On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 10:22 PM, Bob Beck <b...@ualberta.ca> wrote: >> boo hoo. run one machine somewhere and make release. done. > > Once you have a built release you can run upgrades everywhere from > that release tarball. > > man release > > to figure out how to do that. > > Now you may ask, why don't we do that? We simply do not have the > resources and time to > devote racks of machines, developer time, and internet bandwidth to > building stable somewhere > for all architectures, and distributing it securely. > > Us (the developers) would rather spend our time improving the os and > our resources at > distributing it and making it better than expending a lot of effort > because someone is > too lazy to rtfm and patch something themselves. If you want push > butan, get os, please > go run windows 7 or OSuX.. you'll be much happier, as will we because > the neediness > of our user community goes down. > > The fact that you have to not be lazy to use OpenBSD is important to > us. Unlike a commercial > OS, or linux, we don't measure our success in how popular it is, or if > we're going to replace the > evil microsoft any time soon. we *WANT* needy lazy users to use those > other OS's so we can > concentrate on making something that works and is stable for people > who really need it, like > ourselves. [...]
Well said. Recently, I introduced a friend to OpenBSD 4.5 through the CDs', and deliberately asked him to follow the install manual (he was firstly surprised to see only 4 pages) and go ahead and install. Within 30 minutes he came running out of the lab, with eyes sparkling and said -- "never ever have I seen such a small install manual, and an installation that goes through perfect as indicated in there". He manages a redhat ent linux farm, and is now trying to assess the stability of OpenBSD, so that he can cutover some of his linux boxes to OpenBSD. My personal experience tells me this -- OpenBSD is simple and elegant. Irrespective of what benchmarks tell you, they can never tell me anything about simplicity and as a result anything about elegance. So they are useless for me atleast. There is no point purchasing an Audi A6, when my 10 yr old Fiat does the same job, and does it well (reaches me in time - the additional time I buy due to Audi's speedup is not worth spending the additional $$ that it costs). Tradeoffs, tradeoffs,... -Amarendra
