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OpenBSD 5.4 Released

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Re: OpenBSD 5.4 Released

#41

Post by ams6110 »

pimeys wrote: post #34

I'm a big OS geek, I love to install and test all new operating systems. Does anybody use OpenBSD as their main development OS? At least there's ports, and looks like you can compile all the necessary tools (xmonad, vim, firefox, zsh) from the ports system. But is this the ideal use of OpenBSD? Do I gain something if changing from Gentoo?

I use OpenBSD as my main desktop and dev machine, with Awesome as the window manager (it's a tiling window manager).

http://awesome.naquadah.org/

I use Xombrero (formerly called xxxterm) for browsing, or Chromium from packages if I'm working with anything on Google.

https://opensource.conformal.com/wiki/xombrero

I use Emacs as my editor and email client, and do pretty much everything else in a terminal.

Re: OpenBSD 5.4 Released

#42

Post by empthought »

mmariani wrote: post #38
dysoco wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried luck with FreeBSD and OpenBSD, but just couldn't. Yes, I love both Operating Systems, I love that they are integrated and somewhat less retarded than Linux, I also like their community and development team and OpenBSD's focus on security and code-correctness. But they are not yet "there" for Desktop use, many applications won't work or will be difficult to set up, and driver compatibility is way worse. So may…

Or you could switch to Mavericks which is based on Darwin that was forked from FreeBSD, and desktop ready. ;)

You probably know this, but the Darwin/FreeBSD relationship is much, much more complicated than a fork.

Darwin's the successor to NeXTSTEP, which included a Mach microkernel and some BSD APIs and userland. When they developed OS X, Apple updated much of the userland using more recent FreeBSD versions as a base.

Even more confusingly, Apple has contributed some subsystems to open source that have made their way into FreeBSD (notably the compiler and libc++).

So Darwin's not a fork in the same way that OpenBSD is a fork of NetBSD.

Re: OpenBSD 5.4 Released

#43

Post by nodata »

teddyh wrote: post #40
csmuk wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unix manpages are fine. If you've read the GNU awk manual vs BSD awk, you'll understand what I mean. GNU awk manual is hundreds of pages long and serves only to confuse the user. Not only that, half of it is listing differences between GNU awk and other awks which is just mindnumbing. A fine case of cat -v. And don't get me started on glibc. The bit that pisses me off is: man awk (see info awk instead). I think they…

Even the document I cited conceded that there are some very good Unix man pages — BSD Awk may very well be one of many, I have not read it. It follows, logically, that there could be some very bad Info documentation manuals, and the GNU Awk manual may very well be one of many; I have not read it. This does not disprove the point the citation made; namely, that the Unix man page structure is unsuitable for many things…

> The official GNU system documentation is in Info

There is nobody in the world outside of the GNU foundation who prefers using info pages to man pages.

Re: OpenBSD 5.4 Released

#44

Post by ams6110 »

teddyh wrote: post #40
csmuk wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unix manpages are fine. If you've read the GNU awk manual vs BSD awk, you'll understand what I mean. GNU awk manual is hundreds of pages long and serves only to confuse the user. Not only that, half of it is listing differences between GNU awk and other awks which is just mindnumbing. A fine case of cat -v. And don't get me started on glibc. The bit that pisses me off is: man awk (see info awk instead). I think they…

Even the document I cited conceded that there are some very good Unix man pages — BSD Awk may very well be one of many, I have not read it. It follows, logically, that there could be some very bad Info documentation manuals, and the GNU Awk manual may very well be one of many; I have not read it. This does not disprove the point the citation made; namely, that the Unix man page structure is unsuitable for many things…

Obligatory xkcd

http://xkcd.com/912/

Re: OpenBSD 5.4 Released

#45

Post by ghshephard »

aflott wrote: post #27
protomyth wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to reinstall a couple of servers this weekend with 5.4. It generally is just a matter of printing out /etc/fstab, doing the install (I skip the upgrade on these), install some packages, and laying back down the configs and keys from source code control. It takes about 20 - 30 minutes to put these servers up (gateway, dns). [edit] I should point out I've had a box running it before release to make sure that…

I used to do fresh installs (due to a general fear of incremental upgrades failing) until I tried using their upgrade guides. I've never looked back. http://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade54.html

I seem to recall someone (Theo, I believe) say that in order for an OpenBSD to maintain library compatibility with existing applications, you had to do an "Upgrade in Place" - and not do a fresh install.

I.E. The default approach, incremental upgrade, is the only way to ensure your OpenBSD system doesn't fail.

