Trying out the new OpenBSD 3.8

daniel49

Diamond Member
Jan 8, 2005
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could we get a few more details about what the whines and the mistakes were please:)
 

n0cmonkey

Elite Member
Jun 10, 2001
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whining:
OpenBSD no built-in list of available packages, and updates are not automatic or even schedulable.
"Installed" is well and good, but it still leaves you some work to do. Setting up the x.org X server, for instance, requires you to look up hardware specs for your equipment (some of which, such as my monitor's ReferenceClock frequency, I had never even heard of before), in contrast with the built-in database included with many Linux distributions today. If the information is close at hand, you will have no trouble, but be forewarned that the OS will not help you guess your way out of a jam.
pkg_add itself lacks the convenient GUI of Synaptic or YUM but otherwise does a identical job.
-Isn't synaptic just a gui front-end to dpkg? One could be written for pkg_add.
Mistakes:
("packages" in BSD lingo refer to programs in the official binary release,
- packages (wrt packages and ports) are binaries of third party software, and are not considered base.
such as the use of the Korn shell (ksh) instead of bash,
-OpenBSD uses pdksh instead of the official korn shelll due to licensing.
the ability to park the drive heads in response to the motion-sensitive "Active Protection System" in IBM Thinkpads,
-I'm pretty sure they haven't gotten this far yet, just basic support.
 

EatSpam

Diamond Member
May 1, 2005
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I use OpenBSD on my firewalls....no GUI, nothing fancy. It runs off of a 512mb flash module. It just works.

I could care less about this other stuff.
 

lucky9

Senior member
Sep 6, 2003
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Which is exactly what it is supposed to do. Funny, that...isn't it?
All in all, a very strong statement for open source.
 

n0cmonkey

Elite Member
Jun 10, 2001
42,936
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Originally posted by: EatSpam
I use OpenBSD on my firewalls....no GUI, nothing fancy. It runs off of a 512mb flash module. It just works.

I could care less about this other stuff.

Some of us do more with it. ;)