BSDCon '03 Nearly Here (OpenBSD 3.4, Too) 332
An anonymous reader writes "Pre-orders for the OpenBSD project's latest release, 3.4, are now being taken. This release will ship around November 1st. Significant enhancements have been made in this release, including i386 switch to ELF executable format, further W^X improvements for i386, ld.so on ELF platforms now loads libraries in a random order for greater resistance to attacks, inclusion of a static bounds checker to the compiler for basic checks on functions which accept buffers and sizes, strcpy/strcat function audit to replace with safer strlcpy/strlcat, ProPolice stack protection in the kernel, further manual page cleanups, large number of bug fixes and optimizations to the packet filter (PF) including packet tagging, stateful TCP normalization, passive OS detection, SYN proxy, and adaptive state timeouts, and many other improvements to the rest of the system.
Order a CD from the OpenBSD store. Ordering a CD helps support the project, as a bonus you get cool stickers, artwork, and an audio track!"
The same reader sent links to more information on this release, including new features, and the changelog between 3.3 and 3.4.
Soon? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Oh and... (Score:1, Insightful)
Speak for yourself. Some people think she's hot.
Re:removing some utilities (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:removing some utilities (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah! Such enlightening insight into the world of open source licensing!
My dear sir, you are utterly incorrect. Were some corporation to "lock down" their source code (and I can only assume that by "lock down" you mean to re-release under a proprietary license) they would only be assuring that their version of the software would be utterly disregarded by the entire computer community, because (pay attention here) the free version would not somehow magically cease to exist! So on the one hand you would have the free, latest version. On the other hand, you would have the not-free, catching-up version. Gee, tough choice.
Now what the BSD license does allow is for some company to take some or all of the source and reuse it elsewhere, under a proprietary license if they so wish, without giving anything back to the Free software community. Whether or not this is necessarily a bad thing is a philosophical matter. However, your assertion that a company could "lock down" the OpenBSD code is completely and utterly incorrect.
Re:removing some utilities (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong. There's never enough money.
Re:Soon? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why, god. Why is it that an OS must be usable "on the desktop", "by mom", or by "the regular consumers" in order for it to be considered "good"? First we had Linux, and then they mom-ified Linux. Now you want them to mom-ify *BSD too? Fuck that shit!
There are server OSs. There are desktop OSs. Any attempt at combination is bound to fail miserably at one or the other and quite likely both.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:removing some utilities (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Soon? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know. FreeBSD is a fine desktop/workstation OS. I use it on my laptop. However, it's not quite mummified yet (sorry, but we all have to have a reference to '*BSD is dead', don't we?). I recently installed it on my desktop as well, and wantet GDM as a log in manager. That was painful. After I finally got GDM to start at all, and managed to log in, I noticed I was root. This came as a surprise to me, since I had tried to log in as a user. I didn't bother too much with it, and installed KDM instead. It worked.
FreeBSD might or might not work for the regular consumer, as a desktop OS. It doesn't rot away from normal use, like Windows does. But the ports and packages aren't necessarily working correctly, might need tweaking and so on. A FreeBSD install that has been set up by a knowledgeable nerd for its intended use should work fine, even for a mummy.
Re:Soon? (Score:3, Insightful)
OpenBSD has been working fine as my desktop for years. I'm using Mozilla on OpenBSD on my Laptop to type this message right now.
It's really quite easy to install, and you only need the tiniest bit of knowledge to setup X and install applications. I wouldn't say it's for "the regular consumers", but only because those people are horrified if they have to type-in a single word, rather than being able to click the mouse to do everything.
With a simple shell-script, I could have an OpenBSD CD automatically install itself, configure X, and install and configure basic applications. That's pretty-much what Windows does, but Unixers expect more control and flexibility than that, so nobody bothers to do it.
Re:thank you for supporting troll kind.. (Score:1, Insightful)