OpenBSD 6.2 Released (openbsd.org)

basscomm writes: OpenBSD 6.2 has now been released. Check out the release notes if you're into that kind of thing. Some of the new features and systems include improved hardware support, vmm(4)/ vmd(8) improvements, IEEE 802.11 wireless stack improvements, generic network stack improvements, installer improvements, routing daemons and other userland network improvements, security improvements and more. Here is the full list of changes.

Comments

*BSDs are rendering Linux irrelevant.

[Anonymous Coward]

The *BSDs are quickly rendering Linux irrelevant, especially now that nearly all Linux distros have started using systemd which has caused stability and reliability problems for lots of users.

OpenBSD is proving to be an excellent server OS. Its focus on security is more important now than ever before.

FreeBSD is proving to be an excellent general-purpose OS. It can be used very successfully on servers, as well as on workstations. It probably has the best hardware support of all of the BSDs, and its ZFS support is remarkably useful.

NetBSD is proving to be an excellent embedded OS. It supports a huge range of systems, both new and ancient.

DragonFly BSD is proving to be an excellent testbed for next-generation technologies. Its HAMMER filesystem is superb, and it has long had excellent support for multi-CPU systems, and its virtual kernel support is extraordinarily useful.

It's getting to the point where Linux really doesn't offer any substantial benefits over the *BSDs. In many ways the *BSDs offer significant advantages over Linux.

The *BSDs are becoming the go-to operating system for a wide range of computing needs, from servers to workstations to embedded systems.

Re:*BSDs are rendering Linux irrelevant.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can somebody please mod up the parent comment? It shouldn't be at -1. It's very relevant, and more importantly, it's correct. I've been involved with moving some servers from Linux to FreeBSD, and it has been an excellent experience so far. Unlike modern-day Linux distro developers, the FreeBSD developers clearly respect the UNIX philosophy, and it shows in the high quality of FreeBSD. It works very well as a web server and as an application server, and we've had great success using it to run PostgreSQL. Our developers have also started using FreeBSD as their main development OS, and they're loving it. To paraphrase one of our developers, "FreeBSD is what Linux should have been."

We're starting to investigate using OpenBSD for some of our servers, and so far the testing has been going very well. Our only complaint with OpenBSD is that it isn't as user-friendly or convenient to use as FreeBSD is. But we can overlook that because we know it's offering us a very robust and trustworthy system. Personally, I can't wait until we've moved all of our computing systems over to FreeBSD or OpenBSD. I have far more trust in the systems running FreeBSD or OpenBSD than do in the systems running Linux.

Re:*BSDs are rendering Linux irrelevant.

[Anonymous Coward]

The various BSD forks are generally worked on by real operating system developers who care about the conceptual integrity of the system as a whole, not only the kernel itself. There are Linux distributions with a similar philosophy, but most Linux development now is done by either large commercial interests who are adopting an MS-like attitude or random incompetent people who only want to leave their mark on something, whether it's a good idea or not.

BSD is more elitist, and that's a good thing for the quality of the system.

Re:*BSDs are rendering Linux irrelevant.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think that "elitist" is the right word to use. I think the correct word is "professional". The *BSD communities are some of the most welcoming around, and they're always willing to help. The only caveat is that they expect you to act professionally, as well. That is, they don't put up with bullshit. If you're going to contribute code, you will be held to a high standard. If you're going to ask a question, it's expected that you've at least put in some serious effort to figure out the answer on your own. They won't necessarily hold your hand, but if you come in with good intentions they'll often go to the ends of the Earth to help you out.

Their professionalism is also why Linux starts to seem so amateurish after you've used the *BSDs for any period of time, and especially after you've interacted with the *BSD communities. Debacles like how Debian switched to systemd, causing severe stability problems and disruption for so many Debian users, would never be allowed to happen within the *BSD communities.

Re:*BSDs are rendering Linux irrelevant.

[Anne Thwacks]

FreeBSD is what Linux should have been.

No. *BSD is what Linux was trying to be.

Re:*BSDs are rendering Linux irrelevant.

[Billly Gates]

The various BSD forks are generally worked on by real operating system developers who care about the conceptual integrity of the system as a whole, not only the kernel itself. There are Linux distributions with a similar philosophy, but most Linux development now is done by either large commercial interests who are adopting an MS-like attitude or random incompetent people who only want to leave their mark on something, whether it's a good idea or not.

BSD is more elitist, and that's a good thing for the quality of the system.

The BSD guys are interesting. Not more elitist .. hell go look at the forums of ARCLinux MY GOD but rather conservative. The BSD guys are really good at documentation and creating teams like the ones making /usr/share/docs and the FreeBSD handbook and great manpages which also include Unix history.

The BSD guys want something done well with great input from experts rather than just throw yet a another million userspace daemon when problem solving. BSDs are also a full OS and not just a kernel, a distro, and a few user apps are thrown in and grown and linked together with a hope it will work.

