OpenBSD 3.7 Reviewed 197
busfahrer writes "Jem Matzan has written a review of OpenBSD 3.7 for Newsforge. He talks about their licensing issues, network features, upgrading packages and the new supported architectures."
Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're guessing.
Declare your bias, why don't you? (Score:5, Interesting)
The operating system world has been blessed by another regular release of OpenBSD.
And, no, it doesn't get any more objective further down. Nor does he talk about the licensing issues or new architectures in any detail at all - less detail, in fact, than he talks about the theme tune.
Re:Declare your bias, why don't you? (Score:5, Insightful)
You have issues with BSD licensing? How much freeer do you want it?
Re:Declare your bias, why don't you? (Score:1, Flamebait)
Fact 1: BSD license isn't free enough to allow merging in GPLed code.
Fact 2: GPL isn't free enough to allow merging in BSD licensed code.
Wether this restriction of freedom is justifiable or not, wether it is unavoidable or not, the fact is that IMHO this is a significant restriction on freedom (both for the programmer and for the code). It forces people to "re-invent the wheel", and therefore it goes against one of the basic motivati
Re:Declare your bias, why don't you? (Score:5, Informative)
Fact 2: GPL isn't free enough to allow merging in BSD licensed code.
No, the modified BSD licence - which everyone uses nowadays - allows you to mix BSD and GPL code. The result is always GPL.
But that's not the issue here - RTFA.
Re:Declare your bias, why don't you? (Score:1)
Thanks for the clarification. No wonder I was modded troll
Re:Declare your bias, why don't you? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sort of like mixing champagne and sewage. The result is always sewage.
Re:Declare your bias, why don't you? (Score:2, Funny)
Fact 2: GPL isn't free enough to allow merging in BSD licensed code.
Fact 3: The purpose of a BSD license is to flip out and kill processes.
BSD licenses can `kill -9` anyone they want! BSD licenses cut off threads ALL the time and don't even think twice about it. These licenses are so crazy and awesome that they flip out ALL the time. I heard that there was this BSD license who was eating at a diner. And when some dude dropped a packe
Re:Declare your bias, why don't you? (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you talking about the so called "freedom" that code has under the GPL that "keeps" it open? That's not really freedom as it comes at a cost, a large cost, the authors "give up" their "rights" is the cost. Now they might want to do that and pay that price (which is perfectly fine if they choose to do so), but afterwards they are no longer free to do what they want with the code, and neither are users who might choose to use the code as the "many rules" of the GPL w
Re:Declare your bias, why don't you? (Score:5, Informative)
RTFA. The issue mentioned is that OpenBSD folks object to the Apache 2 licence, and so OpenBSD won't get Apache 2.
Re:Declare your bias, why don't you? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Declare your bias, why don't you? (Score:2)
Re:Declare your bias, why don't you? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Declare your bias, why don't you? (Score:3, Insightful)
So I highly doubt a BSD would care if, say, Windows inherited its own OpenSSH-based SSH daemon (though it might need a different SSL library). I quote from Theo, "Their security is our security", and if Windows machines are given boosts to security capabilities, the whole world benefits. There's no point in starving o
Re:Declare your bias, why don't you? (Score:2)
Re:Declare your bias, why don't you? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Declare your bias, why don't you? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Declare your bias, why don't you? (Score:2)
This isn't unusual, so people need to stop acting like they've been raped if they don't get complete verilog sources. Full specs for the hardware is much more i
Re:Declare your bias, why don't you? (Score:5, Informative)
The whole point of the recent OpenBSD wireless developments are that the drivers are completely free!
Stallman gave Theo de Raadt the 2004 FSF award in Febuary [slashdot.org] as recognition for crying out loud!
Re:Declare your bias, why don't you? (Score:2)
Re:Declare your bias, why don't you? (Score:2)
That's it, I'm switching (Score:3, Funny)
Good bye linux, hello obscurity, er, OpenBSD!
Re: That's it (Score:3, Funny)
Your mom knows a lot of other things you wouldn't suspect.
Oh, and btw BSD rules. So, you *please* stay away from it. Thanks
(No, I didn't forget the "post anonymously" blah blah)
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Requiem for the FUD [slashdot.org]
Re: That's it (Score:2)
Re: That's it (Score:3, Interesting)
There are also other reasons related to the goals of the projects - I like FreeBSD for emphasizing the "tool" aspect of software, keeping policies/politics completely out of the door. But it's not that I don't respect OpenBSD activism, as a matter of fact I do, they have a point (and by pressing hardware vendors they've already got amazing results). It's just that the FreeBSD po
Re: That's it (Score:2)
Re: That's it (Score:4, Informative)
In fact, the main differences are technical, in their very goals: while FreeBSD focuses mainly on features and i386 performance, OpenBSD focuses mainly on code correctness and security.
