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Announcements Operating Systems BSD

OpenBSD Turns 10 61

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the great-work-continues dept.
Eh-Wire writes to tell us OpenBSD Journal is reporting that OpenBSD is officially ten-years-old today. After some confusion, it was decided that 10 years ago today marked the birth of OpenBSD when Theo de Raadt committed his makefile to CVS.
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OpenBSD Turns 10 More

OpenBSD Turns 10

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  • Netcraft confirms it: (Score:4, Funny)

    by heinousjay ( 683506 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @11:17PM (#13823813) Journal
    BSD is 10.

  • Slow development (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Just Some Guy ( 3352 ) <kirk+slashdot@strauser.com> on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @11:24PM (#13823839) Homepage Journal
    After ten years, they've only made it to version 3.7. FreeBSD isn't that much older and I already have 7-CURRENT on my laptop. Even Windows progressed from 3.11 to 95 in a few short years.

    Seriously, though, OpenBSD is simply amazing. Any reasonably experienced Unix user should be able to install it and know what every single running process on the default system does. There's nothing like logging into a multiuser system and seeing a "ps" listing maybe 15 lines long. Their devotion to doing things The Right Way is staggering -- who else bothered to randomize PIDs and TCP serial numbers and encrypt swap?

    They treat every theoretical exploit as a practical matter, and the result is some of the most robust, elegant software to be found. I have my reasons for not running it on every system I admin, but that doesn't stop me from giving them my utmost respect. Kudos, Theo et al. Job well done.

    • If this comes off as kind of troll, I apologize, but why would version number matter so much? Depending on who updates the magic update number, it could increase in a lot of different ways.

      Software Group A could have many small updates and never inrease the version number while Software Group B could change by a whole number if they wished just for something trivial.
      • I take it you missed the "Seriously, though..." part immediately proceeding it?
         
        • I wasn't questioning the parent. I was questioning why a lot of people feel the version # is important.
          • I wasn't questioning the parent. I was questioning why a lot of people feel the version # is important.

            You have a funny way of not questioning the parent which causes me not to believe you. When you reply to someone's post (which jokes about version numbers) and you ask a question, such as your "... why would the version number matter so much?", you are asking the person you reply to. That's how these threaded forum thingies work. Had you meant to direct the question at nobody in particular, you should i
            • Perhaps you missed my point, maybe I missed yours, maybe we're seeing things entirely different. There are a lot of possibilities but this is leading nowhere, I would just like to wish you a nice day.

              I hope that if we ever converse in that future that it will be both positive and constructive. I have seen your posts in the past and I hope to see them in the future, and even though you do not seem too fond of me (atleast in my perspective, sorry to assume) I will look forward to them still!

              • Re:Slow development (Score:5, Funny)

                by Shanep ( 68243 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @03:42AM (#13833805) Homepage
                Perhaps you missed my point, maybe I missed yours, maybe we're seeing things entirely different. There are a lot of possibilities but this is leading nowhere, I would just like to wish you a nice day.

                I hope that if we ever converse in that future that it will be both positive and constructive. I have seen your posts in the past and I hope to see them in the future, and even though you do not seem too fond of me (atleast in my perspective, sorry to assume) I will look forward to them still!

                Wow. Ghandi? Is that you?

                That sure was refreshing! And at slashdot!!

    • New fork announced (Score:5, Funny)

      by vuud ( 678736 ) on Wednesday October 19, 2005 @02:28AM (#13824474)
      Yes thats right, I am forking the OpenBSD tree.

      My first release will be MyBSD2010. Note the large quasi futuristic number on the name - clearly it is a better product. Sure the code may be the same, and I may have no intentions of patching or improving, but I DO intend to re-release it in several months as MyBSD2030.

      Note the 20 increment in there - clearly BIG BIG things have happened.

      With the release of MyBSD2050 I plan on addind a large graphic and a pleasing startup sound my daughter shall compose on the toy keyboard she has.

      This will clearly be a superiour product!

      And if I feel particularly good, I may start to release hundreds of service packs each release... some of which shall just randomly change about lines of source code. If enough people run this, one of them has to randomly produce a code improvement (Following the million monkey theory). That person shall be slightly better off for the microsecond before one of the many bad mutations crashes the system.

      Whoops, just accidentally release MyBSD2010 SP1

      And BAH to a simple CD you can buy that comes complete with a full set of installation instructions! No, my new and improved (signifying nothing) distrobution will come in a very large box - very brightly colored, with no instructions, but a large legal document (also signifying nothing) and a hefty price tag because that - more than anything - is what the market demands!

