OpenBSD 4.5 Released 118
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.
Same day as Solaris 10u7 (Score:4, Informative)
Title says it all: http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/get.jsp [sun.com]
Re:Not like that... (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Seems to be full of old stuff with known bugs? (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Not like that... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Not like that... (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Not like that... (Score:3, Informative)
Not on the level of binary compatibility, no.
Re:"Only" two remote holes in 10 years? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not like that... (Score:4, Informative)
security related channel (Score:3, Informative)
You could try looking over on the Bug Tracking System [openbsd.org] or the openbsd-bugs mailing list [kerneltrap.org]
security and ports & packages (Score:5, Informative)
"The ports & packages collection does NOT go through the thorough security audit that the OpenBSD base system [openbsd.org] 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"
Re:oh goody (Score:4, Informative)
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.)
Re:Old, but scrutinized. That's the point. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:"Only" two remote holes in 10 years? (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:BSD vs. Linux (Score:4, Informative)
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.