My take is read the manual is added because they trust their own manual. If a newbie say well that doc SUCKs and they will examine it and quickly email the documentation guy to fix it etc. There is a real documentation effort as the kernel guys don't want to answer noobie questions and many are at all skill levels and needs. What is cool about FreeBSD at least is they have examples you can uncomment out to do things and hacks like CVSUP. It encourages you to play.

Re:*BSDs are rendering Linux irrelevant.

[Billly Gates]

FreeBSD also has KMS support but an earlier version. FreeBSD does run great as guest with Microsoft Hyper-V and Azure oddly as I use Pfsense on Hyper-V with Windows 10.

Re:*BSDs are rendering Linux irrelevant.

[Antique Geekmeister]

Oh. Oh, my. I'm sorry to say that that there is almost no paying work involving any of the BSD's, except for MacOS as a descendant of FreeBSD. Even the most casual search of job sites, whether hiring or looking for work, lists Linux over any or all of the BSD's by a ratio of hundreds to one.

The idea that they are a "go-to" operating system ignores that actual job listings involving the non-MacOS BSD's are almost entirely migration projects, to migrate from the BSD selected by a former technology architect, to a supportable and hardware compatible operating system. The individual BSD's can, and many do, have significant feature benefits over Linux. The lack of systemd is one of them, I can agree. But the featues you list have proven insufficient to gain market share compared to the ease of development, the ease of installation, and the broad usage of Linux.

Re:*BSDs are rendering Linux irrelevant.

[Bing Tsher E]

No, *BSD is what Linux couldn't be at the time, so it became linux instead.

The BSD license was still uncertain in 1991-3 when Linux was getting it's start. If the uncertainty had not been there, people would just have used 386BSD and been done with it.

Re:*BSDs are rendering Linux irrelevant.

[Bing Tsher E]

The whole structure of the OS is so vastly different. The whole base userland and kernel on a BSD OS are released as a complete source tarball on one revision tag. It all builds together. You can build an entire BSD release with two make commands, one for the kernel and one for the userland.

With Linux, the userland of each 'disto' is whatever that 'distro maintainer' decided to pull together into the dogs breakfast of a userland that Linux OSes always have. Source code for userland binaries come from all over the place. And there are so many userlands.

Re:*BSDs are rendering Linux irrelevant.

[slack_justyb]

It's getting to the point where Linux really doesn't offer any substantial benefits over the *BSDs. In many ways the *BSDs offer significant advantages over Linux.

Welp I know this will get modded down, but hell why not play devil's advocate here? Vendor support. You have actual companies that will stand behind and certify software and hardware for Linux. Not so much for BSDs. Also, you kind of point out the problem with BSD. This BSD is good for this, this BSD is good for that. Not many businesses have the time to sit there and evaluate ten different BSDs to figure out which one provides the most bang for buck, where as much as everyone hates it, systemd homogenizes Linux. A single known Linux versus a half dozen BSDs where commercial support is iffy at best, guess which one is going to win in the mind of the non-technical person who write the check that will pay for the installation.

The *BSDs are becoming the go-to operating system for a wide range of computing needs, from servers to workstations to embedded systems.

I don't doubt that BSDs are getting deployed, but you are over stating the figure a bit. Newer folks in the industry are learning Linux and while the old hats like the way BSD works and feels, the newer folks don't really give a stink. Most of them will get ten seconds to have 100 servers up and running, ready for whatever software the PHB has selected. With BSD you'll be lucky to get past configuring disks in that ten seconds. With Linux you'll have an army of AWS boxes at your command ready to go before your first cup of coffee is poured.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not sitting here dissing the BSD folks, but there's a serious need for folks to look past systemd as the sole reason everyone and their dog is leaving Linux. That's not happening and people yelling this argument sound a lot like how people used to junk on Java for how poorly 1.2 ran all the way up to where Java EE and Spring is pretty much everywhere. It's seriously getting old and Linux's popularity hasn't gone anywhere and doesn't look like it is going anywhere anytime soon.

All the different BSDs are great and they have their place. However, I hear arguments about systemd and the majority of them are dated as hell, just like when Java 6 was out and people would rag on it like everyone was still using Java 1.2. So all the different BSDs, they're doing great, I mean look at Yahoo, they're still running all their stuff on BSD. There's a good amount of IoT that is running some version of BSD. I'm not saying BSD isn't some hot stuff right now. What I am saying is that Linux is way more known and a lot of folks know it as the go-to-solution, systemd and all. Additionally, systemd, while contentious, has not been the death knell for Linux that everyone would like to think. It has been an evolution, to try and put the best spin on the systemd situation, but there's actual vendors with money on the line who have a vested interest in seeing systemd become stable. For the most part, it has become a stable system. That's not to say everything is rosy now, but systems with systemd on the server and a person well versed in systemd are good enough for actual production systems, Amazon among others have shown that very clearly.

especially now that nearly all Linux distros have started using systemd which has caused stability and reliability problems for lots of users.

