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OpenBSD 6.4 released

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Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#141
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hence why companies are now trying to move away from Linux on embedded, e.g. ARM mbed, RTOS, Zephyr, Fuchsia, ....

Nothing to do with the license.

These systems do things that Linux just can't.

Linux is no RTOS, nor does it have a pure microkernel architecture. It can't do anything where latency guarantees are needed (hard realtime) nor high assurance, nor any actual semblance of security.

I suggest these posts: https://microkerneldude.wordpress.com/2018/08/23/microkernel... https://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2016/01/01/0/

Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#142
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Sure, VxWorks is safe.

That goes beyond strawman.

Try reading: https://microkerneldude.wordpress.com/2018/08/23/microkernel...

For as long as Linux is a monolithic design, the whole kernel is going to be part of the TCB.

And thus, you should be skeptical of any claims of Linux providing security.

Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#143

My biggest turnoff with OpenBSD is the more complicated package management if you want to have new versions and security updates beyond the versions packaged with the release. As far as I know you either have to stay on the bleeding edge with -current, build packages yourself, or trust a third party (M:Tier) to build for you, who last I checked were behind on firefox builds. I'd love to someday run it on my laptop th…

The best part of OpenBSD (to me), as opposed to say, FreeBSD is that pkg -u only brings in security fixes, instead of unrelated crap I don't want.

When I want new packages, I'll upgrade the operating system. I very much appreciate the stability of packages during a release cycle.

Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#144
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>Sure, VxWorks is safe. That goes beyond strawman. Try reading: https://microkerneldude.wordpress.com/2018/08/23/microkernel... For as long as Linux is a monolithic design, the whole kernel is going to be part of the TCB. And thus, you should be skeptical of any claims of Linux providing security.

> That goes beyond strawman.

It's a strawman when I agree with someone?

> And thus, you should be skeptical of any claims of Linux providing security.

When did I say Linux has perfect security?

I presume the point you're trying to make is that different operating systems, with different architectures, can beat Linux in various regards. Of course this is correct. But for a general-purpose multi-platform Unix-like OS, Linux is king, and will be for the foreseeable future.

Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#145
post #143

My biggest turnoff with OpenBSD is the more complicated package management if you want to have new versions and security updates beyond the versions packaged with the release. As far as I know you either have to stay on the bleeding edge with -current, build packages yourself, or trust a third party (M:Tier) to build for you, who last I checked were behind on firefox builds. I'd love to someday run it on my laptop th…

The best part of OpenBSD (to me), as opposed to say, FreeBSD is that pkg -u only brings in security fixes, instead of unrelated crap I don't want. When I want new packages, I'll upgrade the operating system. I very much appreciate the stability of packages during a release cycle.

For firefox at least, I don't think security patches are backported for OpenBSD, nor are newer versions. As the browser is the main way I view remote content, not being fully patched there is important to me.

Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#146
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually created an account as this is one of those things that gets repeated a lot and IMO it simply isn't true. 1. The BSDs adoption was severely hurt in the 90s by the AT&T lawsuit, it basically stopped several years of development while the lawsuit legal status was clarified. Linux and the GNU tooling didn't have that problem. If the lawsuit never took place it is doubtful whether the Linux kernel would have go…

> software that is only deployed on one or two servers on a company intranet and the general public will never see it. I thought that, in this case, it's the company itself who is the "user" of the software and isn't obligated to do anything to/for/about upstream (since there is no stream.. they're not re-distributing it). In that sense, they're not stealing anything, just using what was, explicitly, free to use.

The code was compiled, so they cannot make modifications. So it is in violation.

You would be right if it was PHP / Python or something else that was interpreted.

The real point to take away is that any modifications will never reach upstream.

Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#147
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always thought of qemu as the lightweight way to virtualizea system, but maybe it's just an impression. Or did you mean that using a VM is a heavy way to try a system out?

As a heavier way of running a VM then what you get using the hardware virtualization support in the CPU the way most modern VM systems do like VMware, Virtualbox, Parallels etc.

QEMU uses KVM when available, so you are using hardware support.

Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#148
post #143

My biggest turnoff with OpenBSD is the more complicated package management if you want to have new versions and security updates beyond the versions packaged with the release. As far as I know you either have to stay on the bleeding edge with -current, build packages yourself, or trust a third party (M:Tier) to build for you, who last I checked were behind on firefox builds. I'd love to someday run it on my laptop th…

The best part of OpenBSD (to me), as opposed to say, FreeBSD is that pkg -u only brings in security fixes, instead of unrelated crap I don't want. When I want new packages, I'll upgrade the operating system. I very much appreciate the stability of packages during a release cycle.

This is very probably because you have

    url: "pkg+http://pkg.freebsd.org/${ABI}/latest",
in your configuration file instead of (say)

    url: "pkg+http://pkg.freebsd.org/${ABI}/release_3",

Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#149
post #148
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best part of OpenBSD (to me), as opposed to say, FreeBSD is that pkg -u only brings in security fixes, instead of unrelated crap I don't want. When I want new packages, I'll upgrade the operating system. I very much appreciate the stability of packages during a release cycle.

This is very probably because you have url: "pkg+http://pkg.freebsd.org/${ABI}/latest", in your configuration file instead of (say) url: "pkg+http://pkg.freebsd.org/${ABI}/release_3",

    url: "pkg+http://pkg.FreeBSD.org/${ABI}/quarterly"
This is the default configuration.

Re: OpenBSD 6.4 released

#150
post #149
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very probably because you have url: "pkg+http://pkg.freebsd.org/${ABI}/latest", in your configuration file instead of (say) url: "pkg+http://pkg.freebsd.org/${ABI}/release_3",

url: "pkg+http://pkg.FreeBSD.org/${ABI}/quarterly" This is the default configuration.

Not originally it wasn't. That was a change in 10.2 .

* https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/a-mini-faq-on-pkg.49694/p...

* https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ports-announce/2...

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