This is a partial list of new features & systems for OpenBSD 3.7, scheduled to be released in May.
OpenBSD 3.7 Page Goes Live
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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X.Org 6.8.2 <– wow… they arent THAT far behind anymore. I am not sure if OBSD would make a good workstation. I used it as a workstationat OBSD 3.1 and it was pretty usable… no java and flash in browser but it was rocksteady.. now with more support for Wireless Lan I might get it on my laptop.
As much as everyone always disses Theo , I must say so far OBSD has impressed me each time with every new release and Theo keeps the developers all under one umbrella. That has to count for something.
kudos to the OBSD team
//FR
http://www.2blocksaway.com
I like obsd myself, the only thing I find disgusting is there logos. The graphics just sucks. Although everything else is wonderful
I think their web site is hobbyist. If they had a professional logo and web site like Red Hat + their excellent security hardened OS, there is no reason why OpenBSD wouldn’t take off.
Yea maybe it could use a little face-lift, but its also good to have a minimalistic site accessible from many platforms/browsers without too much unnecessary junk on it
I’m a long time Linux user and since a couple of months ago I’ve been playing a little with OBSD, it has really really a lot of very nice features and it’s very very well organized and easier to understand than almost anybody thinks.
PF, the firewall included, __just rocks__ , much better and easier to understand and configure than iptables (the syntax really sucks; any port of pf to Linux planned?
).
I’ll probably order a CD in order to support this project.
I will also buy a cd this time to support the project.
They do really important stuff like the efforts to work with wireless chipset vendor to get documentation …
I used to have my home server (running linux) acting as a firewall. About a year ago I bought a Sparc Ultra1 to play around with, installed OpenBSD on it and I have it running as a firewall since. PF is very nice compared to iptables. I know both of them pretty well and both can do about the same things, but working with PF is much more pleasant. The syntax is very readable and the documentation is excellent. I’ve been hoping that someone would port PF to linux some day. Is anybody at all working on something like that, is it technically impossible or not just worth the effort?
Nothing stops a PF port but the desire of someone with the skill to do so.
I read some time ago that it would be quite difficult due that it requires major core changes to the Linux kernel, don’t know if it’s true but probably nobody is working in such thing.
So I’ll stick with OpenBSD or FreeBSD for these purposes (it’s already included in FreeBSD since 5.3!).
I kept on hearing that they were doing something with the ports tree, but nothing was mentioned in the “What’s New” section. I noticed in the changelog that they’ve been adding more functionality to pkg_add such as the following:
+ Enable the progress meter by default in pkg_add(1); use -x to disable it.
+ More work on pkg_add(1) internals; make progress meter useful during package replacement.
+ Start work on update support in pkg_add(1).
+ + More work on pkg_add(1) package replacement.
+ More work on pkg_add(1) internals; make progress meter useful during package replacement.
+ Add a progress meter to pkg_add(1).
+ Add support for mtree(8) to the pkg_add(1) framework.
From just reading the changelog, it seems as though that you can update packages and/or replace them. If so, then that seems like a neat tool to keep your packages up-to-date and secure.
As much as I have been loving OpenBSD lately (was a FreeBSD to OpenBSD convert), the one thing I miss about FreeBSD is the ever-updating ports tree. With OpenBSD, the release version of the ports tree (if you follow -STABLE you can get security patches to the ports tree, though) is what you get and they don’t recommend following a -CURRENT ports tree. That kinda sucks.
Other than that, OpenBSD is great. It’s simple, secure and well thought out.
There should be a Spongebob like series with the blowfish and friends
Actually the current ports tree of FreeBSD sucks.
It’s okay if all you want to do is update a small package — but anything large with dependencies, always results in disaster for me.
A dependency often fails to build and then you’re left with half of a bunch of junk installed but not the main app.
Or even worse, sometimes some ports will install updated libraries and break other ports. Or it seems harmless at the time, but things just get ouf of sync, and then you have trouble installing the prebuilt packages.
OpenBSD’s support for wireless is impressive. Primary OS here (on multi-arcs). I just wish there would be some of grugq’s work integrated with OpenBSD, it would offer even more security. Keep up the great work Theo & Crew!
Just waiting for the 3.7 theme song…
Send them patches. They spend their time being productive instead of making a pretty webpage.
The stable ports tree gets some updates. If you want something more up to date, use snapshots.
Links to examples please?
Snapshots? You mean ports -CURRENT or something different? I do update my ports tree to the -STABLE branch.
Sometimes this results in actually updating the port rather than just fixing bugs in patches. For instance when I was running 3.4 Samba actually got updated to 2.2.12 version from some previous version due to a security problem with the previous version.
