Download OpenBSD 5.9

Although it was only scheduled for May 1, the new semi-annual release of OpenBSD came out on Tuesday. on this page a comprehensive list of ftp and http download locations can be found. OpenBSD descends from the original Berkeley Software Distribution and has the characteristic that the developers only want to use open source software. Furthermore, the operating system is known for its excellent documentation and safety. Extensive release notes can be found on this page are being found; Below is an overview of the most important improvements:

OpenBSD 5.9 released (early!)

The release of OpenBSD 5.9, previously scheduled for the usual May 1st, has just been officially announced! the release page mentions most of the major improvements, and the detailed changelog has a much longer list. Here are some of the bigger things incorporated into 5.9 that we’re excited about:

• Pledge
  With a great Hackfest presentation to lay out all the details, pledge(2) is one of the more prominent changes. We say prominently, but you actually shouldn’t notice any difference with it enabled… assuming all your applications behave correctly. Much work has been done in this area, with around 70% of the OpenBSD userland being modified to use pledge within a single release cycle! A few ports also got the same treatment – something to expect more of as time goes on.
• UEFA
  Many new laptops come with UEFA now, some without an option to fall back to a traditional BIOS. With the 5.9 release, OpenBSD can now be booted on such machines.
• GPT
  Assuming you’re on the amd64 platform, support for GPT has been vastly improved throughout the OS. The installer has been updated to accommodate as well, and it even works on soft raid(4) volume.
• rewritten less
  the less(1) we’re all familiar with has been completely rewritten. After importing a fork from illumos’ Garrett D’Amore, OpenBSD continued to make improvements to the code. A safer and more modern tool was the end result, even if it’s just for viewing text. Hopefully there will be less bugs now.
• Xen domU
  If running OpenBSD under Xen (such as on Amazon’s cloud platform) sounds interesting to you, you’ll be happy to know that 5.9 includes some pretty solid support for this.
• graphics
  Laptop users rejoice, as 5.9 includes graphics support for Intel’s Broadwell and Bay Trail GPUs!
• Network SMP
  Many improvements have been made to get the network stack running multithreaded. There’s still plenty more to do in this area, but some exciting progress has definitely been made already.
• 802.11n
  Another big one for laptop users: initial support for N wireless has landed in both the iwm(4) and iwn(4) drivers.
• UTF-8
  Locale support for everything but C and UTF-8 has been torn out, and many utilities in the base system have much better UTF-8 support than prevously.

As always, OpenSSH, OpenSMTPD, LibreSSL and all the other sub-projects have got some nice updates of their own. Hit up the release page for more info, and consider picking up a CD set or making a donation to support the project. Be sure to check out the errata page and apply any relevant patches. Happy upgrade!