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."

Comments

Congratulations

[norbot]

Congratulations to the OpenBSD team. BSD is far from dead!

Re:Congratulations

[grub]

I've used OpenBSD for many years (early 2.x days). Before asking questions on the list it helps to gooooogle and read until your eyes are bleeding. OpenBSD has (IMHO) the best manpages of any *nix system I've ever used. The FAQ and How-Tos on the site are excellent as well.

I've had a few replies from questions I've answered both on and off-list and the people have always been helpful. That includes the few exchanges I've had with Theo over the years.

In short: exhaust your reading and searches before asking questions on the lists. The OS is free, but developers' time is limited.

Re:Congratulations

[Anpheus]

Agreed. When publishing bug reports, mind you, Ubuntu and a few other communities are the exception to this rule, I find nothing but hostility. Suspicion that I'm making it up, that no matter how competent I profess myself to be, it's my problem. It's a hardware issue (effecting just one piece of software,) when Pidgin randomly deleted my buddy list and then kept it deleted, it was entirely AOL's fault. In reality, I suspect Pidgin incorrectly parsed the buddy list sent which works flawlessly for millions of users and clients (including Trillian) worldwide, and then interpreted that as my 'new' buddy list.

I can't stand the arrogance of most open source developers I've associated with. To be fair, I can't stand the ambivalence most closed source companies have towards their users. Flash Player 10, for example, won't install on Windows unless you have -a- C:\. If you installed Windows onto a spare hard drive, it is given a different drive letter (such as E:\, in my case.) If I didn't have another disk that I could re-assign to C:\, or if I were a less technical person, I could not install Flash Player 10. Interestingly, from installing the trial of Adobe CS4 (the designer tool,) it was the only program that failed to install. I tried to contact Adobe and was told that support would come with a fee. WHAT? I am reporting a bug and they want to charge me money to elevate my call.

Maybe I just hate other programmers? Perhaps Jean-Paule Sartre should have said, "Hell is other programmers."

Re:why bother with 6 month release cycle?

[NormalVisual]

T1s aren't quite three years old yet, and T2s have only been out for just over a year.

A site geared towards Linux user, to learn OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

This site is geared towards Linux users that want to learn OpenBSD: http://www.openbsd101.com/

Re:Mebbe I should try it some time

[QuoteMstr]

Yes, OpenBSD's performance is behind that of Linux and FreeBSD (which are neck-and-neck.) However, performance is still quite adequate. OpenBSD has a kind of austere simplicity, however, that makes it a pleasure to administer. It certainly has a niche.

Re:Mebbe I should try it some time

[menkhaura]

Let me just point out that PC-BSD's kernel is the very same FreeBSD, nothing related to OpenBSD; let me also just point out that the standard FreeBSD distribution combines the advantages of Gentoo's (customizing the building of packages to your needs or desires) and of Debian (superb dependency tracking, very fast on searches, always up-to-date (if you consider Debian Unstable)).

Re:Mebbe I should try it some time

[cbhacking]

PC-BSD, like DesktopBSD, is FreeBSD based. Don't confuse FreeBSD and OpenBSD - they share many userspace utilities and their kernels have some common history, but they are not the same OS.

Basically, OpenBSD is the one that is rabid about security - makes great server software.
NetBSD is the ultra-portable one - good for unusual hardware.
FreeBSD has excellent support for commodity hardware. It is the one used to make the user-friendly distros.

Re:Mebbe I should try it some time

[ArbitraryConstant]

> What does Linux take from BSD? All those vendor supplied drivers? The userland? The vast array of high quality filesystems?

The overwhelmingly dominant SSH implementation?

Re:KDE version

[OmegaBlac]

They audit every line of code they ship, including the external stuff they don't write.

I keep seeing this, but it is not entirely correct. According to their own FAQ they do not audit ports or packages to the same degree as the base system. One must assume that the "external stuff" has not been through an audit at all when installing a port/package.
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq15.html#Intro

Re:Mebbe I should try it some time

[laffer1]

Yes and don't forget the other three since you're trying to be complete:

DragonFly BSD - clustering (freebsd 4 fork) good for servers.

MirBSD - OpenBSD fork (3.x i think)

MidnightBSD - FreeBSD 6.x fork (although bringing in 7.x features now) Focused on desktop use. Not at PC-BSD usability levels yet.

Re:Package security?

[incripshin]

Anonymous cvs access is done over ssh, and the public keys are listed on the OpenBSD website. The ports tree includes checksums, and these are all verified automatically. So if you check the ssh key of the cvs server, all your ports are safe.

As for pre-built packages from FTP, I don't think there's anything in place for verification.