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OpenBSD 4.5 Released
portscan writes "OpenBSD 4.5 has been released. New and extended platforms include sparc64, and added device drivers. OpenSSH 5.2 is included, plus a number of tweaks, bugfixes, and enhancements. See the announcement page for a full list. OpenBSD is a security-oriented UNIX/BSD operating system." As per OpenBSD tradition, of course there's a song.
Title says it all: http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/get.jsp
#include <sig.h>
I don't think that there are many people out there that would claim that OpenBSD is comfortable to use and would make a good desktop system.
You might be surprised. OpenBSD has good ACPI support now, has DRI in 4.5 (had it in 4.4 but it wasn't enabled by default). Sound support is good, and 4.5 introduces a simple sound daemon for userspace mixing. ARM support has also improved a lot recently, so it makes a good choice for handhelds.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
A version of KDE that no longer gets any love from upstream; old Firefox, old Thunderbird. Hopefully there are security updates for the latter two and that someone is giving some TLC to the former.
I would beg to differ. The package management is just as good if not better than what's available in Linuxland, so there's no great difficulty in setting it up as a good desktop system.
Having excellent support for many non-x86 platforms, as well as having a small footprint make it a great choice for older hardware. I currently have it installed on on my old UltraSparc and Alpha workstations.
OpenBSD contributes more than just OpenSSH to other OS'es. Aside from pushing hardware manufacturers to open up their documentation, they've also reverse engineered drivers that have made their way into the other BSD's and even Linux (remember the whole Atheros? issue last year). Whereas many Linux distributions and the other BSD's have made compromises with proprietary drivers and binary blobs, OpenBSD still pushes for true open source.
PF and CARP also make OpenBSD a superior router platform to any IPTables based setup any day. You may be surprised how popular it is in the data centre.
Unlike Minix, OpenBSD's niche has a place in real world usage.
http://astutehosting.com/
I don't think that there are many people out there that would claim that OpenBSD is comfortable to use and would make a good desktop system.
Depends on what you mean by a desktop. I run ubuntu on my laptops but I have an amd64 machine running netbsd for serious work. I use it for network administration and software development. The environment is simple: X11, fvwm, aterm and applications like firefox and nedit. Its not gnome, but for some purposes it is much better. I haven't used openbsd at all but I am pretty sure it would be similar on the same hardware.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Not on the level of binary compatibility, no.
Error: password can't contain reverse spelling of ancient Chinese emperor
A default OpenBSD install includes OpenSSH open on port 22. I assure you there is no shortage of script kiddies looking for exploits in OpenBSD. And even more trying to exploit OpenSSH. Usually they are able to escalate privileges from root to root using a bug in grep from a version released 5 years ago and then they give up.
You might be able to. OpenBSD can run Linux binaries, although may not support some recent system calls. If you're using ext2/3 then OpenBSD should be able to mount it correctly. I don't think anyone's done this as a drop-in job, and I can't imagine many people wanting to (a large part of the attraction of OpenBSD is the clean and consistent, well-documented, userland. Replacing this with the cobbled-together userland from Ubuntu would not be an improvement). You can, however, install most of the software you would run on Ubuntu on OpenBSD.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
"I find it intimidating that the community is unable or unwilling to maintain proper information channels for security-related maintenance"
You could try looking over on the Bug Tracking System or the openbsd-bugs mailing list
davecb5620@gmail.com
"The one area where OpenBSD is let down on the security front is the packages/ports"
"The ports & packages collection does NOT go through the thorough security audit that the OpenBSD base system does. Although we strive to keep the quality of the packages collection high, we just do not have enough human resources to ensure the same level of robustness and security"
davecb5620@gmail.com
FreeBSD 7.2 is coming out on Monday, too. (The release source code has been tagged; now it's just a matter of waiting for ISOs to build and bits to propagate to the mirrors.)
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Except that - as someone pointed out in an earlier comment - the optional packages like Firefox and KDE don't get the auditing and code screening. Hell, allegedly they don't even get prompt security updates when upstream fixes something.
That's a bad example - Apache is shipped as part of the core OpenBSD system and therefore a hole in Apache as shipped with OpenBSD *would* count.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Another thing: Theo may be a dick
I have to say that I've never had problems with him or the other OpenBSD maintainers. I'm not part of their "in crowd" by any measure, but everyone's been decent to me when I've had problems or questions.
Bad approach: I can't do $foo. How do I do it?
Good approach: I RTFM about how to do $foo, but step 5 gives different results for me than the man page says it should. What should I try next?
They're busy people, and when I've been respectful of their time, they've been respectful of mine.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?