    • I agree to everything you've said. Except one topic: you should've left version numbers alone -- as you state yourself, version != capacity or quality, and their quality is truly stellar.
    • After ten years, they've only made it to version 3.7.

      But that means Linux is even worse, since it has only gone up to 2.6.13 in 14 years. However, Gentoo solves this problem by providing version 2005.1 right now, so truly it is the best distro out there.

    • Re:Slow development (Score:4, Funny)

      by rho ( 6063 ) on Wednesday October 19, 2005 @11:00AM (#13826687) Journal
      The number of gimps who replied to this because they didn't get the version numbering joke is astounding. Really, really astounding.

    • After ten years, they've only made it to version 3.7. FreeBSD isn't that much older and I already have 7-CURRENT on my laptop. Even Windows progressed from 3.11 to 95 in a few short years.

      Actually, Windows is up to version 2003 these days!
      • "Actually, Windows is up to version 2003 these days!"

        Oh, that's nothing!

        It is XP the amazing one! Everybody and his old aunt knows X is ten in roman numbers. P must be Petasomething, then.

        So Windows XP is version Petasomething and then ten more.

        Beat that!

    • Re:Slow development (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ickoonite ( 639305 ) on Friday October 21, 2005 @08:46AM (#13843619) Homepage
      Hear hear!

      I think I came to OpenBSD at about 2.7, and I have always been impressed by its simplicity. After a few years spent struggling with Linux, it was such a relief. I'd say something like the install isn't for the faint of heart, as it doesn't even sport a Debian-style ncurses-based interface, but it works surprisingly well, and, like you say, anyone with reasonable UN*X experience should be able to install it.

      I'm a big fan of the Mac now, but see the same kind of brilliant design and engineering that goes into Mac OS X in OpenBSD. It really is wonderful.

      iqu :)
    • Where the heck did you fing FreeBSD 7?!? Link a torrent, even their site says 5.4 is current and 6 is upcoming. You've got the source my friend.

      • Link a torrent, even their site says 5.4 is current and 6 is upcoming.

        In FreeBSD parlance, version 5 is the "-STABLE" release. That is, it's the one most people should be using. Version 6 will be "-STABLE" in a couple of months, supposedly. 7 is "-CURRENT", which is the bleeding-edge development version, or what you get when you check out the "HEAD" version of the CVS tree.

        You'll pretty much never see the -CURRENT release advertised anywhere. It's for developers and people who want to play around w

  • I don't care about what people say re: Theo... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SecureTheNet ( 915798 ) on Wednesday October 19, 2005 @01:58AM (#13824389) Homepage
    about his attitude or any of that. OpenBSD is a very good product, and it's leading-edge when it comes to security. They audit code, they take care of security issues, and they tackle even the so-called theoretical security issues. OpenBSD is the best example of how others should treat security. Happy Birthday OpenBSD!
  • I only wish they will update the Only one remote hole in the default install, in more than 8 years! on their webpage.
    They should go back to: No holes in the default install for X years.
    • I'm no OpenBSD wiz (just a dabbler) but I found it extremely positive and refreshing that they admit to having had a remote hole in the default install at some point during the last eight years. To me it signals a large and rare amount of honesty and integrity in contrast to the usual blurbs other operating systems use. And of course as long as X remains low it is impressive like few other things.

      It also sends a strong and extremely sensible signal that one should not take security for granted in any way -

  • Great OS (Score:5, Informative)

    by Atlantic Wall ( 847508 ) on Wednesday October 19, 2005 @09:59AM (#13826124)
    I have been using OBDS for 5 years and it gets better every year. Congrats to Theo and his team. Great OS for just about anything that needs to be done right and secure. No complaints here, just wish my linux boxes would run as well as OBSD.

  • I like it. Documentation is good. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tandoori Haggis ( 662404 ) on Saturday October 22, 2005 @11:53AM (#13852551)
    I've been using SuSe Linux for a few years but I've also taken an interest in OpenBSD for a while. Recently I decided to give it a go. The online documentation is very well thought out. To suppliment online documentation I opted for an excellent book which should help new and experienced *nix users alike in getting the best from OpenBSD for their requirements. Absolute OpenBSD by Michael W. Lucas ISBN 1-886411-99-9 http://www.nostarch.com/ [nostarch.com] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-fo rm/103-8285097-8052630/ [amazon.com] http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/188641199 9/qid%3D1129994895/026-1045610-3018009/ [amazon.co.uk] I like the way OpenBSD has been produced and the way in which it encourages good practice.
  • openBSD may be X, but sometimes I wish that OS X was openBSD.

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