>Do these two share between each other?
Sure they do - and massively.
For example, one little jewel that came from OpenBSD to the other *BSDs is pf (packet filter) [openbsd.org], that has an excellent reputation for its being very clean and easy to use.
>Is there a common BSD kernel or anything like that?
No.
The *BSDs are developed like OSes, not "distros". So, while they massively share code, they maintain their own kernels.
To better understand the differences, it helps to notice that OpenBSD was born as a NetBSD fork, 8 years ago - and even today, it shares more code with NetBSD than with FreeBSD.
But to understand even better, well.. FreeBSD and OpenBSD are renowned for their excellent documentation, that is well worth having a look at.
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/
http://openbsd.org/faq/index.html [openbsd.org]
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Requiem for the FUD [slashdot.org]
Re: That's it (Score:3)
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/ f aq/index.html [freebsd.org]
I also forgot: this is a very nice place to find competent and informative answers to BSD and Unix related issues
http://bsdforums.org/forums [bsdforums.org]
Btw, one little thing that the forum above has, and IMHO Slashdot is missing *badly*, is the ability to edit comments to add things you f
Re: That's it (Score:2)
Likely so that people couldn't change what they wrote after replies were written, but it would be good to have it eBay-style, so you'd see something like:
So you could only add, not remove.
Re: That's it (Score:2)
No. There are many technical differences in addition to the political differences.
In general, FreeBSD picks features, compatability and performance first, while OpenBSD picks security and robustness first. Over time, that drift has left them in completely different positions.
The freedom of 3rd party software is som
Re: That's it (Score:3)
I'm not a big RMS fan, but here's where I'd disagree with you -- how GM engineers their engines and why may be none of my business, but being allowed to tear it apart and replace parts myself for my own use should be a basic right. If I then want to tell others what I did to my GM engine to make it better, so they can do it to theirs, that should be fine too.
Re: That's it (Score:3)
I think we're talking about two different things: the right to see the software source code is like the right to have the *blueprints* of that engine (i.e., the right to have their knowledge and know-how, the "reci
Everyone is biased.... (Score:1)
Why Can't We All Just "Get Along"? (Score:4)
Sheesh. The prez in "Mars Attacks" said it best:
"Why can't we work out our differences? Why can't we work things out? Little people, why can't we all just get along?"
Mark
Re:Why Can't We All Just "Get Along"? (Score:1)
Not a good image to evoke.
Re:Why Can't We All Just "Get Along"? (Score:3, Funny)
Just picture a bunch of little BSD Daemon guys killing Stallman and...
Mark
Re:Why Can't We All Just "Get Along"? (Score:4, Funny)
Actual information (Score:5, Insightful)
Outside of these things, the only pieces of information I could find boiled down to "there's two new ports", "it still doesn't include Apache 2.x", and "you get daily (in)security reports mailed to you". If it wasn't for the irrelevant fluff mentioned above, I'd assume the author of this article hasn't even installed OpenBSD and instead just looked through the website and maybe Google'd for some extra information.
I really hope the author didn't get payed too much for this, because no matter how much he got, the article wasn't worth it.
Re:Actual information (Score:5, Interesting)
Heck it was more of a bad press release than a review.
Re:Actual information (Score:2)
2. Computers need to be secure.
Without knowing how fast and how secure it is how do you know if it will suit your needs?
Is it faster than the last version?
What tuning options do you have?
How is it on disk access.
How does it do an large reads?
How does it do on small reads?
What raid drivers does it have?
How fast are those?
How fast is the TCP/IP stack?
You say it sucks but is secure? How bad does it suck then? Am I going to need a 4 way SMP box to run a firewall for my house on it?
Re:Actual information (Score:2)
1. micro-benchmarks arn't relaible use application benchmarks (i.e. the best thing to do is install it and see before putting it into production)
Routing - OBSD is really fast and uses almost no resouces on my small network (~30computers, 1.5Mbit connection that stays at about 90+% useage;); i'm using an old K6-II 400 /w 64MB of ram and a 2GB hdd. CPU usage hasn't topped 3%, disk isn't used except durring boot up and memory stays at about 20%
Multimedia and Development-
There is less reason to review OpenBSD. (Score:4, Insightful)
When I ran RedHat, there were some pretty annoying things that got changed from release to release (inetd disappears, two different C compiler installs because of kernel problems, etc.).
