Slashdot Mirror
OpenBSD 5.3 Released
An anonymous reader writes "Today, OpenBSD 5.3 has been released. It has many improvements, updates, and new stuff. Also, OpenSMTPD 5.3 is included. This is the first version of OpenSMTPD considered to be ready for production. Many pre-built packages are available for many architectures. OpenBSD 5.3 ships with various Desktop Environments, including Gnome 3.6, KDE 3.5, and XFCE 4.10."
And don't forget the release song, "Blade Swimmer."
:)
OpenBSD is very cool. It's amazing what Theo and team have done over the years, and sadly, they don't get the cred they so richly deserve: OpenSSH, OpenBGP, pf, etc., and an awesome operating system that just works out of the box.
I'm very surprised more has not been done with OpenBSD. If I ran a company of any kind, it would be OpenBSD on the servers and Linux on the desktop. I would trust nothing else on my servers. I've worked with OpenBSD professionally and it's a joy to use an easy, well-documented system.
Kudos to you, Theo!
But seriously, it looks like a great set of improvements. It is also great to have a new stable choice for mail transfer.
OpenSMTPD presentation is here.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Glad to see OpenBSD is continuing to push for better security.
Has anybody been keeping tabs on performance, particularly on multicore systems? I'm curious what gains have been made there over recent years. I know that Linux and NetBSD have improved a lot, but what about OpenBSD?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
My favorite improvements:
* OpenSMTPd - can't have too many solid mail servers out there
* OpenSSH 6.2 - new crypto algorithms and other goodies
* pf improvements - sloppy state tracking for ICMP
* relayd and OpenBGPd improvements
now the question is: how long until those trickle down to sister projects like FreeBSD or Debian/kFreeBSD?
Semantics is the gravity of abstraction
I know software versioning schemes aren't exactly consistent, but isn't 1.0 a tacit milestone for production-ready?
Light the blue touch-paper and retire immediately.
Released on May Day, eh? I see what you're up to, OpenBSD. That's a pretty red logo, too.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I hear NetCraft has been wrong before. ;)
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
And don't forget the release song, "Blade Swimmer."
You know that Voight-Kampf test of yours? Did you ever take that test yourself? Theo?
Hey - I really liked KDE 3.5. Although I'm surprised to see GNOME 3.6 in there.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
undeadly.org
The mailing lists. misc@ tech@ for starters. Go to openbsd.org and sign up, or browse them on http://marc.info/
You can find links to OpenBSD mail archives at the bottom of this page.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Has anyone checked how correctly OpenSMTPd implements the SMTP protocol? The OpenBSD project has an unfortunate history of caring more about simplicity of implementation than correctness (see also this discussion).
Can someone remind me which is the good one? OpenBSD or FreeBSD?
I know software versioning schemes aren't exactly consistent, but isn't 1.0 a tacit milestone for production-ready?
Many of us do not consider v1.0 to be production ready, more often really a public beta. :-)
This is a truly fabulous operating system. And for the ones wondering about version numbers, OpenBSD increases it by 0.1 for every release. And a new version is released every 6 months. Also, besides the mailing lists, there is a small but pretty capable community at www.daemonforums.org.
I suppose that depends on what you consider mastery. My home firewall runs BSD. I usually just grab a new disk and do a clean install, and mount the old disk to copy over whatever config files I need. With that approach instead of sysmerge which would actually be faster, I'm back up and on the internet in 1/2 an hour or less. After that I start with packages and again copy over config files, reviewing the files and release notes in case I have to make changes. And frankly to find any languishing TODOs I have forgotten. By this point 99% of my system functionality is restored and I've spent maybe another hour to one and a half hours. Finally I recompile and reinstall whatever is needed from ports. I don't really count that so much against upgrade time, because it's easily scripted and some builds can take a while. After all my machine is just a firewall, it's old and slow and there's no reason to put in a large machine that compiles quickly when I do that maybe once every 6 months. Nothing I described is particularly difficult or even requires more than an average SA's skillset. From my perspective it takes less time to do what I just described than the last time I installed Windows 7 and Office 2010 on a friend's laptop. Actually Windows 7 took no time at all. It was the security patching that took forever.
