The OpenBSD project has made available information as to what is new in the upcoming 3.4 release in November, while pre-ordering is available too. On other BSD news, Simon Schubert has offered to provide daily snapshots of DragonFly, the recent FreeBSD 4.x fork.
BSD: OpenBSD 3.4 Announcement; DragonFly BSD Daily Snapshots
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The snapshots do not install, either through sysinstall or via the shell. Building it from source hasn yet worked for me either, but not for a lack of trying.
The new features in OpenBSD look really cool though.
I really like OpenBSD. It is a powerful, stable server and probably the easiest to manage of any server I’ve ever used; a pleasure to work with to say the least.
If you’re interested in purchasing OpenBSD, I would like to recommend purchasing a subscription package for OpenBSD from http://www.bsdmall.com. I did that a couple of releases ago and am excited to see 3.4 coming in the mail in the somewhat near future. I like this subscription setup because it saves me some money and I don’t have to worry about pre-ordering for each release.
Although I am primarilly a FreeBSD user, I have to admit that I am ever more impressed with the quality of OpenBSD. It’s clean, small, fast and solid, as well as well laid out. The list of new features in the upcoming 3.4 release is IMO truely impressive, and I think I may actually buy a copy of this one, although directly from the source.
I am also very interested in DragonFly, but I fear that it will be at least a year before it becomes at all usable. I have always liked the idea of message-passing systems, and it looks like the DragonFly folks might just get it right.
The future of BSD certainly looks bright.
I really got to try openbsd out.
I’m a long time openBSD user, and this new release looks great.
Why should I use a ancient OS when I have WINXP?
WINXP has a nice gui , is stable and easy to update.
OSS has no inivation, micrsoft has.
I think that BSD and linux are like dinosourus, they
will die out eventualy.
Hey Jim, its true, Linux has never contributed anything new to the world of operating systems. Like Microsoft they only copy the idaes of others. But BSD has contributed a lot of new things. Job control, long filenames, working VM system, socket interface, TCP/IP etc. Ever heard of the internet which is based ob BSD?
Why you should use an ancient OS? Let me rather ask you, Why can’t you grow up? If it weren’t for OSS, you’re lovly XP would probably not be where it is today. OSS is good for competition, and without it, windows would truly suck, cause then (as mentioned by Thomas), Microsoft would have to invent stuff themself. So just be happy that there’s other alternatives around, so that you can keep on been real 1337 playing Counterstrike 12hours a day, shouting w00000t, c4mp3r, 4|mb07!!!! to everyone, and spend the rest of the day hiding your pimple-face in the #1337-h4x00rs channel at quakenet, bragging about how good you are at games, and how you totally 0wn3d your math-teacher the other day, by sending the “I’m Teh 31337, all your base are belong to cyb3rb0y-14” smb-message on the projected display of his laptop-screen, in front of the whole class.
BTW: Enjoy your life!
Troll. But hey.
“Why should I use a ancient OS when I have WINXP?”
Because most other OSs are better than XP.
“WINXP has a nice gui, is stable and easy to update.”
WinXP is ugly, relatively unstable and not easy to properly update. Heard of “slipstreaming”? Bet you don know how to do it…
“OSS has no inivation, micrsoft has.”
You obviously have no idea *what* “innovation” is.
“I think that BSD and linux are like dinosourus, they
will die out eventualy.”
We thought the same thing about trolls, but even such basic, unevolved and stupid creatures as they seem resillient enough to have propagated into the twenty-first century. In the software world, the BSDs will do better.
I’m really looking forward to the 3.4 release. I’ve been running Linux for many years, and just recently tried out (open)BSD for the first time. Now it powers all my servers, just leaving Linux for my desktop. (Which I have no plans to replace by BSD). I think OpenBSD was real slick! It was easy, smooth, clean, logical. The latter striked me the most. Everything is so logical, things are usually found where you believe they will be
The rc.* system is real slick (reminds me of slack (which is good), but even smoother), and setting up NAT on the packetfilter was done in three minutes with no pf-experience at all. Now I can’t be real objective about iptables, since I know it, and knew ipchains before it, but from seeing Linux-newbies trying to configure N(O|A)T, it seems more newbie-friendly.
Many of the new features look promising too. Keep up the good work!
Do I still have to install OpenBSD’s /boot directory below 1024 sector?
Because I use many OS’s i consider this “feature” a bug.
> Why should I use a ancient OS when I have WINXP?
