The OpenBSD team earlier this month released version 3.6 of the free operating system, with support for more hardware, updated application software, and bug fixes included. This time around OpenBSD has added support for multi-CPU systems, a number of drivers for new peripheral hardware, and about 200 more apps to the Ports tree. NewsForge took the new version for a spin, and liked what they found.
OpenBSD 3.6 review
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I thought than it should be a very robust OS. What pity than OpenBSD doesn’t has a good documentation book as FreeBSD has.
While the documentation isn’t perfect, or complete, there is plenty of it. Between the FAQ, the man pages, and the mailing list archives I don’t think I’ve come across much that wasn’t covered.
There are a number of ongoing projects working on the documentation though, as well as a long discussion about it on misc@. Volunteer some time.
there is ….
Along with the man pages and the other resources there is Absolute OpenBSD by Michael Lucas.
http://www.nostarch.com/frameset.php?startat=openbsd
For starters, the Installation Guide is the best guide to installing an operesting system out there. Use it.
Second, the FAQ and man pages are very complete and very decent.
Thirdly: Look here for other interesting documentation, though it is work in progress: http://www.openbsdsupport.org/
As far as documentation goes, the OpenBSD FAQ and the man pages are great. http://undeadly.org, while mostly being a news site, does have some useful tutorials for OpenBSD. I also found Absolute OpenBSD and Secure Architectures with OpenBSD to contain excellent tips for running OpenBSD.
OpenBSD is by far my favorite OS for my file server, firewall (pf is the best in my opinion), and web server. It is easy to set up and very simple to maintain. Applying patches on the system is extremely simple. Recompiling the kernel for kernel level patches is also easy.
Buy a book if you dislike the available online documention (really, nothing compares to books, i suggest buying books for all problems{except shortsightedness, but thats another matter})).
Theres nothing new in this release for me personally, aside from perhaps tcpdrop.
At anyrate, for all those folk who havent tried OpenBSD yet, its worth your time imho. And itll only take up 200megs of diskspace
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The best thing i like about it is you dont have to compile anything. Not even the kernel
{yeah, i know, you dont have to compile your own kernel in linux either, but i feel like i always get forced into doing it anyway somehow or another..}
I like OpenBSD and I use it intermittently, but I was really disappointed that this release didn’t fix the bug (that has been there at least since 3.5) that causes all sorts of annoying crashes in KDE, especially Konqueror. I use Konqueror to browse, and many sites (OSnews, for example) just cause Konqueror to crash. You get the KDE Crash Handler dialog again and again. I reported this on the OpenBSD mailing list, and several others did too, but still not fixed.
Maybe this is a small gripe, and if you don’t use KDE or any KDE apps, then I guess it doesn’t matter. Many people are only using OpenBSD as a server or firewall, so they won’t even see this bug. Still, I wish it would get fixed.
I’m curious, is this bug an OpenBSD bug or a Konqueror on OpenBSD port bug. I not using OpenBSD yet, but I’m planning on using it on a workstation soon.
I’ve been using KDE in both OpenBSD 3.5 and now 3.6 and have had no problems with crashes in KDE or specifically Konqueror. I just now opened OSNews in Konqueror without any problems.
I’ve never experience more “anger” from mailing list participants as I have with the OBSD lists. I was a regular user (and purchaser) of OpenBSD from 2.8-3.3 and FreeBSD from 2.8-now. People were all too quick to rip you a new one if they felt you hadn’t RTFM to their satisfaction. In most cases I had read the docs but I either missed something or it wasn’t clarified. I hate to villify the entire project because they’re doing a great job but a few bad apples surely ruined it for me. Even still I only stopped using it because I went back to my Linksys firewall. People should try it…just think carefully before you ask for help.