Raiders of the lost OpenBSD

“A few people asked if I would do a review of the latest release
of OpenBSD (version 4.8) and it is with some reluctance that I
approached the task. It’s not that I have anything against OpenBSD
or the developers behind the project, it’s the nature of the
review. Most of my distro reviews are like visiting a museum and
looking at all the interesting things on display. On the virtual
shelves are package managers, configuration tools and shiny new
desktop environments. Tackling a review of OpenBSD is more akin to
a digital Indiana Jones adventure. One enters the deep jungles of
the command line, explores the ruins of text-based installers and
digs up cryptic package names. In short, it’s more work and less
sightseeing.

“Before we get into the actual running of OpenBSD, I think it’s
important to explore the mindset of the developers and the
community surrounding it. Taking a look at the project’s website
shows us a lot of clues. There’s the simple layout of the site and
the links are generally developer oriented, pointing to change
logs, patches and talks about cryptography. It’s also telling to
note there’s no link to a user forum, instead we find a bug tracker
and mailing lists — mailing lists where people are asked to use
text (not HTML) and format their lines to be 72 characters in
length or less. There are manual pages, most of which expect that
the reader has some experience with the UNIX family of operating
systems and probably some time with the BSDs. But enough looking
around, let’s get down to business.”

Complete
Story