OpenBSD 4.0 Review and Experience Using It

870wh0 OpenBSD 4.0 Review and Experience Using It In an era when the next edition of Microsoft Windows is pushed back more than a year, and popular GNU/Linux distributions are almost expected to have their release dates delayed by weeks or months, it’s nice to know that at least one operating system releases on schedule without all kinds of showstopping bugs and problems. OpenBSD 4.0 was released on November 1 with its usual mix of new hardware support and enhanced operating system features.

What’s new in 4.0

OpenBSD now has support for various ARM-based devices (the Thecus N2100 and IOData HDL-G are the only ones known at this time); UltraSPARC III-based machines are also now supported, as is the Sharp Zaurus SL-C3200.

As for new and improved hardware driver support, there are too many updates to print here, but you can see the full list on the OpenBSD site. Mostly the new peripheral support includes wired and wireless network cards of various kinds, some new SATA chipset support, and improved CPU scaling on processors that support it.

One major new feature in OpenBSD 4.0 is the introduction of OpenRCS, a BSD-licensed, compatible rewrite of GNU RCS. RCS stands for revision control system, in case you were wondering, and the GNU version had come to a point where it made more sense to rewrite it under the BSD license with security and portability in mind.

IPsec has also gained several new capabilities and features, including IPv6 support.

The theme for the 4.0 release is “Humppa Negala” — humppa being a style of music that many OpenBSD programmers enjoy.

Complete Review

puffy40zt0 OpenBSD 4.0 Review and Experience Using It

Using OpenBSD 4.0

Quick OpenBSD facts

Default shell: Korn shell (ksh) for root; Bourne shell (sh) for users; the C shell (csh) is also included by default.
Default editor: vi
File system: BSD Fast File System (FFS) with soft updates (no journalling necessary)
Kernel: 4.4BSD-based, monolithic, SMP-capable, does not support external kernel modules by default
Binary support: OpenBSD, FreeBSD, SCO/ISC, SVR4, Linux, BSD/OS
Supported architectures: Alpha, AMD64/EM64T, Arm, cats, hp300, hppa, i386, luna88k, mac68k, macppc, mvme68k, mvme88k, sgi, sparc, sparc64, vax, zaurus
Hardware support (i386)