OpenBSD 5.1 released

I love OpenBSD and have 5.0 installed on a router. But man they are old-school. Just looking at the upgrade instructions[1] brings me back to the time before package managers and makes my long for a nice "apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade".

[1] http://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade51.html

Re: OpenBSD 5.1 released

#5

Post by tobiasu » Wed, May 02, 2012, 12:31 AM UTC

__david__ wrote: post #4

I love OpenBSD and have 5.0 installed on a router. But man they are old-school. Just looking at the upgrade instructions[1] brings me back to the time before package managers and makes my long for a nice "apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade". [1] http://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade51.html

Awesome, isn't it. It's transparent and works every time. Not something you can say about apt-get...

Re: OpenBSD 5.1 released

#6

Post by derleth » Wed, May 02, 2012, 12:35 AM UTC

tobiasu wrote: post #5

__david__ wrote: post #4

I love OpenBSD and have 5.0 installed on a router. But man they are old-school. Just looking at the upgrade instructions[1] brings me back to the time before package managers and makes my long for a nice "apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade". [1] http://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade51.html

Awesome, isn't it. It's transparent and works every time. Not something you can say about apt-get...

It is in my experience.

Re: OpenBSD 5.1 released

#7

Post by srl » Wed, May 02, 2012, 12:39 AM UTC

__david__ wrote: post #4

I love OpenBSD and have 5.0 installed on a router. But man they are old-school. Just looking at the upgrade instructions[1] brings me back to the time before package managers and makes my long for a nice "apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade". [1] http://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade51.html

The last successful ubuntu upgrade I did was 10.04 (9.10 on my laptop), I think. 10.04 - 11.10 all broke (on multiple computers, in different ways) eventually requiring a liveboot and significant skill. (I'm now running arch, with significantly better results - but not perfect.)

I've never had an openbsd upgrade break, even when I do it the ninja way (which I often do, being a reckless fool).

Despite the longer setup time, I've found that openbsd servers end up needing far less maintenance than any others. It works well as a "fire-and-forget" operating system, a quality that seems to be lacking among the larger players.

(EDIT: not disagreeing that apt-get, yum, and pacman/yaourt are nice. Just talking about how awesome OpenBSD is.)

Re: OpenBSD 5.1 released

#8

Post by __david__ » Wed, May 02, 2012, 12:40 AM UTC

tobiasu wrote: post #5

__david__ wrote: post #4

I love OpenBSD and have 5.0 installed on a router. But man they are old-school. Just looking at the upgrade instructions[1] brings me back to the time before package managers and makes my long for a nice "apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade". [1] http://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade51.html

Awesome, isn't it. It's transparent and works every time. Not something you can say about apt-get...

"Awesome", yes. It's also going to take about an hour of my full concentration to accomplish. That's also not something I can say about apt-get...

Re: OpenBSD 5.1 released

#9

Post by koeselitz » Wed, May 02, 2012, 12:40 AM UTC

derleth wrote: post #3

So what really sets the various BSDs apart? Has anyone done a good comparison between them?

I actually rather like Wikipedia's page on the three - particularly the matrices of different options for the different BSDs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_BSD_operating_sys...

Re: OpenBSD 5.1 released

#10

Post by bingbing » Wed, May 02, 2012, 1:04 AM UTC

derleth wrote: post #3

So what really sets the various BSDs apart? Has anyone done a good comparison between them?

There's a wikipedia page with tables of differences: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_BSD_operating_sy...

In my opinion: OpenBSD - Focused on security above all else. Host project of OpenSSH and pf/carp/altq?. Lags behind on architecture support and performance (Previously poor SMP performance?). Primary use: Router/firewall.

FreeBSD - All around features and performance (zfs,dtrace,pf,linux syscall emulation layer). The most popular, and I believe has the most development effort. Popular freebsd derivatives: pfSense (firewall appliance), FreeNAS (zfs storage appliance), PC-BSD (packaged up for an easier desktop experience). Primary use: Desktop/server/firewall/storage/database.

NetBSD: Focused on architecture support. Supports 57 platforms/15 processor architectures: http://www.netbsd.org/ports/. Primary use: support on embedded/uncommon hardware.

DragonFlyBSD: Interesting technologies being developed: HAMMERfs (compare with zfs), application snapshots, virtualized kernel. Matt Dillon's fork of FreeBSD adding the spirit of AmigaOS. Primary use: Compute clusters?