Chapter 13: Add-On Software


Overview

Software repair steps:
retry, reboot, reinstall?
No need for that here!

Most people don't use an operating system — they use software, which needs an underlying operating system. No matter how robust OpenBSD is, it's completely useless if applications can't run on it. OpenBSD supports a wide range of software and has several tools to make software management quick and effective. One difference that is surprising between OpenBSD and other operating systems is how much software is not included in the system, but is instead available for adding on if necessary.

Many commercial operating systems include hundreds or thousands of small programs: from games, desktop toys, and fancy-looking clocks to disk scrubbers and Web browsers. Most users never touch most of the programs on their system, but they're there taking up disk space and possibly memory just the same. This makes it easy for the user, so long as everything works properly. Each program lugs along its own infrastructure, however, and this can cause problems. There's a reason that Windows became famous for "DLL Hell."

OpenBSD includes almost nothing. You get exactly what you need to provide the infrastructure for software and nothing more. While a traditional UNIX system includes compilers, games, and manual pages, you don't even have to install those when you install OpenBSD! Even if you install the full OpenBSD software, it will include far less than a Windows, Macintosh, or commercial Linux operating install. That's because almost everything is considered an add-on package. OpenBSD makes it very easy to install additional software through the ports and packages system.

The advantage to this sparseness is that you know exactly what is on your system. This makes debugging problems simpler and helps to ensure that some shared library or other chunk of code that you've never heard of won't break your programs. The downside is that you may need to do a bit of thinking to decide exactly what you do need, and you'll have to install those programs. OpenBSD makes installing software as easy as possible.




Absolute Openbsd(c) Unix for the Practical Paranoid
Absolute OpenBSD: Unix for the Practical Paranoid
ISBN: 1886411999
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 298

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