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OpenBSD 5.4 Released

openbsd.org

61–70 of 107 posts

Re: OpenBSD 5.4 Released

#61
post #3
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!

Signed up to agree. Canned 6 Ubuntu machines (servers) and replaced with OpenBSD 5.3 recently. So much goodness ships with openbsd it's unreal. Bar Theo's sharp tongue (which is usually spot on), you get pf, opensmtpd (so much cleaner than postfix), nginx in base, miles better manual pages than Linux, no horrid gnu info, small and simple base system, absolutely no surprises, no bloated crap like dbus/upstart, tmux in…

D-Bus is just a low-level socket protocol(which is, by the way, really quite light); there is nothing "bloated" about it.

Re: OpenBSD 5.4 Released

#63
post #49
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hm no.. have never heard of Infinality and didn't see anything OpenBSD-specific.

I'd say if you're needing extensive font support, or do any really heavy graphics work, OpenBSD may not work well for you as a desktop. For me, the stock fonts on OpenBSD meet my needs.

Re: OpenBSD 5.4 Released

#64
post #5

I found out that http://openbsd.org is not the same as http://www.openbsd.org (one is much lower bandwidth) and apparently it's intentional that one doesn't redirect to the other. And that's not even to mention the website not using a static generator or CSS (despite http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/ actually being modern and good looking). From what I understand is the reason it's not changed is because it'd be too…

openbsd.org is a different machine than www.openbsd.org. Why are you using openbsd.org? Who gave you a link to it? Tell them to stop.

It's hard to fault someone for going to a base domain, especially when it's content is identical to the www domain.

Re: OpenBSD 5.4 Released

#65
post #57

What is the best hardware for a home router? Soekris was very popular in the past but I'm wondering that maybe there's cool hardware out there. I also wonder if carpd is usable with a DHCP connection.

While may not be the best, but with no moving parts Alix boards are quite nice. http://www.pcengines.ch/alix2d3.htm

Re: OpenBSD 5.4 Released

#66
post #52
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What do you code? That awesome looks um.. awesome. Never come across it before. I have an old netbook here that has a broken trackpad. I might be tempted to give it a go with that.

Right now I'm working mostly in python and javascript, with some database development (mysql and postgres) and general sysadmin (can't ever seem to get away from that). I've had success using the FreeTDS and sqsh packages to do SQL Server work (with a remote server, obviously. In theory you can run VMs on OpenBSD using qemu but the one time I tried it was so painfully slow it wasn't worth it).

Re: OpenBSD 5.4 Released

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Completely agree with you - and it's what I've done in almost every case. The Library thing is an OpenBSD issue that people who are upgrading need to take note of though.

Re: OpenBSD 5.4 Released

#68
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?

OpenBSD is made for developers by developers. Everything from configuration files in /etc to any system API calls are well documented in the man pages. They treat the man pages just as any other piece of the operating system. I.e. incorrect information in a man page is treated as a bug and dealt with just as diligently.

http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi

I moved from using Gentoo for 10 years to OpenBSD and have not looked back.

Edit; You gain quite a bit of time moving from Gentoo to OpenBSD because there is no requirement to compile or fix your operating system.

Re: OpenBSD 5.4 Released

#69
post #17
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest I've been using it for about 7 years and I didn't know that. I'm not sure that matters either. It's not really a priority and I respect that.

No, and being able to download all the FAQs easily is cool but there are things where it actually impacts me. For instance, I have a netbook without a cdrom drive or floppy disk. So, to install OpenBSD on it, I had to first install OpenBSD onto another PC computer, and then run makeboot and such on my USB drive and copy over the ramdisk. Apparently the cited excuse for why they don't support USB bootable media is bec…

I ran into this problem as well at first. The issue is easily overcome as described at the following URL.

http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#noflopcd

Can this easily be done from any Linux distribution? AFAIK it can not, instead they waste resources creating USB installs and images.

Re: OpenBSD 5.4 Released

#70
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The doc is really unbeatable, I know nothing like it anywhere.

Are they much different than the freebsd docs?

From my experience FreeBSD documentation is often outdated and no longer applicable. In my opinion incorrect documentation is worse than having no information as it often causes more problems and frustration.
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