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OpenBSD Marches Toward 5.0 Release
badger.foo writes "OpenBSD-current just turned 5.0-beta, providing us a preview of what the upcoming release (slated for November 1st) will look like. Peter Hansteen takes us through the main new features and explains the development process that has consistently turned out high-quality releases on time, every six months for more than a decade."
OpenBSD: Two remote vulnerabilities in the default install in ~12 years. None in the last 2 years.
Running a 2 year old copy of OpenBSD still safe (unless you make it otherwise). Your Linux ISO from 2 weeks ago is already vulnerable.
FreeBSD: The Power to Serve!
If your hardware is older, OpenBSD is a safer environment - if your CPU does not implement the NX bit, OpenBSD manages the same functionality with W^X. Many other memory-handling features make the system safer (malloc with mmap, rather than sbrk, for example), although there can be a performance penalty.
OpenBSD implements privilege separation in many of the daemons of the base system (ftpd, dhcpd, ntpd, sshd), so you can trust them more.
OpenBSD's alternate daemons for well-known protocols (ntpd, smtpd) give you some "security through obscurity," and you also gain flexibility.
There are also custom patches for well-known servers to improve security (apache chroot).
In a number of ways, OpenBSD is the "Reference UNIX Security implementation." Come see why.
The OpenBSD technology is amazing; I'd recommend that any Linux user gives it a try to see how a Unix is supposed to work. Simple, flexible, consistent, robust, and superbly documented (there are man pages for everything, including the internal kernel APIs needed to write device drivers!). I just wish it had apt, that's all. (And better non-PC support. My main server's an ARM.)
It's even more amazing if you've ever interacted with the OpenBSD community, who are basically dickheads. Admittedly, it's been a while since I gave up on the -misc, but the last time I was there there was some poor guy trying to discuss virtualisation and the lead developers (including Theo) were simply hurling childish abuse at him rather than, say, actually trying to communicate. And of course all their groupies were joining in. It was incredibly unpleasant.
I suppose it's possible that they've grown up since then. I really wish they would; OpenBSD deserves a lot more attention and use. But I was so turned off by the total lack of anything resembling professionalism in the community (which is weird, because the actual docs are brilliant) that I haven't felt like going back.