Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 31st Oct 2008 20:04 UTC
The OpenBSD team has released OpenBSD 4.4. "As in our previous releases, 4.4 provides significant improvements, including new features, in nearly all areas of the system." Information on how you can obtain OpenBSD can be found on the OpenBSD website.
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RE: Another great release
by Liquidator on Fri 31st Oct 2008 20:45
in reply to "Another great release"
Member since:2007-03-04
how is OpenBSD not the absolute king of open source operating systems??
Depends what you mean by "king". If it's the king of security or elitism, yes, it's the king. If it's king of popularity or usage share, no it's not.
It's not the most popular OS because it's focused on a small niche of users (it's a choice from Theo), and there are other reasons that have made a number of users disgruntled, but this is another story...
RE: Another great release
by darknexus on Fri 31st Oct 2008 22:00
in reply to "Another great release"
Member since:2008-07-15
Member since:2005-10-15
RE[2]: Another great release
by darknexus on Sat 1st Nov 2008 14:30
in reply to "RE: Another great release"
Member since:2008-07-15
You don't *have* to build it. It's just very simple if you wish to do so either to apply your own patches or enable different build options. Keep in mind that simplicity is a relative term--I, for example, don't find Windows Vista simple at all, but rather needlessly layered and complicated. I find OpenBSD, and all of the BSDs for that matter, to be very consistent and concise without a lot of hand-holding or cruft. They let me do what *I* need to do and stay the heck out of my way the rest of the time, something that OS X thankfully inherited from its BSD roots as well. Wish I could say the same for most of the so-called "simple" Linux distros out there today, so far Slackware and Arch are the only ones I've found that stay out of the way.
RE[2]: Another great release
by johkra on Sat 1st Nov 2008 14:34
in reply to "RE: Another great release"
Member since:2007-09-12
Actually you don't have to build X (xenocara is on the install CD) and most packages are available pre-built, too.
But setting up everything needs more user intervention and knowledge (both the partition and the disklabel editor are *not* user friendly) and it's just not an out-of-the-box experience as many got to expect from their OS.
That being said, I've just finished the installation, went back to Linux to transfer the wireless firmware and will now test WPA support.
I've tried to switch since 4.1, but there was always a problem (wireless, printer drivers, screen resolution,...) holding me back to my Arch install...
Member since:2006-06-28
Member since:2008-11-01
RE[2]: Another great release
by Archite on Sat 1st Nov 2008 22:32
in reply to "RE: Another great release"
Member since:2006-01-14
They do. Did you bother to look?
ftp://openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/4.4/i386/install44.iso
Member since:2005-12-25
I already have this installed and kernel patched, and works great as usual. Includes preliminary support for UVC USB webcams and WPA/WPA2-PSK. With the intense quality of the OpenBSD releases, from the kernal, to the userland, and system utilities, even how simple it is get the source for X and build it, how is OpenBSD not the absolute king of open source operating systems??
Although I agree that OpenBSD is great, there are many reasons why one would rather have some Linux running.
NVidia and ATI. If you need extreme performance, you need the binary drivers that are only for Linux (and perhaps FreeBSD).
Another reason is package management. I don't know if this has changed for OpenBSD recently, but seems to me that they don't have a simple way to upgrade the whole system fast. You even said in your comment something about getting the sources of X and building them. Almost nobody wants to do that.
Then there's SMP. Almost all new machines have more than one core. How does OpenBSD handle that currently?
RE[2]: Another great release
by omoerbeek on Sun 2nd Nov 2008 13:14
in reply to "RE: Another great release"
Member since:2006-10-28
Although I agree that OpenBSD is great, there are many reasons why one would rather have some Linux running.
NVidia and ATI. If you need extreme performance, you need the binary drivers that are only for Linux (and perhaps FreeBSD).
Another reason is package management. I don't know if this has changed for OpenBSD recently, but seems to me that they don't have a simple way to upgrade the whole system fast. You even said in your comment something about getting the sources of X and building them. Almost nobody wants to do that.
Then there's SMP. Almost all new machines have more than one core. How does OpenBSD handle that currently?
Indeed, OpenBSD does not allow blobs for drivers. We are very firm about that, and for good reasons.
It's strange how people judge a system without actual experience. Since a couple of releases, upgrading packages is as simple as can be. The package system checks which packages are out of date and offers to upgrade them. This includes dependency checks and all that. Also, a lot of ports are available as pre-built packages.
Upgrading the base system always has been easy: boot install media an choose "upgrade".
Both i386 and amd64 (and sparc64 and macppc) have MP support. But multi threading is done in-process.
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2006-04-19
I already have this installed and kernel patched, and works great as usual. Includes preliminary support for UVC USB webcams and WPA/WPA2-PSK. With the intense quality of the OpenBSD releases, from the kernal, to the userland, and system utilities, even how simple it is get the source for X and build it, how is OpenBSD not the absolute king of open source operating systems??