Or I guess we would have seen MacLinux.
No, GPL does not force companies to use your code. It may only restrict them from using it.
OpenBSD is not for noobies or the lazy.
If you have to ask, OpenBSD is not for you. That is by design, the project lead wants it that way. If you can't use Google to answer the questions you have asked, then OpenBSD is not for you. Let me take it one step further than that, if you DIDN'T GOOGLE IT FIRST, then OpenBSD is not for you in any way.
It is not intended for people who expect ANY hand holding as you WILL NOT GET ANY.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
OpenBSD is PVP unix. External attackers or your fellow players can kill you any time. As long as you understand that, it's fine.
so far all I see is a bunch of catchy tunes, and there butthurt jealousy of Linux's popularity, meanwhile complaining about how some distros have non-free firmware, and how unfree the GPL, along with some prophesizing about how OpenBSD is going to take over the world. Then some bashing of RMS as a hypocrit.
Show me where Theo tells about OBSD taking over the world, I'm fairly positive thats exactly the opposite of his goals. Otherwise, it seems more like your statement is you projecting your own feelings on openbsd. RMS is not a hypocrite, just a fucking douche you're too stupid to recognize as using you to further his own political agenda.
What they miss is the only reason that either RedHat, or IBM, or SuSE call what they sell "linux" and various distros are vaugely compatible with each other is because of the GPL.
What you call 'vaguely' compatible, the rest of us call a joke. Its why no commercial vendors put real effort into targeting Linux, because what you call compatible, real developers call 'a fucking mess with no organization'. Distros BARELY remain compatible with the 'standard linux base', all of them come with random versions of libraries and different sets, in different places, effectively making the only common aspect amoung them to be names like Linux and GPL.
There are plenty of proprietary BSD-based OSs with their code. Mabey if the GPL'd back in the 1990s, people would using "MacBSD" instead of OSX or iOS. I am sorry but the BSD license is self-defeating, and they worked their way to oblivion, despite putting in undeniable hard work.
No, we wouldn't have MacBSD if it was GPL, we'd have something else not compatible at all. BSD did EXACTLY WHAT WAS INTENDED here, it allowed a commercial OS to use a common code base. THIS MEANS COMPATIBILITY. You don't get any more compatible than actually running the exact same code. This is why your shitty little fanboy OS actually can talk to a windows box, because ... everyone ... used .... BSD code ... for networking.
What we have now is ... Mac(h)/BSD ... so basically, we got what you said we would have got with GPL ... without GPL ... BSD also got a metric fuckton of code in return. You pretty much picked 'the example' that is used to disprove your retarded 'BSD doesnt' get contributions back' argument as Apple has given back arguably more than they took in the first place.
The Internet as you know it would not exist if it weren't for BSD. We would most likely still be arguing over which network vendor was the mostest awesomest and still not have systems that talk to each other in a common way. At best there would be the half implemented GPL version that everyone says is fucking awesomer than awesome ... but no one uses but a handful of geeks because some moron thinks that using vi to edit config files is acceptable, and god forbid how evil it is for a company to use your code without you immediately getting access to all of their work as well. Thats pretty fucking hypocritical. You call it 'free', you wouldn't knwo free if it hit you in the ass.
In the linux sphere, we made the corporations who enter give back. So yes, Linux go the devs and is now the most advanced Free UNIX clone, in part because we have 100x the devs working on it, and more people basing their projects on Linux, because of this.
No, you didn't. You don't even realize it. Its not the most advanced on several levels, ZFS being a prime example but certainly not the only example. How advanced can you be when you have a political ideology making decisions which should be based on technical merit? It IS NOT a 'free' UNIX clone, you don't even know what the word means. UNIX is a specification that Linux does not meet. It is not a clone. It doesn't work tha
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
This is why I call OpenBSD PVP UNIX. If you failed to armor up, you will be flamed to death by fellow players. :-)
I can appreciate trying to raise the floor with a dress code or basic code of conduct, but a culture of contempt is actually counterproductive. It results in a "blame culture", which is inherently less secure. And both these negative qualities reduce the viability of the community and stunt its growth and progress. There are other ways to raise the floor.
Apple actually does give back.
Have a look at their work on WebKit and LLVM.
New things are always on the horizon
I don't know about OpenBSD, but I can say that it's been much easier to port KDE 3 than KDE 4.x on MidnightBSD. QT4 isn't bad, but a few of the KDE bits are a real hassle. They may have to port a lot of support code first to get it running. I don't think people realize the amount of work it takes to port KDE and GNOME. They are huge.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
The thing is, the OpenBSD folks have put a huge emphasis on writing good documentation for everything. Something not documented clearly/fully is considered a BUG by the developers.
Because of the work they put into it. They expect you to have read the documentation before coming to them with a question. Not just googling for answers, but reading the actual documentation that comes with the OS. If you can't be bothered to put in enough effort to RTFM, they don't want to deal with you. Seems reasonable.
actually, the real request is to read the excellent documentation (compared to say GNU/Linux) first before asking questions in forums.
Samba X ?
http://xamba.sourceforge.net/sambax/index.shtml
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
You might want to read this.
Samba requires xbase53.tgz (not sure why but yeah). Go to your root directory, and, as root, retrieve xbase53.tgz (you don't need the other X packages, just xbase) from your friendly local mirror. Then tar fzx xbase53.tgz to install.
Then pkg_add samba as normal. That should fix it.
Maybe 2007 really will be the year of the Linux desktop!
This struck me as well. If they can be current w/ GNOME 3.6, why can't they have KDE 4.9, for example?
If they want to use KDE 3.5, they're better off adapting Trinity
How is PCC coming along? Has the project made much headway in making its break from GCC?
I have one question about these alternate e-mail servers. Do any of them come w/ the ability to recall mail? As one might know, in an MS Exchange/Outlook environment, if one has sent an e-mail on Outlook and regrets it after the fact for any reason, be it a typo or whatever, one can try to recall it. If the message has not been opened at the other end, Exchange allows the message to be recalled. Such a feature is sometimes a lifesaver, but I doubt that Sendmail has it. Does anyone know whether any of these alternatives - Postfix, Qmail or OpenSMTPd have it? (Incidentally, how is SMTP a mail server - that's just one part to the e-mail, the other being IMAP/POP)
There is an opportunity here. Like Red Hat, the OBSD guys too could work on their own certification course, and have a legion of educators for people who have question. Would probably be a good way to grow.
Otherwise, having a hostile attitude towards people who don't fit their regimented notions of what a perfect learner should be is just going to ensure that OBSD, no matter how good, would continue to languish in the doldrums. Heck, even NetBSD could then overtake them in terms of popularity.
I largely agree w/ the rest of what you wrote, but to claim that Linux does not meet the Unix specification begs for citations. It's true that Linux has never been lab tested to see whether it does or not, and for that matter, neither have the BSDs. OS-X has been tested and found to pass, so it's a good supposition that FBSD would pass as well. But to claim that Linux would fail begs for evidence. Chances are that Linux has not been put thru those tests b'cos it costs money - money that nobody would be willing to cough up - not Red Hat, not Canonical, not Linux Foundation... After all, if they did meet it, what would it get them?
I don't think it's hard to find examples of Theo being contemptuous outside of handling an indolent noob.
Stallman isn't a noob. He has a different perspective from Theo, obviously. Any reason not to be a gentleman about it?
And, contempt for indolent noobs, as it turns out, is still counterproductive. Because contempt by itself is counterproductive.
I do agree that Theo could use some manners, but his content is right - on one hand, RMS doesn't tire of preaching his 'free' ideology, and yet, he doesn't put any restriction on emacs or gcc running on something like Windows or MacOS. If he were consistent, he'd deprive those non-free operating systems of the treasures of gcc and emacs, so that they can run only on 'free' systems
I meant contempt, not content. But I do agree w/ Onymous' main assertion - that contempt is counterproductive, and only serves to alienate people who might otherwise be willing to give OBSD a try, if not more