OpenBSD Journal

Have you pre-ordered 3.7?

Contributed by phessler on from the may-19-isn't-too-far-away dept.

Yes 36.1% (394 votes)


No 36.3% (396 votes)


Its in the plans 27.7% (302 votes)


Total votes: 1092

(Comments are closed)

Comments

  1. By Marco Peereboom (67.64.89.177) slash@peereboom.us on http://www.peereboom.us/

    Order some CDs for pete's sake!

    Comments

    1. By almeida (66.31.180.15) on

      For Puffy's sake too!

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (193.136.60.39) on

        olha ele :P

    2. By Anonymous Coward (139.142.208.98) on

      I ordered 5 over a month ago.
      One for each office.

      It is realtively easy to convince the bean counters to get one copy per office as they assume buying a CD is akin to buying a license (I've given up trying to convince them otherwise).

    3. By Anonymous Goon (203.24.100.131) on


      I wish we could buy tapes like the "Good Old days" when distro's of $FAVOURITE_OS + Kermit(!) came on TK50, DL600, 8mm, hell.. I'd even pay for DDS{1,2,3,4} DAT. :-\

    4. By Anonymous Coward (66.131.207.182) on

      Who's Pete?

  2. By Anonymous Coward (162.58.35.101) on

    I don't use the cds, they're just clutter in my house. I donated something like $50USD instead, along with a t-shirt.

    I wish I could buy the stickers seperately though. :P

    Comments

    1. By Marcos Latas (81.193.148.82) on

      If you donate some hardware you might get some stickers for free. :)

      www.openbsd.org/want.html

      Go and read that.

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (162.58.35.101) on

        I've read that, and donated hardware. It'd just be easier to give them money for stickers. :P

      2. By Anonymous Coward (68.6.193.220) on

        Interestingly enough, I've offered to donate hardware and never gotten a response. Even a "we don't want your shitty hardware; please insert it into the body orifice you'd find most painful" reply would have been nice.

        Comments

        1. By Marcos Latas (82.154.0.53) on

          You contacted Theo directly?

          Comments

          1. By Anonymous Coward (68.6.193.220) on

            Well, I sent him an e-mail. I didn't, like, stalk him at his house, leave notes on his car and door, shave offers onto his pets, advertise on billboards he drives by on a regular basis, or anything like that.

            At the time, it was just a few brand new 9.1 GB SCSI drives that a customer stiffed me on some years ago. They're now taking up valuable closet space that could be used to store more of my fiancee's wardrobe. And like most geeks, I have stacks 'o RAM that aren't ever going to find their way into any of my current systems. Also old but perfectly functional motherboards in the P2 - P3 and Althon range, etc. These could actually be doing good work rather than sitting around in shiny antistatic bags. I'm perfectly willing to FedEx them to Canada, but I'm not going to beg to.

            Comments

            1. By Marcos Latas (82.154.0.53) on

              Probably the mail got lost... I have donated some times and even when the hardware wasn't need Theo always wrote back saying thanks.

              Remember que amount of mail he receives... If you don't get a response in a couple of days, send the mail again.

        2. By Anonymous Coward (151.188.16.53) on

          He did basically tell me that. I bought and offered him a fiber Gig-E card a few years back, when they were asking for those so they could write drivers for 'em, and he essentially told me to go to hell. So, I followed his expressed wishes and went to GNU/Linux (specifically, Trustix).

          Sadly, the OpenBSD team seems to like being gruff with people who want to give them things. It's one thing to ask, "is there any way you can help us get the programming documentation for that NIC or chipset without NDA requirements?" I'd have said, "Sure, I'll do whatever I can" and acted on it. It's quite another, though, to say, "Sorry, we don't have the programming docs for that chipset, go away, screw you, you need to go use some other OS other than OpenBSD." The latter is what I was told. So, as I said, I went away.

          OpenBSD is a fine operating system with a dedicated team of hackers whose programming prowess is to be honored and respected. Being nice also counts, though.

          Comments

          1. By m0rf (68.104.57.241) on

            having an ounce of clue counts when donating hardware too though.

            though i suspect this story is only half told.

            Comments

            1. By Marcos Latas (81.193.199.89) carvalholatas@gmail.com on

              I think so too...

    2. By sbr (66.11.172.61) sbr@gnook.org on http://gnook.org/~sbr/

      i dont use/need the cd's , but i still buy them. they look nice, its good to support, i like the song and of course stickers stickers and more stickers. are there stronger stickers out there, i had the 3.6 sticker on my laptop right where those damn windows stickers used to be but it got all worn away from my wrist. are there any of those hard super sticky stickers for openbsd? sbr

  3. By Anonymous Coward (68.6.193.220) on

    I charge my customers a "media fee" for all OpenBSD installs / upgrades, which I use to procure a CD for them. If they ask (no one has), I just tell them it's either 1) for their convenience, in case I get hit by a runaway blimp or something like that, or 2) explain that the project is free, but funded by such purchases (depends on whether I'm talking to an admin, manager, or beancounter).

