devs, Miod, fixed such an error in the compiler that was picked up because the VAX puked in building X on the same compiler instructions that other platforms were perfectly willing to tolerate.
In the end it produces a better product for all of us since it can often help developers find and fix bugs--especially the hard-to-find and hard-to-duplicate varities. That's pretty cool.
Running 'Nix is like owning a Lightsaber. It's "a more elegant weapon for a more civilized time."
FWIW (not much) I usually buy one copy of OpenBSD whenever a new version is released, if for no other reason than to support OpenSSL development. You may not be an OpenBSD fan, but if you're running Linux, you're probably also running OpenBSD-derived software.
Actually, if the developers write a bug fix, they can withhold security patches from you. The BSD license gives them the power to distribute patched software in any way they please. This means they could fix a bug and decide to relicense the fixed release in whatever way they see fit, even as closed source proprietary binary blob. In general the BSD license lets people do with the software whatever they please. In the case of GNU/Linux, if any group distributed a patch to any of the GPL software included then they would be forced to release their code under the GPL(because it would be considered a derivative work) and therefore have no real control over distribution. I am not familiar with what the OpenBSD people do, although it seems they have a firm commitment to open source software, but I did want to point out what the BSD license actually gives you the right to do. Some people see BSD style licenses as more open source than the GPL because it allows more freedom, but, because it allows almost complete freedom, many people don't like it because that means nobody is obligated to give anything back.
OpenBSD got a real boost in performance at spring 2005 Hackathon, when a subtle bug in the virtual memory code was found and corrected.
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
"it usually comes from people that have never tried using it... Then make your judgements."
I suspect that won't do any good. The ones yelling the loudest most likely only see computers/operating systems as a comsumer desktops. Though OBSD can be used as a desktop, I don't think they would find it meets their expectations. And if any Window's user did, they'd experience culture shock. Thus, all the bad-mouthing.
However, there are other uses for an operating system and in this area OBSD has value. But I don't think many of these critics will be building routers, bridges, wireless AP's and writing filtering rules enough to make a judgment tempered with experience. But to each his own. OBSD continues to improve and that is a plus.
Linux binary support under OpenBSD is surprisingly good; you might give that a whirl. Just install the port emulators/redhat, execute 'sysctl kern.emul.linux=1', and change /etc/sysctl.conf. Then use a Linux JRE.
java 1.5 is native on openbsd/i386. it works as fine as you can expect java to run.
OpenBSD is the new NetBSD?
perhaps you meant the old NetBSD? with 17 supported platforms (as opposed to 60) it aint king of portability.
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
written in Perl
Get. Away. From. Me.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Linux binary support under OpenBSD is surprisingly good; you might give that a whirl. Just install the port emulators/redhat, execute 'sysctl kern.emul.linux=1', and change /etc/sysctl.conf. Then use a Linux JRE.
The Linux support is actually so good that I got a dedicated Quake 3 linux server binary running on my OBSD box :)
Fear is the mind killer.