This kind of stuff doesn't happen in OpenBSD. From an administration perspective, my first 3.2 install is very similar to the 3.5 that I run now, which itself is similar to 3.7. There are no large architecture changes (perhaps because things are well-thought-out from the start).
Because of this, you pretty much know what you're getting when a new OpenBSD release comes out. The installer is practically identical, and the running system yeilds few surprises. There will always be new features, but there won't be lots of things to unlearn.
So no, I don't really pay much attention to the reviews. The list of new features on the OpenBSD web page pretty much tells me all that I need to know.
Re:There is less reason to review OpenBSD. (Score:2)
Or perhaps because releases are frequent enough that changes are spread out over different releases.
How many times has OpenBSD completely broken binary compatibily in the past ~2 years? 3 times or so?
Personally, it's the tiny useless changes that really bother me. In your config files, one option will be known by a slightly different name from release to release.
Re:There is less reason to review OpenBSD. (Score:2)
OpenBSD had GCC 2.9 and 3.x for a while. I think 3.7 is the first release in a while with just one C compiler.
"There are no large architecture changes"
What, like the IPF to PF transition? Or the a.out to ELF transition that broke all the old binaries?
OpenBSD is my OS of choice, but let's not kid ourselves. It has uphevals from time to time.
Re:There is less reason to review OpenBSD. (Score:2)
Each platform had only one compiler, and the kernel was built with that same compiler. Red Hat 6 came with two different compilers on each platform.
I started using OpenBSD at 3.2, and this was already done, so it was no pain to me. Implementing PF was a sound choice, it caused a major version upgrade (2 to 3), it removed a big licensing problem, and
Re:There is less reason to review OpenBSD. (Score:3, Informative)
Now that's pure BS. Upgrades with OpenBSD are far simpler by any account. It mainly has to do with the underlying OS being simpler (elegant, whatever), but no question it is simpler.
Those instructions are quite verbose, and really talk a lot about borderline cases that most everyone can ignore. Files
Re:Actual information (Score:4, Insightful)
Later he wrote an article on newsforge about "Being Free is Hard to Do" on free software, than he submitted this article to slashdot under his nick (ValourX), describing it in the following terms:
What shameless self promotion! It is a pity, for once this guy wrote excellent reviews and articles, but what he does lately is prostitution, not journalism.Re:Actual information (Score:2)
After his FreeBSD 5.3 "review", it's amazing that a piece written by this guy - who rarely does argue so well as himself
Thanks for revealing another one of these trollish characters - you really seem to have a talent for spotting them.
(Yes, I want to be on his s**t list too. Does it show?
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Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.
Re:Actual information (Score:2)
The jemreport has a widespread reputation, and it's not a good one.
Standard OS Review Questions? (Score:1)
I expected more, but of course... (Score:5, Insightful)
I would have appreciated the article more if it were a lot more in-depth, but perhaps that would've ward off others. I would like to see him not just talk about the install process (initially), but also how easy it was to install applications (and not just "I had to type too much"), configure them (interface-configuration, or purely text-editing), and finally - how well they all interacted. Now, I know that sounds more like an analysis of the individual applications rather than the operating system, but what is an operating system if not a platform that you use to interact with applications?
We also hear about the "new wireless" stuff... where was that? Test with multiple cards? USB-Wireless perhaps? PCMCIA Wireless? To tout such things (even in the review) and then not do anything with them is rather disappointing.
Re:I expected more, but of course... (Score:1)
Also, as noted in a previous story [slashdot.org], the Sharp Zaurus port allows you to (with a CF ethernet adapter) set up a handheld, on-the-go wireless AP.
A much better source of information can be found at this ONLamp Interview With OpenBSD Developers [onlamp.com]
The shot at RMS for the day (Score:4, Funny)
The theme of the OpenBSD 3.7 CD set is The Wizard of Oz, and the cute little CD jacket cartoon strip shows the OpenBSD mascot and friends on a journey to achieve better wireless card drivers. Their adventure takes them to the Emerald City to meet the great and powerful Wizard of OS himself -- an effigy of a crown-wearing penguin. The man behind the curtain turns out to be a Richard Stallman-like character with GNU horns. The characters are disappointed because the Wizard ends up being "all talk -- no action!" So they decide to code the wireless driver by reverse-engineering the device.
Re:The shot at RMS for the day (Score:1, Troll)
Just curious, when was the last time that RMS reverse engineered a useful device and posted the driver source?
Re:The shot at RMS for the day (Score:1, Funny)
Just curious, when was the last time Theo wrote a compiler suite capable of e.g building OpenBSD?
That's what I love about the OpenBSD community - the total lack of arrogance.