  4. By Anonymous Coward (204.214.120.254) on

    i'm curious as to how well the stickers hold up to the elements. i'd like to display my operating system of choice on my car, but i don't want the stickers to wash away after the first light drizzle. thanks

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward (216.220.225.229) on

      I tried this with 2.8 stickers. They faded in the sun, and then washed off after a few months. They are also really too small.
      Perhaps this has changed.

    2. By James Carter (66.218.244.40) on http://www.opentorrent.org

      A bumper sticker would be very cool...

      They have plenty of quality phrases to feature.

    3. By Anonymous Coward (69.209.203.219) on

      Seems like Theo should make some vinyl stickers since everyone wants them so much. He could make a nice markup on them to make more funds for project.

      http://www.stickerobot.com

      http://www.stickerguy.com

  5. By Anonymous Coward (207.34.103.194) on

    I pre-ordered, and just got notification today that its been shipped! Woohoo!

    Comments

    1. By Marcos Latas (81.193.199.89) carvalholatas@gmail.com on

      Are they shipping already? Or are you just pulling my leg? :)

    2. By Peter N. M. Hansteen (194.54.107.19) peter@bgnett.no on http://www.bgnett.no/~peter/

      Shipping confirmation is good, but I never got one from Calgary at least. Where did you order from?

      Comments

      1. By Brent Graveland (198.53.128.241) brent@graveland.net on

        I'm in Alberta, so it's obviously going to be quicker, but I received 3.7 + my shirt today... It was pre-ordered the first day it was available, and I got shipping confirmation yesterday :)

        No broken tabs, or any sort of other issues that have been reported in the past, just a perfectly good ordering experience.

  6. By Cabral (201.19.12.188) on

    I live in Brazil

  7. By Anonymous Coward (213.23.141.168) on

    As always on every new release i already followed the call of duty to buy a cd set and also the regular monetary donation to the project. Keep going!

  8. By Anonymous Coward (207.232.97.28) on

    Already got it at CSW!

  9. By RC (4.8.16.53) on

    Since this seems to be an appropriate thread to say it in... I'm not going to be upgrading my OpenBSD systems this time.

    I've been using OpenBSD since about the 2.4 release IIRC (makes it about 6 years now) but now it looks like I'm going to have to switch. I always accepted it's limitations, a single (different) irritating bug every release, many open-source programs being off-limits (OpenOffice, Mozilla, etc), and many more of the issues you've all had to deal with.

    USB support was slow to come, and USB2 even slower, and even now, unplugging a UMASS device causes system panic about 1 in 5 times. Basic firewire support still isn't available, and is probably a long way off. ACPI looks like it won't be implimented for several years, and with the increasing power requirements for computers, power management is a real necessity for most people, including myself... I'm just not willing to continue wasting hundreds of watts for no good reason. I'm well aware of the fact that OpenBSD is relatively short-handed and underfunded, but these features are important, so I'm forced to switch. I'm sure someone will tell me to donate, but throwing money at a problem never solves it. If they are more interested in rewriting apache from scratch than fixing their USB support and power management, more donations are not going to change that. I've spent ~6 years looking for each release to catch-up, but it seems they get further behind, never fix important things because they don't feel like it (eg. usb, atactrl, acpi), and I'm not willing to donate any more when they keep saying they're going to do what they think is the most fun, anyhow.

    Not to say that everything is perfect in FreeBSD though. I was always impressed with OpenBSD automatically detecting everything, where other OSes require you to select a handful of kernel modules to be loaded on startup. With minor exceptions (hostname.???, X11), you can take an OpenBSD hard drive from one machine to another, and have it boot-up and work with no changes at all. OpenBSD has also got a much nicer and cleaner layout than other OSes, and much simpler init scripts. I also prefer the OpenBSD version of the pdksh shell to any other, fortunately I've been able to compile it on FreeBSD, so no real loss there.

    I wish I could stick with OpenBSD, I really do, but the system instability, limited hardware, lack of power management, and limited software are now forcing me to look elsewhere, and FreeBSD is a big step-up in most places, and only a small step down in others... Hell of a lot better than Linux, IMHO.

    Even after I switch my workstation over, I'll still be using OpenBSD on a few others, but I expect I'll end up switching those over too. One is an Alpha machine, and OpenBSD's Alpha support is getting worse, not better, with big pieces of functionality still missing. NetBSD wasn't a better alternative when I tried it, but FreeBSD's Alpha port is pretty good, and I've been testing and considering it for a long time.

