OpenBSD 4.3 released

Theo de Raadt, founder of the OpenBSD Project, has released OpenBSD 4.3 which updates many drivers and software packages. The distribution is ready for download as an ISO image for a range of hardware architectures, and also via BitTorrent. The system can also be ordered on CD. The project hopes that this distribution method will cover at least part of the costs.

A large number of new drivers have been provided to improve hardware support. The project is rather reticent about what software versions are included. Among them are GNOME 2.20.3, KDE 3.5.8 and Xfce 4.4.2, the GNUstep 1.14.2 development environment, OpenMotif 2.3.0, the MySQL 5.0.51a and PostgreSQL 8.2.6 databases, and the OpenOffice 2.3.1 office package. A detailed overview of the changes is given in the release notes and in the change log.

Like NetBSD, FreeBSD and its offspring DragonFly, OpenBSD is one of the free BSD Unix derivatives that originate from 4.4BSD Lite2. OpenBSD was born in 1996 as a fork of the NetBSD project and pays special attention to security. The distribution boasts that in its twelve years of existence, only two security holes have been detected in the default installation that could be exploited from outside.

(trk)