What's New in OpenBSD 4.2?

blackbearnh writes "OpenBSD 4.2 was released today, and has a host of new features. O'Reilly's ONLamp site has a pretty thorough overview of the release. 'Even though security is still there, this release comes with some amazing performance improvements: basic benchmarks showed PF being twice as fast, a rewrite of the TLB shootdown code for i386 and amd64 cut the time to do a full package build by 20 percent (mostly because all the forks in configure scripts have become much cheaper), and the improved frequency scaling on MP systems can help save nearly 20 percent of battery power. And then the new features: FFS2, support for the Advanced Host Controller Interface, IP balancing in CARP, layer 7 manipulation with hoststated, Xenocara, and more!'"

Comments

Where to get it...

[KingSkippus]

Since the submitter didn't bother linking to their site (!!?), if you want to try out some of these amazing new features and improvements instead of just reading about them, you should head over to the OpenBSD 4.2 page and snag a copy!

Jun-ichiro "itojun" Hagino

[eldavojohn]

It should probably be noted (as one of the articles states) that this release is dedicated to a man who passed away a few days ago. From another article on KernelTrap:

"Jun-ichiro 'itojun' Itoh Hagino passed away on October 29, 2007 at the age of 37. "To those in the BSD communities he was simply Itojun, best known in his role as IPv6 KAME project core researcher. Itojun did the vast majority of the work to get IPv6 into the BSD network stacks. He was also instrumental in moving IPv6 forward in all aspects through his participation in IETF protocol design meetings. Itojun was helpful to everyone around him, and dedicated to his work. He believed and worked toward making technology available to everyone. He will be missed, and always remembered." Truly unfortunate for the open source community, the networking community & all of Itojun's family. It's a shame to see someone so promising go at a young age.

Love!

[antifoidulus]

Remember, Theo de Raadt loves each and every one of you, he includes love in each copy of OpenBSD! Well, love or an incredible hatred of the x86 platform and everything not OpenBSD.

Re:I need to try BSD

[ByOhTek]

One of the first things I do on FreeBSD after installing bash and portupgrade...

portupgrade -Nf sysutils/gnutools
echo "
alias ls='gls --color=always'
alias cp='gcp'
alias mv='gmv'
" >> ~/.bashrc

Something similar will probably work on OpenBSD

(oh, and for those who need their [modified] meems... OpenBSD is Undead, netcraft confirms it!)

Good Desktop OS

[LM741N]

I know OpenBSD is renowned as a secure system, but it also is a good desktop OS. In fact, I bet it recognizes more devices than my Windoze Vista. I was pleasantly surprised the last time I tried out OpenBSD on my laptop. My only complaint is that the ports are not as comprehensive as FreeBSD. But then, maybe I should be a maintainer for one and stop complaining, lol.

sp1?

[farkus888]

I am thinking some of the optimizations to pf and the network stack are pretty cool but I think I will be waiting for sp1 when they have worked out all the bugs and security holes before I upgrade my machine.

I'm just strollin'

[FoolsGold]

The only reason I clicked on this article is 'cos I really dig the red stylesheet for BSD news here. Reminds me of strawberries.

I assume BSD has other, more useful features though.