OpenBSD 3.6 Released!

dspisak writes "The people over at OpenBSD have released version 3.6 containing significant new features such as: SMP support for i386 and amd64 archs, the ability to optimize pf rulesets, better hotplug support, in addition to more robust encryption and vpn functionality. This is in addition to more recent hardware support, for a full list of changes take a look at the 3.6 changelog. Don't forget to use the mirrors!"

macppc G5 support?

[Anonymous Coward]

When will Open support Apple's new G5 computers? Currently the hardware compatability only lists all older G3 and G4 based computers.

Reasons I like OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple (text install). Default install is small, but gives you a complete, basic Unix-like OS. Man pages are really useful. Multi-platform, so you don't have to manage a different OS on every arch you have. OpenBSD is creating technology that helps other distros, such as OpenSSH. I'm expecting to see their BGP and NTP stuff showing up elsewhere.

Re:Firewall ?

[homer_ca]

That and a pf ruleset actually makes sense when you read it.

Re:OpenBSD impossible to update?

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking through the OpenBSD documentation it does seem indeed possible and not the worst thing you could go through.

Keeping up to date with security fixes on the other hand just comes off as odd for most Linux users. Reading through the docs the OpenBSD way does seem to make sense in a "Unix way" but for anyone who has used any modern Linux distro or even Windows it comes off as positively unnecessary and more difficult than it needs to be. Debian, Fedora, Mandrake, Suse etc all have moron proof, no thought upgrade mechanisms. This is a philosophy I subscribe to as well and until OpenBSD changes its methods(ie never) it will continue to seem strange and needlessly awkward for performing basic updating functions that other modern OS's made easy long ago.

I know with a few scripts keeping OpenBSD up to date seems rather simple to old hats but signed binaries rather than compiling fixes are the way of the future.

I'm not saying OpenBSD sucks or something but they as well as Gentoo are out of step with anyone who isn't an OS hobbyist. The role I see for them is more of a security research team that comes up with good ideas that can be folded into other products rather than an OS that will ever be widely used for Corporate or home users. That's OK too.

Re:Firewall ?

[TheRaven64]

Last time I looked, iptables also didn't support prioritisation of TCP ACKs, a particularly useful feature for people on an asymmetric connection, since it prevents maxing out the upstream bandwidth from throttling the downstream.

Re:On Address Space Randomization...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention proper W^X support. If you are using OpenBSD, you should definately be buying AMD64 hardware, not i386.

Don't forget to buy a CD

[Keith McClary]

Don't forget to use the mirrors!

I've heard there are big companies using many copies of OpenBSD but haven't even bought a CD.

They should get their names on this list:
http://www.openbsd.com/donations.html

Re:Recent FreeBSD switcher

[setagllib]

FreeBSD is a great place to start learning BSDs, since it is by far the simplest and offers the most functionality on x86 machines. The downside is that its future is bleak (lost best devs, politics too messy, CODE too messy... this isn't trolling, hell I love FreeBSD, but judging by 5.x progress it's not going to get any better).

So use FreeBSD as a learning platform then move to the deeper end of Net and/or OpenBSD. When DragonFly has cleaned out more of the 4.x cruft and become production-class stable, that'll be a great thing to investigate too. Net and Open, however, have had so-clean-you-can-eat-off-it code for years now, and the result is a pair of portable (especially NetBSD), secure (especially OpenBSD), high performing (at least, OpenBSD say they've made it so) and generally very good systems. They certainly pose very good alternatives to Linux, and I would much rather run either on a server/gateway machine (iptables is a joke).

Re:SMP support

[setagllib]

Well, you saw the crap that happened to FreeBSD 5 when they tried to get 'good' SMP support. The SMP is fine-grained for the most part, but it isn't worth it, since the performance on SMP and UP is still (as demonstrated above) miles behind other systems, even Net and OpenBSD which don't claim to have fine-grained or even far matured SMP.

SMP itself is not a killer, but when a design for SMP is overcomplicated, the rest of the system suffers.