OpenBSD 7.9 is released, here's what's new
It includes additional ARM and RISC-V processor support and drivers for Wi-Fi 6.
Theo de Raadt announced the release of OpenBSD 7.9 this week with many updates to the 29 year-old Berkeley Software Distribution forked from NetBSD.
What's new
- ARM and RISC-V processor support: Rockchip's RK3588 and RK3576 ARM processors are now supported, along with SpacemiT's K1 RISC-V chip.
- Basic Wi-Fi 6 support: The network stack has initial support for 802.11ax, aka Wi-Fi 6.
- The wireless standard was first introduced in 2021.
- Intel ICE Ethernet support: The driver enabling Intel's Ethernet 800 Series adds data center-level wired connectivity.
What's getting better
- CPU core support: OpenBSD can now manage up to 255 cores on an x86_64 processor, rather than being limited to 64 cores.
- For context, AMD's EPYC 9965 data center processor has 192 cores.
- Hibernation: You can now set a battery-powered device to switch from suspend to hibernation after a specific amount of time in order to preserve the battery.
Zooming out
Why this update matters: OpenBSD is not a Linux distribution. As we saw with the nearly universal Copy Fail and Dirty Frag Linux vulnerabilities, there's strength in open source operating diversity.
My take: I wish more open source projects had unique (human-made) artwork like OpenBSD does, and I also really like that OpenBSD has a song for each release too.
Diving in
The fineprint: I barely scratched the surface of OpenBSD 7.9's updates. See the release notes for more.
Get it now: Go to the OpenBSD download page to get an OpenBSD 7.9 image for x86_64, ARM, PowerPC, RISC-V, or even a 32-bit system.
