OpenBSD 8.0, the 61st release of the security-focused operating system, marks over three decades of development since its fork from Net BSD. Theo de Raadt announced the semiannual update, highlighting the project's continued commitment to security. The release continues the operating system's remarkable record of more than thirty years with only two remote holes in the default install. The new version brings significant improvements across the board, particularly in hardware compatibility and virtualization capabilities. These changes should improve compatibility with modern graphics cards and allow the system to map more than 4GB of VRAM.
Key updates include added support for Intel Arc A-Series graphics cards and a 512GB kernel virtual address space on AMD64, up from 4GB. Hibernation support for ARM64 systems has been added, alongside RISC-V improvements including kernel support for the 'V' vector extension. Wireless network driver additions include 802.11n and 40 MHz channels for the qwx driver. The virtualization stack has been improved, now supporting up to 64 virtual CPUs per guest virtual machine. Security updates include LibreSSL 4.4.0 and OpenSSH 10.6. The release also retires support for the Loongson architecture due to compatibility issues with the Clang 22 compiler.
Source: Ars Technica · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing