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OpenBSD 4.4 Released
Linux blog writes "The new version of OpenBSD is available for download. There are lots of nifty new features to try out including OpenSSH 5.1 with chroot(2) support, Xenocara, Gnome 2.20.3, KDE 3.5.8, etc. Machines using the UltraSPARC IV/T1/T2 and Fujitsu SPARC64-V/VI/VII are now supported. It seems amazing to me that they keep delivering these new results on a six-month release cycle."
Congratulations to the OpenBSD team. BSD is far from dead!
How does BSD compare to linux? Other than the whole take what you can give nothing back vibe?
Congrats to the OpenBSD team.
In related news, NetBSD 5.0 should be released soon, too.
BSD proves Netcraft wrong again.
This isn't meant as a troll, but... Those SPARCs are 4 year old machines. If this is the result of a 6 month release cycle, I wonder why they bother? The new machine support isn't at all impressive. Is their unstable branch so bad that stabilizing a release every 6 months is a big deal? I'm guessing that's not the reason, in which case, why?
I have been regularly running OpenBSD for the last 8 years, and I have never been disappointed. 4.4 keeps up the string of solid releases.
I have a thinkpad that runs it as well.
Yes, I buy the CDs, and a few shirts, and donate $ when I can. Hopefully it keeps them working on the next release. I don't know what I would do without it running my DNS and other servers.
KDE 3.5.8? Why so old... even if KDE 3.5.10 released in late August was too late to make it, KDE 3.5.9 came out in February, that's over 8 months.
This site is geared towards Linux users that want to learn OpenBSD: http://www.openbsd101.com/
the problem i have with openbsd is it's 12 month EOL cycle. in a production environment upgrading the entire OS ever 12 months so you can continue to get security patches just doesn't cut it. perhaps the openbsd team could put up a paid for extended patch team or something to help fund their efforts? that would certainly be attractive to companies using it for firewalls and as security devices.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
[Death walking away muttering]
Death "SO DISAPPOINTING"
Once was enough, you sockpuppeting shill.
Did you just copy/paste this entire post from Wikipedia's article about Slashdot??? Protip: Next time, actually type your redundant flames, rather than stealing them.
Congrats to open/safe bsd guys. Just a bit momentarily confused because of version number 4.4 - as if we were back in the '90s.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
OpenBSD puts a lot of money in consultant's pockets. It's hands down the most secure OS on the market. Got a client that needs a secure redundant firewall but can't afford big, over-priced Cisco gear? OpenBSD to the resuce. OpenBGP, CARP, etc. You can do things with OpenBSD and 15K worth of hardware that would cost six or seven times as much money with dedicated networking hardware. And, you can do it better. So, if you need some easy extra cash get into OpenBSD and start making a killing in the firewall business in your hometown. When you get a reputation for solid, secure systems (they'll wonder how you do it :)) donate some cash to the OpenBSD Foundation and buy some CDs.
You should have been running OpenBSD, daddy.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I thought you were talking about HURD.
As long as bash is not default shell, less is not default pager and VIM is not default text editor - I'm NOT interested.
I'm working 99% of time in command line and *BSD archaic tools are not really helping to make the switch from Linux.
And find doesn't search by default in current directory. And grep isn't recursive.
And, for **** sake, where is POSIX conformance statement??? Even Linux man pages (more or less all of them) have by now info how does/doesn't particular tool/call conform to POSIX.
As much as I wanted to try BSDs, unfortunately, most of them (OpenBSD included) remain kind of toy for basement kids who do not know anything better.
Mod me down folks, but here is my advice: if you are serious into *nix - as user or developer - pick Linux.
*BSD might be true Unix, but this is not something to be particularly proud of, as Unix has history of being worst platform for both users and developers.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
I suspect you'd agree that there's nothing wrong with using a stable OS. There's everything wrong with trying to "re-invent the OS" every few years using some wet-behind-the-ears college grads, and still -- after 25 years -- not being able to ship a dispatcher that can handle a spinning process without roaching the whole box. Yes, I'm looking at you, Windows. OS/MFT could handle a spinning process. Even CTSS could handle a spinning process, and that was written in 1960.
As far as the old saw that Unix/Linux/BSD/whatever "can't support a real graphical shell," have a peek at OS X. The academics who pronounced that a microkernel was the way to go (where are you now, QNX? Hurd? CMU?) found out that idea wasn't all-she-wrote either. OK, I enjoyed watching the file system crash on QNX without crashing the kernel, but there isn't much you can do without a file system (unless you're running a nuculer power plant, which was QNX's favorite example), so who cares?
Age is good. Stability is good. These are good things.
Unlike Linux, the BSDs don't come preinstalled with tons of third-party software you didn't ask for, because there's a clear separation between the base UNIX operating system and the ports/pkgsrc collection. If you're too damn dumb to go into /usr/pkgsrc and take the 2 minutes to install Bash, I think BSD is probably above you. Stick with Ubuntu.
As far as I know, OpenBSD tries to be fully POSIX compliant. Not just to document the points where they are not compliant. And OpenBSD is the last project I would critisize with respect to documentation.
Even Linux man pages (more or less all of them) have by now info how does/doesn't particular tool/call conform to POSIX.
As long as Linux insists on shipping tedious GNU info pages instead of normal man pages, I'm NOT interested.
As much as I wanted to try BSDs, unfortunately, most of them (OpenBSD included) remain kind of toy for basement kids who do not know anything better.
Son, I think you need to read more and talk less.
Advice: on VPS providers
For a distro that prides itself on proactive security, OpenBSD seems to lack one security feature most mainline Linux distributions have: some form of package signing. I know package signing doesn't make a system 100% percent secure from Trojan'ed applications. I'm not a security expert, but I think having signed packages helps reduce the possibility of man-in-the-middle attacks, say, from malicious DNS redirection that points the user to a bogus mirror even if the "real" mirror (which presumably is running a secure BSD system) isn't compromised. It seems to me the most secure OpenBSD system is one without anything besides the base system installed, good enough for a server, but unfortunately not for everyday Desktop use in Facebook era.
Of all the ways to moderate this, for once "offtopic" isn't the right one ;)
This is not the greatest sig in the world, no. This is just a tribute.
As long as bash is not default shell, less is not default pager and VIM is not default text editor - I'm NOT interested.
Lucky for you, less is more and pdksh isn't a bad shell (not everyone loves bash..). In the BSD realm it's extremely easy to add a package or even compile it from scratch via ports, so even vim is within your reach! If you don't like messing with defaults, might I suggest that neither openbsd nor linux are for you?
And find doesn't search by default in current directory.
Hmm.. OSX, Solaris, Free/OpenBSD all seem to require directory specification in find. I thought I remembered it being required in linux as well--when did linux distros change?
And grep isn't recursive.
hint: "-R"
And, for **** sake, where is POSIX conformance statement??? Even Linux man pages (more or less all of them) have by now info how does/doesn't particular tool/call conform to POSIX.
Exactly where you would expect to find it--in the man page. Where exactly did you look, and why are you getting so worked up? Linux, BSDs, etc can be complicated if you're new to them--that's one of the strongest things about the BSDs--consistent system design and excellent documentation.
If you're not familiar with how to look in manpages, here you go:
As much as I wanted to try BSDs, unfortunately, most of them (OpenBSD included) remain kind of toy for basement kids who do not know anything better.
You wouldn't be attempting a poorly researched troll, would you? I think I just wasted my time :-/
*BSD might be true Unix, but this is not something to be particularly proud of, as Unix has history of being worst platform for both users and developers.
If you don't like unix, you don't like linux. (note that that DOESN'T affirm the opposite--if you do like unix, that doesn't mean you have to like linux!)
Wasn't that one of the bad guys in "Under Siege: 2"?
Here's the song with lyrics for this release: 4.4: "Trial of the BSD Knights" http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#44
Lucky for you, less is more and pdksh isn't a bad shell (not everyone loves bash..). In the BSD realm it's extremely easy to add a package or even compile it from scratch via ports, so even vim is within your reach! If you don't like messing with defaults, might I suggest that neither openbsd nor linux are for you?
Reminds of the saying: "Linux is for those who hate Windows, BSD's are those who love UNIX".
Solaris is also heavily criticized by the Linux crowd for not mindlessly following the GNU "standards" - OTOH Sun has done a much better job with backwards compatibility than Linux.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
Hmmmmm, and what if I want said third-party software... Last time I checked, this is what Desktop Linux is about... I get it, though. BSD is not a desktop OS. Period.
Even Linux man pages (more or less all of them) have by now info how does/doesn't particular tool/call conform to POSIX.
As long as Linux insists on shipping tedious GNU info pages instead of normal man pages, I'm NOT interested.
Show me single Linux distro which removed man.
The "info" weirdo is for GNU tool only. All normal software is pretty happy to live in man pages.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
I'm not that dumb. It is just starts eating into my production time quickly.
I can make out of fresh install of Debian something useful within half of an hour. And I can easily maintain it that way (weekly "apt-get update && apt-get upgrade" rarely takes longer than one minute).
With BSD it never was the case: one or two days are spent on making out of the system something more useful than M$DOS. Later on, patching is also relatively time consuming.
P.S. And broken ports are also not rarity.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
As much as I wanted to try BSDs, unfortunately, most of them (OpenBSD included) remain kind of toy for basement kids who do not know anything better.
You wouldn't be attempting a poorly researched troll, would you? I think I just wasted my time :-/
You didn't. It is nice to know that BSD though slowly is also moving somewhere.
I tried *BSD last time about 2.5 years ago (thanks to free VM software it is quite easy) and situation wasn't much improved compared to when I tried FreeBSD about 8 years ago: you still had to do too much hand waving to have a working system. By "working system" of course I mean system which I can use to do my work. Out of box, BSD is sort of M$DOS: bare command prompt, where you need to install and configure everything before you can do something with it.
I do not might wasted gigs of Debian/Sidux/Ubuntu installs: I lost few gigs (which are penny per kilos this days) but I save much more time since I do not need to configure everything. Most of the things come with decent default configs - but some require attention.
*BSD might be true Unix, but this is not something to be particularly proud of, as Unix has history of being worst platform for both users and developers.
If you don't like unix, you don't like linux. (note that that DOESN'T affirm the opposite--if you do like unix, that doesn't mean you have to like linux!)
I do not like BSD. I do not like Unix. But I like Linux.
Linux - Thanks God - is not Unix.
Unix now is more or less corporate tool (e.g. Solaris, HP-UX, AIX) which you might end up using since your business runs on it. But as to plain user, they have nothing to offer out of box. And of course, since business runs on Unix, you would refrain from installing all the end-user stuff on the business critical systems. Best experience with Unix is achieved - as it was many times confirmed in practice - by using Linux as a client.
BSD is good as development community. It is good as technology preview. But that's about it. Using it do some work in business is quite complicated due to very steep learning curve. And even after that you would find that Linux is much much more interoperable that BSD or commercial Unix and much easier to use in practically any environment. "Easier to use" of course means "can do much more work on it without distractions."
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Solaris is also heavily criticized by the Linux crowd for not mindlessly following the GNU "standards"
I would be last to push "GNU standards" as GNU tools are also by now quite old. If you would check Savannah where most GNU tools are maintained, you can easily find for any tool bug report with flamewar where maintainers try to fend off people proposing new features.
Problem is that GNU now is also stuck in some past.
If you would look closer to Linux installations, you would notice that only few pieces of GNU software are left in. And the list of the GNU software is pretty constant, while Linux universe is now more and more densely populated by tools developed elsewhere.
And frankly, as much as I do not like GNU, their text-tools and file-tools are far more superior to anything out there. If it makes users more productive - why not to use it??
As to Solaris... My critic of Solaris would be that they do not preinstall decent shell, normal text editor and pager. I actually addressed to one Solaris engineer the question: when Solaris would ship with sh/vi/more which support keyboard? He laughed and answered that actually Sun is revisiting preinstalled software on Solaris 10, because I'm not alone who find default setup useless and counterproductive.