@James
How are you updating your ports in FreeBSD. I may have had problems in the past, but they were easily correctable. In the old days I used to use pkg_version -vcl ‘<‘ to create a script that would update my ports. I had to edit the script so that it would build things in the right order though. That worked well for me until they deprecated it in the 5.X branch.
You can use portupgrade, but be sure to know what you’re doing. Portupgrade can break things. Typically, I like to update the libraries first, then the stuff that depends on the libraries. More often than not, it all comes out just fine.
Another tip is to not install things that you don’t need. Also, look at the Makefiles before installing. Sometimes you can tune your build so it doesn’t install junk you don’t need. Then not what you did and add it to make.conf. This helps later on when you need to rebuild it.
For the most part, the FreeBSD ports tree works well for something that has over 12,600 ports. Only 257 ports are broken. That’s not so bad for volunteer effort.
Well, it would be nice to see some of his TDT suite (if you know what that is) integrated with OpenBSD’s filesystem functions.
If you are not familiar with TDT, what I’d like to see (automatic) removal of file slack, dirty/old inodes, etc. I am not too interested in things like RuneFS, more just the secured storage, on or offline.
And yes, I am a paranoid OpenBSD fanatic.
(BTW he did a great presentaion not long ago, check it out)
TDT is gpl so no, maybe duplicated, but not added. And since no dev seems to want those you will have to beer them into doing so.
D’oh, I forgot to check what license it was using. =(
Out of curiousity, I wonder why they aren’t interested. File slack and dirty inodes are security risks.
They deserve a lifetime of beer already, great work team!
I suppose that it is just that they want to do other things over adding such things.
Snapshots: ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/snapshots
OS snapshots, kinda like -current.
Hello, all! Just curious whether anyone uses OBSD as a desktop OS? I like sampling different OSes and use linux and OSX at home. Any compelling features or challenges in OBSD to get a usable desktop?
Greg
It sounds silly, but I am waiting for a new song from the OpenBSD team.
I use it on one of my desktops. I think it’s great. No real reason to use it over anything else though, I just like it better.
May 19 is my birthday. This will be one more present for me to play with!
as far as i can tell, it certainly hasn’t been harder to get working as a desktop than any other Unix-style O/S i’ve used. for general-purpose email/web use, the only problems that might crop up is that i’ve heard that browser plugins like flash/shockwave can be tricky. also, i don’t believe OpenBSD natively supports java, though it might be able to handle it through emulation of linux or some other O/S.
i wouldn’t consider these problems to be knocks against the project, though. they don’t have a real heavy desktop focus, though it’s perfectly usable in a lot of ways as a desktop machine. it’s never been my impression, though, that the OpenBSD developers are out to make the best general-purpose desktop machine possible.
i feel compelled to include the standard obvious statement whenever talking about OpenBSD: it’s a fantastic firewall, and i wouldn’t trade it for anything in that regard. the manual pages are some of the best i’ve ever seen as well.
First, it is not that OpenBSD does not natively support Java, it is that Sun’s Java does not natively support OpenBSD. And actually there is a native Java for OpenBSD, just not the official Java from Sun, it runs at 1.4 standard though I cannot recall the name.
If you were to search through the history of misc@ discussions you’d find it. Henning was talking about it a couple weeks ago.
i stand corrected. there is indeed a 1.4.2 jdk in the ports tree (someone said it was in -CURRENT on misc@). my apologies for the out-of-date information.
I realize there’s no third party support as in nvidia, but what type of card would be usable on openbsd (or net for that matter) that could give dri 3d support on a workstation. I imagine the intel i810 chipset might work, anything else?
Also, for sound, anyone out there have recommendations for what would be best supported on the platform? (had mixed experiences, usually negative, with my audigy and bsds).
Asking because I’m considering buying a new PC, would be nice to know what works best on all platforms first.
hmm, just looked at the macppc port page. have an old G3 b&w running here right now, how would that work with it, anyone know? speed, hardware support?
There is no dri support.
SoundBlaster Live! works fine for me.
wish there was more AP support on the wireless cards.. seems that on Prism2 devices are allowed to hide bssid.. not that it is a big feature
Love it though PF definitely roxurs..
OpenBSD on B&W G3 runs fine and is feels quite fast. Some things to note about hardware support: on-board ethernet is rather crappy, use a decent PCI ethernet card if you are doing lots of network I/O. Modem and firewire is not supported. Apart from that, it’s a nice machine, I used it as a desktop for quite a while.
hehehe… just as I said that they enable HostAP mode on Ralink.. good job guys keep it comming.. BSD programmers are fast..