    Another OpenBSD system is a firewall/router. While it might seem natural to leave OpenBSD on that machine, it really could benefit from better power management. If it was running any OS other than OpenBSD, I could have the hard drive spin-down shortly after start-up, and stay idle for weeks, until I need to log-in. Having it fall back to about 2watts in standby, and only powering-up when it sees some packets would be very nice. Plus, PF is working on FreeBSD, so no need to even change my rulesets.

    My laptop was the first convert. The lack of acpi was a real drain on batteries, and not having working drivers for the cardbus slots was quite annoying. Yes, I would also have liked to use FreeBSD there, but the on-board winmodem only has a Linux driver, so OpenBSD was replaced by Linux there.


    Go ahead and mod my comment down, as if my points aren't valid, and because it's something that you'd rather not hear. But I'm frustrated that I'm essentially being pushed away from the OS I've been using for many years now, and hope that my rant here will be read by a few people, that might perhaps do something about it, and make OpenBSD better so that I can perhaps switch back in a few years.

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward (193.219.28.144) on

      Well The problem is that You are right. OpenBSD need money, but people that give them, don't get what they need in the OS. So I think many people will think same way as You. Theo must wake up from his own world & try too coopare with people, that gives him money.

    2. By Anonymous Coward (66.155.211.1) on

      You might be able to get the WinModem working under FreeBSD with ndis (base) or ltmdm (from ports).

      Comments

      1. By RC (4.8.16.53) on

        I know about the lt port, but my modem is a SmartLink, not a Lucent, so no luck.

        I don't believe the NDIS driver wrapper can be used for anything other than network card drivers. I did a quick search on Google when I saw your comment, and turned up empty. Someone even asked if it was possible on the FreeBSD mailing list, and got directed to the lt port instead...

    3. By halosfan (24.34.139.45) on

      While I hear you, please realize that OpenBSD is used by many, many people, and their priorities are vastly different from each other. As an example, the value of power management to me is half-way between zero and NULL -- my colocation facility is not going to charge me less for consuming less power. The value of hardware support? For servers, I just buy hardware that OpenBSD supports. For laptop, none of the free Unices cuts it for me. After years of struggling with various BSDs and even Linux on laptops, I ended up buying a Powerbook, and I still don't quite understand why I hadn't done it earlier. Powerbooks are well supported, both by Apple and third parties (unlike most Intel laptops), extremely durable (unlike any of the Intel laptops I could get my hands on), support all hardware I care about, run a real Unix, and make an excellent serial console (with ckermit) for headless OpenBSD servers.

      On the other hand, the value of a secure web server to me is immense, as is the value of OpenSSH. Consistent filesystem layout, sane configuration, systrace -- all of that makes a difference to me. One can say that FreeBSD has that too (in one form or another). Yes and no. FreeBSD prides itself on its speed. Unfortunately, performance and security often are mutually exclusive. To me, ProPolice and W^X in the base system are much more important than the speed I potentially lose. Hence, I wouldn't even think about opening a port on a modern day Internet on a computer that is running an OS other than OpenBSD.

      And I'm not saying that I'm right and you are not. As I said, your complaints are valid. It just happens that the project doesn't match your requirements. It doesn't necessarily mean that the project has to change.

  10. By root (203.217.81.152) on

    Nope, pissed off Adaptec user (at theo that is).

  11. By Venture37 (217.22.88.121) venture37@hotmail.com on www.geeklan.co.uk

    Thanx to Wim I got mine on monday along with a bunch of t-shirts :)

  12. By me (62.177.197.3) on

    No I haven't ordered. I think it's a waste of money to buy an OS that you can download for free. I use OpenBSD on multiple systems but I really don't care about the developers, if they need the money they should get a proper job.

    OBSD is doing just fine without my money so I'll use it for myself instead of stupid charity.

    Comments

    1. By dgs (213.114.204.10) on

      I'm sorry but I can't just leave the page without commenting on this last post..

      Ofcourse the though of what's worth paying a few $ for differs. But how can you say that you are using OpenBSD on multiple systems, without care about what happens to the project. I have only been using OpenBSD for a year or so, but I feel that it's natrualy to support the OpenBSD developers. And not by doing it for 'charity purpuse', they do an asome job, and it's a way to show appreciation and to contribute to the project.

      If you contribute in another way, fine. But for most users that don't have the time, knowlage to contribute with coding, documentation, answering common questions etc. Donate money and buying misc. items still contribute in some way.

      To the last things about the OpenBSD developers jobs...
      Most of the developers have work, and what I have understand good works. Their contribution to the project are done mostly on their sparetime, a few of them are working with the project on fulltime but that's just a handfull of them.

      About your sentence with FREE OpenBSD, it's another discussion, but like everyone in the community says: "Free speach not free bear"...

      --
      I just recived my order today, the new t-shirt is awsome...

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (195.229.66.181) on

        You sir, have been trolled.

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