P.S. GCC and glibc are kind of exceptions and due to heavy Linux bias (and fast development cycle) they are more or less all the time on verge of being forked and made independent from GNU/FSF. FSF tried few times intervene with projects but they got immediate response from developers and maintainer "try that again and we all leave." So they do not try anything. GNU/FSF are politicians and religious leadership - they can't without engineers. GCC and glibc are de facto independent from GNU/FSF now.
P.P.S.
Sun has done a much better job with backwards compatibility than Linux.
I'd be careful with that. "Backward compatible" is not too far from "retarded."
I do not think that following steps of M$DOS and M$Wind0ze (which still carry 25yo(!) errors and mistakes for sake of backward compatibility) would get you anywhere.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
It is incredibly trivial to change these things. I'm the most lazy admin ever, and it took me five minutes from install to changing the default shell to bash.
Changing the default editor doesn't take much longer, nor does changing the pager.
Don't like how the userland tools work, you can find the gnu tools fairly easily.
No posix compliance statement is necessary, it's redundant in *BSD.
Having used both Linux (Gentoo, [k]Ubuntu, Red hat/Fedora Core, etc) and *BSDs extensively, I have the same oppinion of Linux as you do of *BSD.
My only complaint of BSD is that the driver support is somewhat less advanced than Linux, beyond that, configuration is easy, documentation is INCREDIBLE, and (at least in the FreeBSD crowd), the user base is extremely helpful and friendly.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
1
Even Linux man pages (more or less all of them) have by now info how does/doesn't particular tool/call conform to POSIX.
As long as Linux insists on shipping tedious GNU info pages instead of normal man pages, I'm NOT interested.
Show me single Linux distro which removed man.
Show me a single Linux distro which has a man page for either bash or grep, two tools you mention. For that matter, show me a single Linux distro that has documentation that is even remotely as good as OpenBSD's. OpenBSD's man pages are truly beautiful.
The "info" weirdo is for GNU tool only. All normal software is pretty happy to live in man pages.
Well, not bash, grep, tr, cut, join, paste, make, cc, bc, awk, gdb, the C library, less/more, m4, ncurses, sed, tar, which, who...yeah, all the "normal" software has man pages.
Advice: on VPS providers
YMMV
:-P
First time I installed FreeBSD (without any previous *nix knowledge) I had a server running in 5 minutes.
Adding the packages was a no-brainer through sysinstall. Updating I do through compiling (portupgrade) but can be done just as easily by specifying to use packages only which is just as fast as using aptitude.
I've seen no difference in ease on installing and maintaining Linux and BSD systems.
Windows systems on the other hand...
home
It is nice to know that BSD though slowly is also moving somewhere
Everything in my email has been true of BSDs for a LONG time. POSIX conformance statements, recursive grep, less is more, etc.
I do not like BSD. I do not like Unix. But I like Linux.
I think we have differing conceptions of what unix is.
BSD is good as development community. It is good as technology preview. But that's about it. Using it do some work in business is quite complicated due to very steep learning curve.
I stridently disagree with this. As I and others have been attempting to say, if you actually look at the man page, look at documentation, etc, the BSDs have a huge advantage over pretty much all linux distros. When I first started playing with linux/bsds, I think the first one i used was an ancient slackware, then some redhat, debian, etc. When I first used BSD I used FreeBSD and have never regretted it. From the FreeBSD handbook to the manpages to the standardized and logical system layout, the learning curve was far easier for me.
And even after that you would find that Linux is much much more interoperable that BSD or commercial Unix and much easier to use in practically any environment
What does that even mean? How is linux "mouch much more interoperable than BSD" ? I run netatalk, nfs, samba and apache on my FreeBSD server. I run OpenSSH on all of them. Almost all software for linux will run on the BSDs. Some do require some modfication. (Actually, most of the BSDs have a linux compatibility layer that let you run linux binaries as if native).
If you're talking a barebones FreeBSD install versus a ready-to-go Ubuntu--I won't disagree about off the bat enduser usability. If you compare PC-BSD or a preconfigured FreeBSD+gnome/kde/whatever to Ubuntu, on the other hand...