OpenBSD 3.4 isn’t ancient. It’s not even out yet, and is thus more recent than Microsoft Windows Xp. Simple fact, right?
> WINXP has a nice gui,
That’s very subjective. Purely a matter of taste. I like my blackbox desktop better than the Win Xp GUI. Your opinion may be different.
> is stable
OpenBSD has proven to be more stable, in my experience. It is true however that Win Xp is far more stable than Win 98.
> and easy to update.
I think OpenBSD is easy to update too. And best of all, I don’t have to update it all the time. For 3.3, there are two patches, a grand total of 5kb. For Win Xp, you need over 50mb of patches to get it up to date. Very nice for people who are on a 56k dailup…
> OSS has no inivation, micrsoft has.
You seem to forget that TCP/IP, in fact, the internet itself comes from the BSD world. Due to the very liberal BSD license, all vendors, including Microsoft, were able to adopt the technology without any legal problems.
Also, more recently, OSS shows a lot of innovation. Only not in the areas that you seem to care about. Microsoft innovates in special effects for its user interface (we’ve all seen the Longhorn preview video’s), whereas OpenBSD innovates in security. And while Microsoft says they’re working on security too, I have my doubts about that…
> I think that BSD and linux are like dinosourus, they
> will die out eventualy.
No, they will not. How many BSD/Linux/*NIX computers have you used today? A lot! Lots of web/mail/…-servers run some flavor of *NIX.
Stop thinking about just the desktop. There’s plenty more out there!
I just installed OBSD3.3 cause i thought it was the recently released version. Anyway, i thought, yer upgrade, but no…
*sigh*
Does anyone find the modules thing in openbsd a little… hard?
I see support for it, but no way of specifying in the config files, what parts you want as modules. Instead of believe you have to cd to the specific directories and compile them as modules yourself.
Any idea if this is getting an overhaul?
I compile my obsd kernel without lkm support and it still was only using < 21M on boot. with lkm and several modules i reckon i could get this close to debians mem usage at boot.
And, WOW… thats one hell of a change log. And i only read the platform independant stuff… WOW.. Those guys do great work. I’d be great though if other OSes using their products would help contribute to their cause. Im not aware if they do or not, but OpenBSD does so much for humanity. I know that sounds weird, but their bringing us a more safer computing experiance. Because of the BSD licence, their products will be incorporated into many different things in the future.
Just look at OpenSSH! I wouldnt be surprised if OpenBSD becomes the base of many future alternative and maybe main streem OSes (or atleast maybe embedded OSes)?
Great stuff!!
3.3 is the most recent release.
Different strokes for different folks…
RE: everyone else
OBSD is stable, most likly the most secure operating system in the world, and if you like open source operating systems such as linux, you’ll be relieved at the consistency, and the fact that it everything seems to work together without clashes.
Unlike linux, this is an Operating System, just not a kernel, packages with some software. Thats the first thing i noticed about OBSD when i tried it in 2.9. I havnt tried NetBSD Or FreeBSD, but i dont know if i could.
The fac that the OpenBSD teams puts so much effort into finding bugs and/or security holes (most likly more than any other projects) just seems like this is the OS to use. OpenBSD claim to put as much effort towards finding/fixing bugs/security flaws as they put towards implementing new features. Thats a huge claim, one they stick up to.
If you havnt tried it and like experementing OpenBSD is a must!
DO IT!!!
Do I still have to install OpenBSD’s /boot directory below 1024 sector? Because I use many OS’s i consider this “feature” a bug.
OpenBSD wants to have its /boot inside the first 8GB of the harddisk. Also the other OpenBSD partitions should follow immediately after that. Though, I’m not sure if it matters a lot where, e.g. you put the /home partition??
There’s a good explanation on the details of OpenBSD partitioning on the new OpenBSD book Absolute OpenBSD by M.W.Lucas which is a very well written guide on OpenBSD basics. Even a newbie could get OpenBSD installed and configured by following the advice of the book. I only hope that other *nix books would always be as clearly written.
Also the other OpenBSD partitions should follow immediately after that.
So the restriction (besides of the first 8GB limit for /boot) is that there can only be one OpenBSD MBR partition per harddisk. Several harddisks makes partitioning easier on a multi-OS system.
Oh yes. I love OpenBSD. been using it for a while now, i wouldnt use anything else for servers. As so many have said, it’s so easy to manage.
It is the only OS that I don’t mind paying for, as I will need to update 3 boxens when it comes out, I think i’ll get the 3.4 CD sets. Plus you get great stickers
J-F