OpenBSD 4.0 Pre-orders are Available

fuzzyping1 writes "Pre-orders for OpenBSD 4.0 are now available in the online store. Five architectures on three CDs in a soft-shell DVD case. Check out the highlights of OpenBSD 4.0. This new release includes support for many new wireless chipsets, the UltraSPARC III platform, a new load-balancing feature for network trunks, and much, much more."

Better RAID support than Linux?

[Craig Davison]

One thing that bothers me about hardware RAID support in linux is the lack of a single set of management/monitoring tools that will work with every driver. With OpenBSD 4 you can just use sensord.
OpenBSD doesn't have quite the hardware coverage Linux does in this area, but who wants to use stuff like aacraid anyway when you have to troll the net for closed-source Dell tools to check your array status?
Anyway, thanks again, OpenBSD team. Good work.

OpenRCS

[larry bagina]

GNU RCS has been replaced with OpenRCS. [opencvs.org]

Interesting. the GNU RCS code is kind of an ugly mess (one reason it's stagnated, one reason it's had so many vulnerabilities). For local stuff, RCS is nice and simple, but I don't know why anyone would use CVS when much better alternatives now exist.

Re:OpenBSD is NOT open source software

[MrNaz]

Wow. Seriously, wow. That MUST be deliberately misleading.

The BSD licence means that the authors can't, even if they wanted to, withhold security patches from you and nobody else. You can just get the patch from someone else who has it.

Furthermore, OpenBSD asking for donations is no difference from Mozilla getting donation, OpenOffice getting corporate support or MySQL having a corporate company employing its development team. In fact OpenBSD's model is probably less influenced by profit agenda than all of the abovementioned projects.

What's more, they manage to keep up with OpenBSD's reputation of begin perhaps the most secure operating system available to consumers, bar none. And all this in their spare time, putting up with FUD like what you've just spouted, and not getting half the recognition they deserve. If you ask me, they are the knights of the open source world. Or something.

Re:VAX

[urlgrey]

Aside from the joy of it for those that are so inclined, the main reason for working on other architectures is because it often brings to light subtle errors in code--particularly in the compiler--because of the differences in the hardware's instructions and such.

In the case of the VAX and Alphas, both out-dated platforms to many people, they've both been quite good at making coding errors surface, so they're very useful for that if nothing else.

If memory serves in fact, one of the OpenBSD devs, Miod, fixed such an error in the compiler that was picked up because the VAX puked in building X on the same compiler instructions that other platforms were perfectly willing to tolerate.

In the end it produces a better product for all of us since it can often help developers find and fix bugs--especially the hard-to-find and hard-to-duplicate varities. That's pretty cool.

Re:Does it still drag ass in performance?

[abigor]

Nope, he's right. This tells the sad story of OpenBsd very well. http://bulk.fefe.de/scalability/ [bulk.fefe.de]

Re:Does it still drag ass in performance?

[shking]

OpenBSD got a real boost in performance at spring 2005 Hackathon, when a subtle bug in the virtual memory code was found and corrected.

Re:Java, coming soon?

[tek.net-ium]

Linux binary support under OpenBSD is surprisingly good; you might give that a whirl. Just install the port emulators/redhat, execute 'sysctl kern.emul.linux=1', and change /etc/sysctl.conf. Then use a Linux JRE.

Re:Java, coming soon?

[Geekboy(Wizard)]

java 1.5 is native on openbsd/i386. it works as fine as you can expect java to run.

I hope they took permission...

[rsidd]

...before using Asterix imagery: those people are pretty litigious [tuxmobil.org].

Re:ripoff

[OttoM]

European prices INCLUDE 21% VAT.

Re:DVD distributions.

[kv9]

Well, PCs support it. That a pretty significant market.

if you look at OpenBSD's mission statement you'll see that their goal is to build a free secure stable operating system -- and not cater to the needs of whiny people that sound like broken records. you honestly think that OBSD/i386 users will feel left out because their toy didn't come on a DVD and flee to some sort of Fedora/Ubuntu point-click-drool affair? dollars to donuts, they gonna do a netinstall like any normal person while waiting for the CDs to come in the mail.

Re:I hope they took permission...

[nickname_unique]

This question already arrised on the misc@ mailing list. Theo's answere, quoted below, sounds quite reasonable to me:
"Our releases are thematic parodies, specifically permitted by law."

Re:Netcraft has confirmed it...

[dumeinst]

I don't know what version you were trying to install but every openbsd install starting with 3.5 has been nothing but simplicity in itself to go through. I've never had a single instance of network cards not being recognized and all my hardware is right there when you start up. Of course - there really isn't a gui installer so if you're not comfortable at the cl you might be a little disconcerted

Re:BSD Section

[zombiepeanutbutter]

I've posted it before, but there is a greasemonkey script that puts the bsd section back in at http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/3790 [userscripts.org] Ta da!

Re:Apache 1.3.29 ??

[jazman_777]

The new Apache license was unacceptable, so they're not using newer versions with the new license. This is a heavily-patched version.