I may be mis-remembering; but didn't Theo say he would never support chroot for OpenSSH because it was never intended to be a security tool and would only confuse people into a false sense of security?
(sorry for posting AC, but I already have been modding in this discussion.)
/usr/share/doc/packagename/ for EVERY package installed in the system. It is so handy that I made a quick bash function that takes a package name as an argument and chdirs me to that package's doc folder.)
:) but hey, (not the best man page) != (no man page at all). And it's not like you cannot browse OpenBSD's man pages online, or download them.
> Show me a single Linux distro which has a man page for either
> bash or grep, two tools you mention.
> Well, not [long list of standard stuff]...yeah, all the "normal" software has man pages.
Well, on my Debian box:
$ man -f $(sed 's/,//g' <<< 'bash, grep, tr, cut, join, paste, make, cc, bc, awk, gdb, less, more, m4, ncurses, sed, tar, which, who')
bash (1) - GNU Bourne-Again SHell
grep (1) - print lines matching a pattern
tr (1) - translate or delete characters
cut (1) - remove sections from each line of files
join (1) - join lines of two files on a common field
paste (1) - merge lines of files
make (1) - GNU make utility to maintain groups of programs
cc: nothing appropriate.
bc (1) - An arbitrary precision calculator language
awk (1) - pattern scanning and text processing language
gdb (1) - The GNU Debugger
less (1) - opposite of more
less (3perl) - perl pragma to request less of something
more (1) - file perusal filter for crt viewing
m4 (1) - macro processor
ncurses (3ncurses) - CRT screen handling and optimization package
sed (1) - stream editor for filtering and transforming text
tar (1) - The GNU version of the tar archiving utility
tar (5) - format of tape archive files
which (1) - locate a command
who (1) - show who is logged on
I would mod you troll but you seem simply uninformed.
(actually Debian has AT LEAST stub man pages with a brief summary of the options, project URL, maintainers' emails, etc -- for every program, and AT LEAST a README, a changelog, and a reference to the upstream website (often also FAQs, code examples, sometimes tutorials, etc) in
> show me a single Linux distro that has documentation that
> is even remotely as good as OpenBSD's.
That's another matter
--
harry
http://slashdot.org/~harry666t/
What universe do you come from? Bash has a huge man page. GNU grep has a good man page. A Linux installation which doesn't have both of them is broken.
Yes, I have seen Linux distributions (RedHat) with a sloppy attitude to man pages, and yes, it's laughable that the GNU yes(1) manpage first lists the two trivial command-line options and then goes on to say: "the full documentation for yes is maintained as a Texinfo manual" but it's never as bad as you believe. And Debian is very acceptable, possibly as good as OpenBSD (which I've never used).
Then you install it? Or if you're using FreeBSD, browse the binary package list during the installer and choose what you want preinstalled?
Please, go back to Ubuntu and stay there.
Oh, come on. It takes a couple of minutes to install bash from ports, and then you're done.
I can do the same with FreeBSD, and I can easily keep it up to date with one of the many available utilities in /usr/ports/ports-mgmt. Portsnap, portmanager, portupgrade...all of these are easy commands to use.
I'm sitting next to a 64-bit dual-core FreeBSD box that took me half an hour to set up. You're flat-out lying.
Show me a single Linux distro which has a man page for either bash or grep, two tools you mention.
$ cat /etc/slackware-version /usr/man/man?/{grep,bash}.?.gz
/usr/man/man1/bash.1.gz /usr/man/man1/grep.1.gz
Slackware 12.1.0
$ ls
Show me a single Linux distro which has a man page for either bash or grep, two tools you mention. For that matter, show me a single Linux distro that has documentation that is even remotely as good as OpenBSD's. OpenBSD's man pages are truly beautiful.
My Gentoo box has both grep(1) and bash(1). They appear complete and do not refer the reader to the info pages (which may or may not be installed...I didn't check).
Now, that said, I do agree that the OpenBSD documentation is second to none, but the state of Linux documentation, at least on Gentoo, is not as bad as you seemed to imply.
*sigh* back to work...