We are pleased to announce the official release of OpenBSD 5.4. This is our 34th release on CD-ROM (and 35th via FTP). We remain proud of OpenBSD’s record of more than ten years with only two remote holes in the default install.
That track record remains impressive – no matter how often I see it.
It is great news and there is much about the project to like. The notion that a documentation flaw is as much a bug as a mistake in the program code gets seriously better as I get older.
Did look into configuring OpenBSD for secure web browsing – banking, etc. Whilst the operating system is pretty darn secure; the browsers [Chromium and Firefox] are still a couple of releases behind the OSX versions – so perhaps with overhanging security issues.
I deeply wish that Theo De Radt had sat down and convinced Mark Shuttleworth to do Ubuntu with OpenBSD … the world would be a different place!
Edited 2013-11-04 19:02 UTC
Well, at least there is “Debian GNU/kFreeBSD”.
No. Just….no.
Hmm… While The default install of openbsd is pretty secure, Ubuntu would have had to build upon that base. I kind of doubt they would invest as much attention to security with their add ons as Open BSD does. Especially as they’d have to do a lot of work to get OpenBSD to be as usable as Ubuntu currently is on the desktop.
I’ve been running it since Friday on my Thinkpad with full-disk encryption. It works great, everything is supported out of the box. Suspend/resume works better (faster to resume & reconnect to WiFi) than Linux. Started out with Gnome 3 since that’s what I was using on Fedora and OpenBSD is the best place in *BSD land for that experience, but I ended up moving to Xfce. No problems with sound buttons or 1080p videos.
I haven’t used OpenBSD since 4.9 or so. I waited until this release to switch back because of the KMS support. I had to give up DropBox, SpiderOak, Gwibber and Flash but I knew that ahead of time. Also, the Firefox version is only 22.0 and crashes often. No idea why. I would like to see an ESR version of Firefox shipped with OpenBSD (and most Linux distributions) since the support cycle for security updates seems to coincide.
ulimit is your friend – OpenBSD limits memory per process by default, and Firefox doesn’t fit there.
Thanks for the tip. I upped the limit to 4GB and now Firefox is running great.
You can use -current snapshots to have the latest Firefox. And Chrome.
The problem with ESR firefox is a lot companies are doing the “last two versions of the browser” in terms of support.
It is a right PITA tbh.
OpenBSD continues to move ahead at a steady pace and always in the right direction.
I have been using it for all my needs (server, router, desktop, laptop) since 2.3
Running it on a TP X230 with full encryption as well. Everything works out of the box.
Suspend and hibernate is not only fully supported on thinkpads, but works better than on debian or windows – battery life is better with settings set to savings than running tlp or powersave script (about 14 hrs with 9cell in mixed use).
Superb stability with more up to date software than debian stable or rhel.
Thank you OpenBSD developers for another great release.
Wrong thread
Edited 2013-11-04 23:52 UTC
You’re in luck, then. Both HW support and the overall quality of Lenovo dropped down, down, down over the last years … Lenovo is no longer the brand I use or recommend to others. It sucks as hell and it’s simply the HW of very poor quality, no matter which model you choose. All of the 4 ThinkPads I bought recently HAD DEAD PIXELS or other stupid defects. ALL. Every single one of it. Damn you, AO Optronics, damn you, Lenovo for choosing such a crappy panel manufacturer. You supposed to be a high-quality brand, and look at you know … you’re no better than Acer or BenQ in terms of HW quality [even though BenQ doesn’t make any notebooks].
Now, I’m not saying other manufacturers are perfect. But the fact of the matter is that some of them have still better quality, or – at least – they sell notebooks with GOOD panels [and yes – panel is actually the window to your goddamn notebook and the whole digital world, so having it defected is just ridiculously stupid. I’m more inclined to accept some flaws in a way the keyboard is manufactured, or some other minor flaws like worse quality of touchpad material, but come on … a panel? It’s the most expensive part of the notebook and still … they’re not passing the quality test]
Out of curiousity, which brand of laptops do you use and recommend these days?
Benq definitely did make notebooks …did it change?
Is there a list of laptops which work particularly well with OpenBSD?
I’m aware that because of a more stringent approach to drivers the set of laptops which work well is necessarily smaller than, say, Linux.
I’m interested in power management, graphics acceleration, good hibernation/sleep, proper use of bus modes eg USB, ATA3, etc
I’m happy to spend money of specific hardware to have OpenBSD work well .. (hello suppliers!)
http://www.daemonforums.org/showthread.php?t=1880
Thinkpads – most developers use them and hence they usually have great support
If available, firmware is now automatically installed via fw_update
search openbsd misc for specific TP models
As a rule of thumb I’ve found that intel based kit made by Dell, Lenovo / IBM works well.
I’m pretty sure you can forget about graphics acceleration not matter which hardware you get.
I daily use an Acer Aspire One D255 for network management, monitoring, etc; with a couple of USB devices (serial adapter and extra NIC).
Almost everything works great. I never tried to use power management, and the SD card reader is not supported. But i guess that a 10 inch netboot is too small for your needs.
NVidia does support FreeBSD, not sure if the drivers work under OpenBSD though.
They don’t work, and nouveau isn’t ported.
http://news.gmane.org/find-root.php?group=gmane.os.openbsd.misc&art…
It is a monolithic kernel. It doesn’t really do anything like modules like Linux or FreeBSD
3D works as long as it isn’t nvidia.
OpenBSD focuses on stability, correctness and doing it right. Linux focuses on getting the latest feature, highest performance and hackiness and sloppy code. Two different paradigms:
http://bsd.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4405517&cid=45311177
OpenBSD is a very solid OS considering they have a grand total of probably about 80 developers (it is a figure I heard a few years back so forgive me if it isn’t the case).
What I like about it compared to say Linux and some of the other *nixes, is that the FAQ, man pages and the read-me docs cover 99.9% everything.
If you are dual booting with Windows (as I do), I suggest using GAC bootmanager.
http://gag.sourceforge.net/
Edited 2013-11-05 15:08 UTC
Why not use ntldr to dualboot OpenBSD and Windows? It is documented in FAQ and has lower potential to make things ugly…
I will write up a little guide if anyone is interested?
Very interested…
Awesome project, awesome people, awesome OS. I am a long time OpenBSD user and I develop some of my software around OpenBSD.
Unfortunately, more and more I find myself using other OSs, mostly GNU/Linux, because it supports more HW.
Even though I don’t use OpenBSD that often anymore it is still the best OS I’ve ever used. Most structurized, logical and simply cool OS I’ve seen.
Long live, OpenBSD! I am going to run you on my VMs until you’re ready for my HW. Also – shame on you, nasty HW vendors for not supplying HW specs!