Re: OpenBSD 5.4 Released

#46

Post by teddyh »

nodata wrote: post #43
teddyh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the document I cited conceded that there are some very good Unix man pages — BSD Awk may very well be one of many, I have not read it. It follows, logically, that there could be some very bad Info documentation manuals, and the GNU Awk manual may very well be one of many; I have not read it. This does not disprove the point the citation made; namely, that the Unix man page structure is unsuitable for many things…

> The official GNU system documentation is in Info There is nobody in the world outside of the GNU foundation who prefers using info pages to man pages.

(You are demonstrably wrong, but I will address your implied point instead of your hyperbole.)

I think that the hostility to Info comes from exposure to the standalone Info reader. It is non-intuitive, non-Unix-like, and does, as far as I know, not even support text attributes, so it looks bad even for a text-based UI. It is not very newbie friendly (like GNU nano with its very explicit menus to guide you). Nor is it consistent with other Unix-based text UIs like “vim” or “less”. Instead it behaves like a brain-damaged Emacs, but without even many basic text-navigation features from Emacs, so even Emacs users feel lost in Info.

I feel that if someone made a module for vim or something to read and navigate Info documentation (and made it the default instead of the barebones standalone Info reader), then Unix people would warm up to Info documentation.

Personally, I read Info documentation using the Emacs built-in reader. It is, unofficially I think, the canonical Info documentation reader, and it is beautifully integrated with Emacs. I prefer reading most manuals this way (if they have an Info version).

Re: OpenBSD 5.4 Released

#47

Post by ams6110 »

protomyth wrote: post #23
sramov wrote: post #2

Packets already flowing through 5.4 - release on my 'lil ALIX home router. Workstation on - current , of course. There is nothing quite like OpenBSD out there. Thank you OpenBSD developers!

I'm going to reinstall a couple of servers this weekend with 5.4. It generally is just a matter of printing out /etc/fstab, doing the install (I skip the upgrade on these), install some packages, and laying back down the configs and keys from source code control. It takes about 20 - 30 minutes to put these servers up (gateway, dns). [edit] I should point out I've had a box running it before release to make sure that…

Upgrades generally work well for me, but DO always check the release notes and the upgrade guide for the new version. Sometimes you need to do a few extra steps, but in my experience it will always be clearly documented. And just a heads-up for the NEXT version:

OpenBSD 5.5 will be year 2038 ready, but this requires a change to a 64 bit time type. This results in a "flag day" event, where old binaries will not run on the new kernel, and the new binaries won't run on the old kernel, and some file formats will be changing. A remote, no-console process will be provided, but it will be a more touchy update process than usual.

Re: OpenBSD 5.4 Released

#48

Post by ghshephard »

nodata wrote: post #43
teddyh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the document I cited conceded that there are some very good Unix man pages — BSD Awk may very well be one of many, I have not read it. It follows, logically, that there could be some very bad Info documentation manuals, and the GNU Awk manual may very well be one of many; I have not read it. This does not disprove the point the citation made; namely, that the Unix man page structure is unsuitable for many things…

> The official GNU system documentation is in Info There is nobody in the world outside of the GNU foundation who prefers using info pages to man pages.

I'll pile on with an additional anecdote - in 17 years of working almost daily with *nix/BSD systems (and hitting man pages routinely) - I've never once looked at an info page.

Re: OpenBSD 5.4 Released

#49

Post by pimeys »

ams6110 wrote: post #41
pimeys wrote: post #34

I'm a big OS geek, I love to install and test all new operating systems. Does anybody use OpenBSD as their main development OS? At least there's ports, and looks like you can compile all the necessary tools (xmonad, vim, firefox, zsh) from the ports system. But is this the ideal use of OpenBSD? Do I gain something if changing from Gentoo?

I use OpenBSD as my main desktop and dev machine, with Awesome as the window manager (it's a tiling window manager). http://awesome.naquadah.org/ I use Xombrero (formerly called xxxterm) for browsing, or Chromium from packages if I'm working with anything on Google. https://opensource.conformal.com/wiki/xombrero I use Emacs as my editor and email client, and do pretty much everything else in a terminal.

Are you using any specific font setup? Infinality patches etc? At least default install leaves the fonts in a pretty bad state.

Re: OpenBSD 5.4 Released

#50

Post by protomyth »

ghshephard wrote: post #45
aflott wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to do fresh installs (due to a general fear of incremental upgrades failing) until I tried using their upgrade guides. I've never looked back. http://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade54.html

I seem to recall someone (Theo, I believe) say that in order for an OpenBSD to maintain library compatibility with existing applications, you had to do an "Upgrade in Place" - and not do a fresh install. I.E. The default approach, incremental upgrade, is the only way to ensure your OpenBSD system doesn't fail.

For the servers I'm talking about, blowing the whole thing away and installing any packages from the new disc is just fine and keeps away the clutter.

I look at it this way, if all I'm really doing is adding some flags or configuration files, I would rather just blow it away and do the reinstall. Last couple of times I did that with my firewall, it was a 20 minute install.

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