Re:The shot at RMS for the day (Score:2)
Re:The shot at RMS for the day (Score:2)
That assumes that another compiler wouldn't have matured along with the BSD progression. Granted, GCC was the first solid one on the block, so it got used. Nothing against GCC, but you can't just state that without it various "open source" projects would not be where they are today. To argue otherwise is simply pretending to be all knowing.
Besides, GCC should be called K&R GCC, because
Re:The shot at RMS for the day (Score:2)
Re:The shot at RMS for the day (Score:3, Insightful)
More to the point, do you seriously think that if your scenario played out the BSD folks could not port their compiler to the new CPU as easily as the GCC folks port thiers today?
Re:The shot at RMS for the day (Score:2)
Yes, that's right, I'm not talking about some wild theory about why licensing GCC with GNU was a good thing, I'm talking about documented history. There were (and still are) other alternatives to porting GCC
Re:The shot at RMS for the day (Score:2)
Re:The shot at RMS for the day (Score:2)
Re:The shot at RMS for the day (Score:2)
As far as "slamming" RMS, I think the cartoon in question is basically just a "joke", and I think some people shoul
Re:The shot at RMS for the day (Score:3, Insightful)
The simple fact of open source isn't what gets built, it's the spirit behind it - a spirit that exists without some fat bearded douche bag writing PART of a compiler (which isn't JUST WRITTEN BY RMS, IT'S WRITTEN BY MANY MANY OTHER PEOPLE [gnu.org] TO REACH IT'S CURRENT, USEFUL FORM!!! Jeebus people). That spirit would move other people to develop their own compiler, mu
Re:The shot at RMS for the day (Score:2)
Tendra is more-or-less on his TODO list.
The parent's post was too specific. Let me generalize it... When was the last time RMS wrote useful code of any kind, rather than just blowing hot air?
Re:The shot at RMS for the day (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I switched from Linux (Score:1, Interesting)
So far it's been a good deal. I copied my $HOME from Debian, installed a bunch of stuff from the ports tree, and I can hardly tell the difference now, other than better wireless support, and probably a cleaner userland.
OpenBSD's base system is great, and though the ports tree is nowhere near as massive as Debian, it still contains nearly 100% of the relevant tools that I use every day, packaged in a very
Re:I switched from Linux (Score:1)
Last week, my dual-boot Win98/Ubuntu laptop (an Inspiron 3700) ate itself, so I decided to use the opportunity to try OpenBSD 3.7, given the allure of the new wireless drivers.
The install went well and I got X running as soon as I realized that I needed to use 'xorgconfig' rather than 'xf86config3'. I downloadeed a snapshot of the ports tree and did the obligatory builds of Gnome (2.8
Re:I switched from Linux (Score:2)
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Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.
Re:I switched from Linux (Score:2)
Oh, and don't listen to the bullshit about portupgrade being a sad excuse for an upgrade mechanism. I kept a production server running for 2 years using cvsup and portupgrade. I actua
Re:I switched from Linux (Score:2)
You can, of course, use NetBSD's pkgsrc on OpenBSD - and the OpenBSD FAQ even recommends you do this in some situations. If you find software you want in pkgsrc but not in OpenBSDs ports (by the way, you should really use packages unless you have a very good reason for compiling from ports), then this might be a better solution for you.
Re:I switched from Linux (Score:2)
As I always tell people: OpenBSD is great, provided you actually read the doucumentation! Since you seem to want OpenBSD to work exactly like Linux so that you don't have to read anything, I'm going to suggest that you just stick with Linux. This isn't intended an insult; for some reason, some people just don't want to read the fine manuals. Those people need to avoid OpenBSD like the plauge. Put another way, your post makes it obvious that you didn't read the instructions...
>I downloadeed a s
No troll, I'm dead serious and love OpenBSD (Score:1, Insightful)
OpenBSD is not open to the typical install process, ie 10Gig of Windows then no possible booting for OpenBSD.
Do we have to wait for version 5.0 before Theo "gets it?"
FUDster. (Score:3, Informative)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=127944&cid=10
Re:No troll, I'm dead serious and love OpenBSD (Score:2, Informative)
Re:No troll, I'm dead serious and love OpenBSD (Score:2)
If you're still experiencing those kinds of issues, the cause is likely to do with an outdated BIOS or other hardware issue rather than a deficien [openbsd.org]
Server OS (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Server OS (Score:2)
Also, what alternatives are so much better than OpenBSD for a desktop? Unless you are trying to play 3D rendered games, OpenBSD can do pretty much anything FreeBSD or Linux can do. Have you not heard of emulation?
