Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

OpenBSD 5.6: What will be there

openbsd.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 83 posts

Re: OpenBSD 5.6: What will be there

#51

Post by Alupis »

chrissnell wrote: post #4

I used to use OpenBSD extensively in my job because of the awesomeness of PF but later moved on to big iron F5 and Cisco gear. In this new age of NSA wiretaps and cloud based services built around advertising and tracking however, OpenBSD feels more relevant than ever. I'd like to give it a shot as a desktop again. So, who makes a modern laptop with good OpenBSD hardware compatability?

> moved on to big iron F5 and Cisco gear.

Just pointing out that this is a perspective thing. PFsense and similar can very-much-so be just as "big iron" as Cisco et al.

Re: OpenBSD 5.6: What will be there

#52

Post by tomasquintero »

Alupis wrote: post #51
chrissnell wrote: post #4

I used to use OpenBSD extensively in my job because of the awesomeness of PF but later moved on to big iron F5 and Cisco gear. In this new age of NSA wiretaps and cloud based services built around advertising and tracking however, OpenBSD feels more relevant than ever. I'd like to give it a shot as a desktop again. So, who makes a modern laptop with good OpenBSD hardware compatability?

> moved on to big iron F5 and Cisco gear. Just pointing out that this is a perspective thing. PFsense and similar can very-much-so be just as "big iron" as Cisco et al.

ASICs start to play a big role at scale. To me the phrase "big iron" signals towards them.

Re: OpenBSD 5.6: What will be there

#53

Post by e12e »

vertex-four wrote: post #46
andreasvc wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are stating an opinion/ideal as fact. If you'd look at actual data, you'd see that the vast majority of internet use by consumers is client to server, not peer to peer traffic (e.g., youtube vs. bittorrent), which means there is no need to be "on the internet" for most people. Distributed federation is great and it does not require end-to-end connectivity for everyone. > See also: Everyone Hates Facebook. I don't…

I'll point out that much of the reason for most traffic on the Internet being client-server is that most users are behind home routers which make P2P traffic difficult or impossible, slowing innovation dramatically. IPv6 could solve this by giving every computer their own IP address on the actual Internet. Sticking with IPv4 continues to slow innovation.

Also note that most uses of p2p are illegal. Then again, much of youtube use is just as illegal -- but people assume (correctly) that they won't be sued for watching or downloading something from youtube (youtube might, or uploaders might -- in theory).

So, users are stuck behind asymmetric dsl lines, behind poorly functioning NAT routers and couldn't use p2p for what they want to use p2p for ... legally.

There are exceptions of course, like this project:

http://vodo.net/pioneerone

or:

https://www.tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs

But after decades of stagnation, and even regression, in the ISP industry -- getting working p2p solutions to catch on is an uphill struggle. And when people don't have software they can, or want, to run as a service -- the demand doesn't exist either.

Contrast this with how people used to run their own BBS back in the day...

Re: OpenBSD 5.6: What will be there

#54

Post by eropple »

Mandatum wrote: post #33
eropple wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caveat laptopor. I installed OpenBSD on my X201 just to give it a shot, and the battery life is atrocious .

I've heard only positive things when using OpenBSD on Lenovo X2XX's. What window manager are you using?

GNOME. It's significantly worse than either Windows 8.1 or Hackintoshed OS X.

Re: OpenBSD 5.6: What will be there

#57

Post by cylinder714 »

peatmoss wrote: post #2

Can anyone speak to SSD in OpenBSD? My understanding is that trim support is not supported in OpenBSD ( http://daemonforums.org/showthread.php?p=51377 ). That makes me a little worried about the potential to wear out an SSD drive in a workstation. The thread I linked discusses reducing some writes by using softdeps and the like, is that enough to make this a non-issue?

Here's a link to the FAQ section regarding flash memory:

http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#flashmem

There's no mention of the 4K alignment issue, however.

Re: OpenBSD 5.6: What will be there

#58

Post by cbd1984 »

justin66 wrote: post #49
cbd1984 wrote: post #15

I can understand not supporting tape installation (although aren't tapes still used in large, serious, high-power businesses as backup media?), but why remove FTP? Granted, it's objectively a horrible protocol, but is the FTP client code more likely to be an attack surface than the HTTP client code? If you're after security, isn't it more secure to remove all network installation and force people to use only physical…

> I can understand not supporting tape installation (although aren't tapes still used in large, serious, high-power businesses as backup media?) How does removing tape installation as a feature affect businesses who use tape as a backup method?

My point is that tape isn't dead, that it's still a viable way to store large amounts of data, like a full OS install with lots of ports to go along with it.

Re: OpenBSD 5.6: What will be there

#59

Post by cbd1984 »

danielweber wrote: post #29
cbd1984 wrote: post #15

I can understand not supporting tape installation (although aren't tapes still used in large, serious, high-power businesses as backup media?), but why remove FTP? Granted, it's objectively a horrible protocol, but is the FTP client code more likely to be an attack surface than the HTTP client code? If you're after security, isn't it more secure to remove all network installation and force people to use only physical…

That surprised me, too, because in 2013 I was installing from FTP. But mostly from habit. I'm hoping it's because they are going to be using HTTPS with pinned certs to ensure you are downloading from a proper mirror. But that's hope, not actual knowledge.

> HTTPS with pinned certs

Is there an FTP equivalent of this?

Re: OpenBSD 5.6: What will be there

#60

Post by atmosx »

chrissnell wrote: post #4

I used to use OpenBSD extensively in my job because of the awesomeness of PF but later moved on to big iron F5 and Cisco gear. In this new age of NSA wiretaps and cloud based services built around advertising and tracking however, OpenBSD feels more relevant than ever. I'd like to give it a shot as a desktop again. So, who makes a modern laptop with good OpenBSD hardware compatability?

On a laptop I'go with linux any day. I don't feel like any BSD was/is intended to be run on laptops, not if you don't wanna lose time in extensive configuration to make everything (almost) work.
Post reply on HN