Presentations on OpenBSD Ports and More

Joe Stevensen sent word of two new OpenBSD presentations. The first is OpenBSD Ports and Packages, by Marc Espie. He takes some shots at the other BSDs, including FreeBSD. He's wrong about Python being needed to update FreeBSD ports. An article I wrote for the February 2006 Sys Admin magazine on keeping FreeBSD up-to-date doesn't use any Python, but it does require Ruby and Perl.

I do agree with some of Marc's critique, however. It would be nice to have package update tools built into the base system. Perhaps they could be written in Perl to avoid adding Ruby? We are starting to see new ports tools developed outside of the base now being added to the base, with Colin Percival's portsnap now in FreeBSD 6.0. I expect to see this trend continue because Colin is a member of the FreeBSD project now. (He's the security officer.)

The second presentation is OpenBSD Networking Update by Henning Brauer. OpenBSD is doing some cool work with OpenBGPD and I see now that OpenOSPFD is planned as well.