Screenshot of MirOS #10-current/i386 “wtf ist hallowe’en” Live CD, with IceWM running, Dillo showing a press article about this release, xclock, and jupp open in a background xterm |
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| Company / developer | Thorsten “mirabilos” Glaser, Benny “benz” Siegert, Ádám “replaced” Hóka, (contributors) Michael Prokop, Lukas U. Smultron, and many more |
| OS family | Unix-like, BSD |
| Working state | Current |
| Source model | Open source |
| Initial release | OpenBSD-current-mirabilos #0[1] (October 11, 2002) |
| Latest stable release |
MirOS #10semel (March 16, 2008) [+/−] |
| Latest unstable release |
MirBSD-current (10uAF-20110818) (August 18, 2011) [+/−] |
| Marketing target | *nix enthusiasts, *net servers |
| Available language(s) | English |
| Update method | Binary security updates for stable releases |
| Package manager | MirPorts, pkgsrc |
| Supported platforms | i386, SPARC |
| Kernel type | Monolithic |
| Default user interface | mksh, IceWM, evilwm |
| License | Mostly BSD, GPL, MirOS Licences |
| Official website | mirbsd.de, Official Torrent Site |
MirOS BSD (originally called MirBSD) is a free and open source operating system, which started as a fork of OpenBSD 3.1 in August 2002.[2] It is intended to maintain the security of OpenBSD - from which it frequently synchronises code updates - with better support for European localisation. Since then it has also incorporated code from other free BSD descendants, including NetBSD, MicroBSD and FreeBSD. Code from MirOS BSD has also been incorporated into ekkoBSD, and when ekkoBSD ceased to exist, artwork, code and developers ended up here for a while. One of the projects goals is to be able to port the MirOS userland to run on the Linux kernel, hence the deprecation of MirBSD in favor of MirOS.
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MirOS BSD originated as OpenBSD-current-mirabilos, an OpenBSD patchkit, but soon grew on its own after some differences in opinion[2][3] between the OpenBSD project leader Theo de Raadt and Thorsten Glaser. Despite the forking, MirOS BSD is synchronised with the ongoing development of OpenBSD, thus inheriting most of its good security history, as well as NetBSD and other BSD flavours.[4]
One goal to provide a faster integration cycle for new features and software than OpenBSD. According to the developers, "controversial decisions are often made differently from OpenBSD; for instance, there won't be any support for SMP in MirOS". There will also be a more tolerant software inclusion policy, and "the end result is, hopefully, a more refined BSD experience".[5]
Goals of MirOS BSD are to create a more "modular" base BSD system, similar to Debian. While MirOS Linux (linux kernel + BSD userland) was discussed by the developers sometime in 2004,[6] it has not materialised as yet. Another goal is to provide a faster integration cycle for new features and software than OpenBSD.
The most important differences to OpenBSD are[7]:
Aside from cooperating with other BSDs, whether attempted (OpenBSD – the fork was not intended, the original plan was to merely improve it; ÆrieBSD) or succeeded (ekkoBSD; MidnightBSD), (more or less successful) attempts to submit patches to upstream software authors, and synergy effects with FreeWRT, there is an active cooperation with Grml both in inclusion[8][9] and technical[10] areas. Other projects, such as Debian[11] are also fed with MirSoftware.
MirPorts is a derivative of OpenBSD ports tree developed by Benny Siegert. MirPorts does not use the package tools from OpenBSD written in Perl, but continues to maintain the previous C-based tools. New features are in-place package upgrades and installing MirPorts instance as a non-root user. Also, in difference to OpenBSD ports, MirPorts are not tied to specific OS versions and even on stable releases using the newest version is recommended. MirLibtool is a modified version of GNU libtool 1.5 installed by MirPorts to build shared libraries in a portable way. Multiple platforms are supported "out of the box":
Following the MirOS BSD policy of faster software availability to the user, many ports removed for political reasons in OpenBSD (e.g. all the DJB software or the Flash Plugin) have been kept in MirPorts and can continue to be used. MirPorts also wants to be a place for unofficial or rejected OpenBSD ports.