OpenBSD 3.7 Reviewed

busfahrer writes "Jem Matzan has written a review of OpenBSD 3.7 for Newsforge. He talks about their licensing issues, network features, upgrading packages and the new supported architectures."

Re:Declare your bias, why don't you?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have issues with BSD licensing? How much freeer do you want it?

RTFA. The issue mentioned is that OpenBSD folks object to the Apache 2 licence, and so OpenBSD won't get Apache 2.

In fact you won't even find Apache 2, because its license is more restrictive than its predecessor. OpenBSD 3.7 includes a heavily modified version of Apache 1.3.29 instead.

Re:Declare your bias, why don't you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fact 1: BSD license isn't free enough to allow merging in GPLed code.
Fact 2: GPL isn't free enough to allow merging in BSD licensed code.

No, the modified BSD licence - which everyone uses nowadays - allows you to mix BSD and GPL code. The result is always GPL.

But that's not the issue here - RTFA.

Re:Declare your bias, why don't you?

[compass46]

The drivers are open source. The board firmware is closed source. They got permission to distribute the blob for the card firmware to make wi-fi setup easier for users so they didn't have to jump through hoops to get their cards to work.

Re:Declare your bias, why don't you?

[Caligari]

Who said anything about closed source wireless drivers?

The whole point of the recent OpenBSD wireless developments are that the drivers are completely free!

Stallman gave Theo de Raadt the 2004 FSF award in Febuary [slashdot.org] as recognition for crying out loud!

FUDster.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this is slashdot, but please stop spreading FUD.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=127944&cid=106 91304 [slashdot.org]

Re:No troll, I'm dead serious and love OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

It has done this for some time now.

Re: That's it

[ulib]

I simply told you which one I like better and why (i.e. what you asked for). I didn't tell you what are the differences between them, so your deduction is wrong.
In fact, the main differences are technical, in their very goals: while FreeBSD focuses mainly on features and i386 performance, OpenBSD focuses mainly on code correctness and security.

>Do these two share between each other?

Sure they do - and massively.
For example, one little jewel that came from OpenBSD to the other *BSDs is pf (packet filter) [openbsd.org], that has an excellent reputation for its being very clean and easy to use.

>Is there a common BSD kernel or anything like that?

No.
The *BSDs are developed like OSes, not "distros". So, while they massively share code, they maintain their own kernels.

To better understand the differences, it helps to notice that OpenBSD was born as a NetBSD fork, 8 years ago - and even today, it shares more code with NetBSD than with FreeBSD.

But to understand even better, well.. FreeBSD and OpenBSD are renowned for their excellent documentation, that is well worth having a look at.
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/h andbook/index.html [freebsd.org]
http://openbsd.org/faq/index.html [openbsd.org]
--
Requiem for the FUD [slashdot.org]

Re:There is less reason to review OpenBSD.

[evilviper]

Upgrading RedHat is far simpler than upgrading OBSD. With RH, you just stick the CD in and choose upgrade.

Now that's pure BS. Upgrades with OpenBSD are far simpler by any account. It mainly has to do with the underlying OS being simpler (elegant, whatever), but no question it is simpler.

Instructions for upgrading OpenBSD are . Now please tell me which is more administration work.

Those instructions are quite verbose, and really talk a lot about borderline cases that most everyone can ignore. Files in /etc rarely change, and you only really need to delete all your packages if there's been some really major architectural change (like the one-time switch from a.out to elf).

Okay Troll, I'm done with you. Go away.