At some point Slashdot users need to break the stereotype that we all beat a dead horse into jell-o. One sided shit like this and everyone who chimes in with "MOD UP!" are all echoing a view that is years old, and yes, I'm pretty sure Slashdot will be first to amp to front page any failure of systemd, because that's what the mob likes, because Slashdotter just can't stop kicking the horse. But truth be told, every flipping OS on the planet has bugs and some of them are pretty damn serious and require fixes, that's how software works. But c

Re:*BSDs are rendering Linux irrelevant.

[slack_justyb]

No, Bill Joy was the heart of BSD, when he moved on to Sun, BSD was done. No one could fire up the folks like Joy, no one had the passion like Joy. When he left, it was like walking into a bakery with the oven off and the door left open to the winter outside. Linus sticking so strongly with the project he started and guiding it the way he did in the early days is what lead to Linux rocketing upward. People like to cite how exciting it was or whatever, but it was the leadership between the two projects that made the difference. All the other stuff is just a by-product IMHO.

Re:*BSDs are rendering Linux irrelevant.

[Anne Thwacks]

Hopefully, one day soon Oracle will realise that if they want to sell Sparc hardware, they need to provide docs and support to the BSDs. Right now, OpenBSD supports the T series as well as it can, but some Oracle engineers on the case would make a world of difference.

Some people like their hardware, but don't like Solaris very much. (I know I am not the only one).

Oracle need to realise (as IBM eventually came to, after a near-death experience) that you have to be nice to the nerds, cos they are the ones people ask for advice. A few $$$ spent on BSD support would be worth millions in PR. More nerds playing with Sparc means more skilled staff available to support (and recommend) it in the workplace. Raising the second hand value of hardware (by widening the range of software that will run on it) is unlikely to take sales from the new kit - it reduces the TCO of new kit by reducing depreciation, and big companies will not put their mission critical software on second-hand systems.

Re:*BSDs are rendering Linux irrelevant.

[Noryungi]

Oh boy, so many things wrong here...

Welp I know this will get modded down, but hell why not play devil's advocate here? Vendor support. You have actual companies that will stand behind and certify software and hardware for Linux.

Hilarious. Try getting actual, useful support from Red Hat and SuSE, to name just two of the biggest... Go on, I'll be waiting right here.

The level of incompetence in these companies is simply astounding. Sure, there are some very good guys in there, but not in front-line support, that's for sure.

And, just so you know: hardware certification these days is usually Linux + FreeBSD, and it's done by the hardware vendor, not the software "supplier".

systemd homogenizes Linux. A single known Linux versus a half dozen BSDs where commercial support is iffy at best [...]

Yes, systemd homogenizes Linux... Down to the level of utter, absolutely unstable crap like Windows.

And there is not "a half dozen BSDs" - there is only three: FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD.

Compared to the situation of Linux, with not "half a dozen BSD", but litterally HUNDREDS of distributions, I am not sure you are being serious...

Most of them will get ten seconds to have 100 servers up and running, ready for whatever software the PHB has selected. With BSD you'll be lucky to get past configuring disks in that ten seconds. With Linux you'll have an army of AWS boxes at your command ready to go before your first cup of coffee is poured.

Ah yes, AWS, that marvelous field of shitty softare and even shittier infrastructure. Just FYI, it's called an "AMI", a system image in other words, and there are AMI for all of the BSDs. And the same is true for Azure and many other cloud offerings out there. You simply don't know what you are talking about, right? Either that, or you should stop blindly clicking on the Ubuntu AMI every time you create a VM in EC2.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not sitting here dissing the BSD folks, but there's a serious need for folks to look past systemd as the sole reason everyone and their dog is leaving Linux.

Actually, no, systemd IS the reason serious system administrators and quite a few devops are leaving Linux behind. The crap you have to deal with gets simply unbearable after a while.

I could go on refuting your ridiculous arguments again and again, but frankly, I have better things to do with my time. You are a very poor devil's advocate and an even worse technologist/system admin/unix admin I am afraid. Your level of ignorance is frankly stunning.

Re:*BSDs are rendering Linux irrelevant.

[TheRaven64]

So, bhyve, Xen, and VirtualBox aren't legit, what is by your standards?

Re:*BSDs are rendering Linux irrelevant.

[TheRaven64]

FreeBSD itself is -- as far as I know -- "managed" by the FreeBSD Foundation, and, in turn, that Foundation is managed by the FreeBSD developers.

