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OpenBSD 6.4 released

openbsd.org

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Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#131

Post by JoachimS »

enriquto wrote: post #89
JoachimS wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS Office is just one of many applications that I need to use. I use loads of EDA tools that either only exists for Windows, or Linux. I have been a user of LibreOffice since it was called StarOffice. It is dog slow, still has an ugly UI, crashes etc. But for many things it has been and is good enough. (and keeps getting better). Unfortunately, customers wants to use Word-specific files, Excel-specific files with mac…

In your situation, then, you'll be happy by running openbsd in a virtual machine from your windows.

Apart from the fun and learning experience, I don't really see a point in running OpenBSD in a VM. In fact I have a OpenBSD 6.3 in a VM today. Playing around with pledge has been very interesting.

Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#133

Post by h1d »

Interesting, I've been running Linux for 15 years, yet I can't understand how to upgrade from 6.3, which I just installed on a cloud server, to 6.4 by reading the official document.

(Specifically the part "instruct the boot loader to boot this kernel" because it says to type in the file name during the boot process, which is not exactly easy on a remote machine.) https://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade64.html

I have a lot of respect to OpenBSD devs when people don't contribute back much even if they use OpenSSH everyday but a bit more friendliness doesn't hurt to let people try it out more.

Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#134

Post by trasz »

_ea1k wrote: post #48
simias wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc. All the software you mention is relatively recent (with the exception of VMware arguably) and Linux was ahead of the BSDs in adoption long before these applications were created. Now what exactly created this divide to begin with is a matter of debate but it took place mostly in the 90's and the very early 00's. By the mid 2000's it was clear that BSDs would have a really hard time ever cat…

I've always blamed the licensing. Lots of people adopted BSD and Linux in the early years. The Linux users gave back (often because they had to) and the BSD users often didn't.

Drivers for hardware that is better supported in Linux compared to FreeBSD - 90% of which is graphics - are usually licensed as MIT or BSD, not GPL, even though they are shipped as part of the Linux kernel.

So, nah, it's not the license.

Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#135

Post by Rondom »

Fnoord wrote: post #7

Undeadly.org mentioned the following highlights: "Selected highlights include: * Support has been added for qcow2 images and external snapshots in vmm(4)/vmd(8). * "join" has been added for Wi-Fi networks. * Security enhancements include unveil(2), MAP_STACK, and RETGUARD. Meltdown/Spectre mitigations have been extended further, and SMT is disabled by default. * rad(8) has replaced rtadvd(8). * bgpd(8) has undergone…

LWN has a good article about unveil() which also discusses the approaches taken in the Linux world.

https://lwn.net/Articles/767137/

Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#136

Post by trasz »

IcePic wrote: post #74
_ea1k wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always blamed the licensing. Lots of people adopted BSD and Linux in the early years. The Linux users gave back (often because they had to) and the BSD users often didn't.

That didn't seem to work the same way for say.. mail server software? Sendmail, postfix and qmail all had BSD-ish licenses, and those three covered quite a majority of all opensource mail serving at the time of BSD-vs-Linux "in the same early years"

PostgreSQL, LLVM, Apache, Nginx, Xorg - all of those are covered by liberal licenses, not copyleft ones.

Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#137

Post by trasz »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #54
auslander wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPL (distribute your code) is better than BSD permissive (do what you want)? For whom?

For almost all of us. Companies extend the BSD OSs with proprietary additions, then abandon the work and it gets lost. With Linux, everyone is forced to play nice and release under the GPL, and the work gets to live as long as people value it. Hence the Linux kernel snowballing and taking over the world, whereas the BSDs have not, despite being at least as strong technically. The better Linux gets, the more people ta…

If that were true, BSD-licensed projects like PostgreSQL, LLVM, Xorg, or Apache would die off long time ago, replaced by their GNU-licensed counterparts. Yet we're witnessing the exact opposite happening.

Licenses don't work like you think they do. In fact, they work backwards: the decision whether to release the source or not doesn't depend on the license, it's the license - and thus the choice of existing software to base your work on - that depends on the decision on whether not to release the source.

BSD makes it possible to release your changes if - and when - you see fit. GPL - doesn't. That's why companies like Sony or Juniper couldn't base their products on Linux. Sure, Sony doesn't give back - but eg Juniper does.

Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#138

Post by pome »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #54
auslander wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPL (distribute your code) is better than BSD permissive (do what you want)? For whom?

For almost all of us. Companies extend the BSD OSs with proprietary additions, then abandon the work and it gets lost. With Linux, everyone is forced to play nice and release under the GPL, and the work gets to live as long as people value it. Hence the Linux kernel snowballing and taking over the world, whereas the BSDs have not, despite being at least as strong technically. The better Linux gets, the more people ta…

The BSD-like license is used not only in BSD operating systems and these projects like Python, Golang, SBCL with BSD-like license playing nice.

Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#139

Post by h1d »

mruts wrote: post #13

Linux is a depressing mess after you've used OpenBSD. Such a high quality system, with stellar documentation. It's unfortunate that Linux has become so popular even though the BSD's are so much better. A bad historical accident. Damn you Linus...

> Linux is a depressing mess

Citation or you only heard it.

Not even going to poke on your rest of statements.

Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#140

Post by MaxBarraclough »

pjmlp wrote: post #128
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, Linux doesn't have a total monopoly in every domain. Sony used FreeBSD as the basis of the OSs of the PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation 4, for instance, and the work they did will never be contributed back. I don't see any proprietary Unix seriously competing with Linux any time soon though.

The OSes that I have listed have all BSD style licenses, nothing proprietary about them as such. As for competition with proprietary UNIX, probably not against Aix or HP-UX as they survive on maintenance contracts for big customers like banks and telecommunication companies, but Linux is still no match for high integrity computing OSes, many of which are micro-kernels with POSIX userspace available as possible API.

> The OSes that I have listed have all BSD style licenses, nothing proprietary about them as such.

Yes, I know - but the software which ends up getting deployed/used/sold will be proprietary forks, right? That's the whole point: the licence is friendly to proprietary forks.

> Linux is still no match for high integrity computing OSes

Sure, VxWorks is safe.

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