NewsForge has a review of OpenBSD 3.7, covering some of the new features and what they do, a general overview of OpenBSD, and some suggestions for OpenBSD developers for some new features in the next release.
OpenBSD 3.7 review
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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congrats to the developers. i just wish they would make the hard disk partitioning part easier. until then i’ll stick with freebsd.
its impressive how they manage to come up with a balanced considered review only moments after the software’s release.
3.7 has been available before the official release date AFAIK.
hard disk partitioning part? Oh come on, it’s NOT that hard. Sure, it’s hard for first time, but it’d be much easier after you have done it.
A hint about partitioning. I have not yet installed 3.7 But with a previous version I just did the following:
1. Download a Linux LiveCD, my personal choice is Damn Small Linux, and at 50mb you probably can get it over modem too.
2. Burn it on a CD-rw and reboot to start it up.
3. Partition your hard drive(s), as you wish using cfdisk or similar program. Just choose to make an OpenBSD partition instead of the default Linux one. Don’t forget the Swap partition.
4. Write to disk and reboot with the OpenBSD install CD.
I’m typing this out of my memory but as I remembered you could use the partitions you just made, without having to deal with OpenBSDs frightening partition program.
And if you are a BSD zealot, or perhaps just bored with Knoppix, use GuLIC-BSD, FreeSBIE or Frenzy.
It’s good to be hard.
Then people that don’t know what they do will not install OBSD & ask stupid questions on Formus/Mailing lists
Well… there you have a good point, but I really think the partition editor is slightly unpractical. As I installed OpenBSD last time (that was 3.5 I think), I resorted to the pocket calculator to calculate the sizes and offsets in sectors of the partitions I wanted – something like the NetBSD disklabel tool where you can easily place partitions after eachother and specify the size in megabytes would be very nice.
The first time I installed OpenBSD was at version 2.5 a number of years ago.
There was absolutely no need to calculate sizes or offsets using a calculator. You could easily specify sizes in MiB. Obviously you were doing something horribly wrong — try reading the help page.
I printed out the installation docs from the website and had absolutely no problems installing the OS. My only prior experience having been from installing Redhat.
Indeed. The OpenBSD partitioning tool is dead simple to use. You just need to have at least a rough estimate the size of the partitions you want to create (in sectors or megabytes). I don’t know how it could get any easier than that.
There is some difficulty involved if you want to share a disk with other operating systems and interleave partitions of different types, but how many people are going to want to do that?
It’s good to be hard.
Then people that don’t know what they do will not install OBSD
That is completely moronic logic. Why would you WANT to keep your OS private?
That kind of attitude would make the OBSD developers sick. Isn’t the goal to make more people secure? Isn’t the idea of open source to be altruistic? …And isn’t that attitude the most elitist, exclusive, arrogant of them all?
OpenBSD is an amazing acheivement – with fewer security loopsholes than pretty much everyone else hands down. Keeping it unnecessarily complex is a silly idea.
Keeping it unnecessarily complex is a silly idea.
The partitioning process is not unnecessarily complex. It’s very flexible and not even that hard.
Hi there again.Wll when i started using OBSD i don’t understand this idea too.
But after using it, making few server, contacts with other admins & even with Theo himself i understand that BSD isn’t commercial system for people. It’s OS for people that make it. & it’s really simple & clear. if You can red mans & FAQ. If You can’y. You are just another lame that will not use this “hard” OS.
That is completely moronic logic. Why would you WANT to keep your OS private?
http://www.holland-consulting.net/tech/ocep/#unfriendly
looks like good reasons to me.