Not quite. The FreeBSD Foundation is entirely separate from the FreeBSD Project. The FreeBSD Project is managed by the core team, which is a set of 9 people that are elected by 'active' contributors, defined as people who have committed something in the last year (I think - I'd have to double check the project bylaws for the exact time). The Foundation board is self-selected (i.e. board members are appointed by existing board members). There is usually at least one person who is both on the board of the Foundation and the Core team, though not always. The Foundation employs a few full time people and a lot of contractors to contribute to bits of the project that no one personally wants to work on, no single company wants to contribute, but which everyone thinks are important. This is typically guided by the Core Team. This structure protects the project's independence from the Foundation's financial weight (the Foundation's turnover is $1-2M/year). The Core Team decides who is allowed commit rights (usually in terms of granting this right, in very rare examples by taking it away), so the most the Foundation can do is pay someone to write code, they can't force the project to accept it.

The Foundation also handles a lot of vendor relations. Often, multiple vendors want the same thing, but no one wants to pay for all of it. The Foundation helps in these situations by getting different companies to pay for part of something. For example, ARM and Cavium jointly funded to the ARMv8 bring-up (ARM likes having a BSD-licensed reference implementation, because companies like Apple and Microsoft won't touch GPL'd code, Cavium wants to sell chips to companies like Juniper that use FreeBSD), but the Foundation organised the people to do the work (and others to do code review). They also do a lot of outreach. For the last few years, they've employed the release engineer, which is an incredibly annoying and high-stress job that it's hard to find volunteers for (and hard for companies to want to do, because the big downstream consumers typically use their own internal release process).

Disclaimer: I was on the Core Team for two terms, but this post contains personal opinions that may not reflect the opinions of the FreeBSD Project or the FreeBSD Foundation.

Re:*BSDs are rendering Linux irrelevant.

[AmiMoJo]

I've been meaning to try TrueOS for desktop out. Anyone tried it?

Their web site doesn't inspire confidence (scrolling is broken), so I might just try FreeBSD. Been about a decade since I last used it...

My standard distro test is to install Chromium and see if the mouse wheel works properly. I've found you can usually tell is a desktop distro is crap by how much effort they put in to making basic input devices work.

Re:*BSDs are rendering Linux irrelevant.

[AmiMoJo]

The page on how to contribute (https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/contributing/index.html) is certainly a lot more helpful than the ones for other big OS projects like KDE and Gnome.

Re:*BSDs are rendering Linux irrelevant.

[Antique Geekmeister]

> MacOS is by no means a descendant of FreeBSD. They grafted some stuff from FreeBSD onto NeXT Step.

According to Apple, much of the kernel is descended from FreeBSD.

* https://developer.apple.com/li...

I worked extensively with both MacOS and NeXT at an earlier point of my career, integrating various tools into several multi-platform environments for groups that hadn't been able to standardize on operating systems or base hardwrae. There are some philosophical and design structure similarities, but the amount of core kernel and OS underpinnings that came from NeXT seemed much smaller than that which came from FreeBSD.

year 2038

[jmccue]

Congregations to the team.

One thing to be aware of, OpenBSD no longer has year a 2038 issue, so if you have 32 bit hardware around you should give it a spin. Never mind the fact that if it was used on 32 bit IOT devices, we would have no worries about built in obsolescence in about ~20 years. And even security would be a bit better 'out of the box' :)

Re:year 2038

[fisted]

Just for the record, this AC is full of shit.

ssh-keygen doesn't generate unencrypted ssh keys by default, that only happens when you skip entering a passphrase (same behavior as ssh-keygen on literally any other platform, because - who knew - it actually originates from OpenBSD). If you do enter a passphrase, it will even refuse to generate a key if the passphrase is too short.

As for layered security, there's plenty of that in OpenBSD, a good deal of which other OSs do not have. Most recent example would be the "pledge" system call (formerly known as "tame").

I particularly enjoy stealing them from CIFS and NFS shares and backups, because even if the OpenBSD box is "secure", people inevitably leave those convenient passphrase keys lying around.

Aha, the "passphrase keys". For the record, as anything else, the private key is created chmod 600. You're not "stealing" shit, you're making things up.

Re:year 2038

[fisted]

Hit "enter" a few times

Yes, if you hit enter at the part where it says "Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase)", you'll get no passphrase. News at 11. Now since this behavior is consistent across all systems that have ssh-keygen, including linux, why are you using this to discredit OpenBSD? And it may have not occured to you, but there are legitimate use cases for unencrypted keys.

*Look, ma!!!* Home directories with .ssh/id_rsa, .ssh/id_dsa

Look ma, even if you're too lazy to enter a passphrase, they're still not world readable. This is, btw, layered security, the very thing you're trying to talk away.
Stop spreading nonsense in order to appear to have a point.

The big feature, KARL

[WayCool]

Seems that the post is missing the big feature to appear in 6.2, KARL - Kernel Address Randomized Link.