Re:BSD, the history (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:BSD, the history (Score:1, Funny)
Note to moderators and BSD zealots - this is a _joke_.
Forgetting one tiny detail... (Score:2)
Some of the major operating systems *are* BSD. FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD. [slashdot.org]
Re:Not dead? (Score:4, Funny)
It's now a zombie. Neither dead or alive.
Re:Not dead? (Score:2)
Re:Not dead? (Score:2)
His teacher was a little flummoxed because my son kept referring to Lazarus as "re-dead", which refers to some zombie like characters in some of his Zelda games on his Gamecube.
For some reason, she didn't get any happier after I "educated" her about who Zelda was... Believe it or not, we really only let him have 30 minutes of total screen time (TV + Comp
Re:BSD (Score:2)
Re:BSD (Score:4, Interesting)
Less complicated init;
MUCH better documentation;
Less painful filesystem management (though LVM2 is really nice);
The downsides are significant however:
Bad support for esoteric hardware;
Less vendor support;
Fewer eyes looking over the code (though, to be fair, there is MUCH less code for them to look over)
Re:BSD (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know if this is really true. There are three major BSD "distributions" with subtle differences. Fans of each routinely look over the code for the others looking for good, "stealable" code. Not only does that mean that people are looking at the code, but informed "outsider" coders are looking at it with a critical eye. So, even if the code is reviewed by fewer people, it's reviewed by people who are more likely to notice, report, and fix bugs.
Re:BSD (Score:3)
Really? Have you heard of NetBSD? Do you not realize that FreeBSD has been not only on-par with Linux, but ahead of it in some areas for many years now?
That's debatable. There are fewer vendors for BSD-based OSes, but you get perfectly good support from those that do exist.
Saying that this is a disadvantage is dishonest.
Re:BSD (Score:2)
I already did. And I quote: "FreeBSD has been [...] ahead of it in some areas for many years now"
Really, now? Start listing them, and I'll be happy to challenge them, one-by-one. Unless of course you're just trolling and have no evidence behind your claims...
The number of companies is completely and totally irrelivant. Microsoft is only one company...
Re:BSD (Score:2)
USB, Firewire, NICs, 802.11, etc. Look it up. I'm not going to give you a lecture on all the developments of FreeBSD and Linux over the past several years.
Oh, you see "a lot" eh? "A lot" meaning 2? 3? Which ones? Provide some real evidence, or quit making noise.
Now that is absolutely
Re:Mandatory Access Controls? (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, this depends really on what you think *most* people want. The system contains a number of tools from the default install, including:
ntpd
pf
bgpd
isakmpd
spamd
OpenSSH
X.Org
Gcc
Perl
Apache
OpenSSL
Groff
Sendmail
Bind
Lynx
Sudo
Ncurses
Heimdal
Arla
Binutils
Gdb
Although I may have missed few...
As you can see from the apps mentioned, there are a number ways you could pu
Re:Mandatory Access Controls? (Score:1)
At least, I don't remember enabling it on my boxes. But then I'm not known for my amazing memory.
Re:Mandatory Access Controls? (Score:1)
Re:Mandatory Access Controls? (Score:2)
The last remote hole was in OpenSSH, if I remember correctly.
Re:Mandatory Access Controls? (Score:2)
Well, the philosophy is this, "Hey, here's an OS that will be secure out of the box. You don't have to scramble around the default install to lock it down. You are now free to build upon it with the degree of security you wish to im
Re:Mandatory Access Controls? (Score:2)
One of the most useful of these is systrace - access control on a system call level. You can explicitly grant access to certain system calls to processes. The privilege escalation feature of this allows you to grant a process the ability to call a certain system call with certain arguments as root, so you can (for example) allow a da
Re:Free, but not quite (Score:1)
There is nothing wrong with specifically warning people against just trusting the Internet, if you download a .iso claiming to be a OpenBSD 3.7 installer there is a chance that it is not, or that someone has modified it. Therefore OpenBSD does not tell you to go out and download something that you cannot read the source for, that what they sell is what they know is trustworthy.
There is nothing wrong with
Re:Free, but not quite (Score:2)
Re:Free, but not quite (Score:2)
"Note that only the CD layout is copyrighted, OpenBSD itself is free. Nothing precludes someone else from downloading OpenBSD and making their own CD."
You are greatly exagerating an otherwise small deal. It takes a small amount of time to make your own ISO. There is nothing complicated about it. If this bothers you that much, well, I don't know what to say. Sorry. I don't find anything hypocritical about it. To me it's like calling a fisher a hypocrite because he als
Re:Apache2 (Score:2)