The start of May 2014 marks the release of OpenBSD 5.5. Another release brings a swag of hardware improvements along with software features that will give users even more choices when they are building a server, router/firewall or desktop computer.
Some highlights that interest me are:
- time_t moved to 64bits for all platforms enabling OpenBSD to continue to work past Jan 19 2038
- signify(1) is now used by default for all releases and packages
- auto-install(8) script now available for unattended installs
- OpenBSD/armv7 replaces OpenBSD/beagle.
- New vmx(4) driver for VMware VMXNET3 Virtual Interface Controller devices
- New vioscsi(4) driver for VirtIO SCSI adapters
- New viornd(4) driver for VirtIO random number devices
- relayd(8) now supports TLS Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) with ECDHE (Elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman) that is enabled by default
- pf(4) new queueing system with new syntax
- arc4random(3) functions now use the ChaCha20 cipher
- OpenSMTPD 5.4.2
- OpenSSH 6.6
- Nginx 1.4.4 (+ patches)
- OpenSSL 1.0.1c (+ patches)
- Sudo 1.7.2p8
Please support the project and purchase the CD set or make a donation. Once you have that and you want to get to work, simply choose your favorite mirror and get downloading – don’t download it from ftp.openbsd.org as it will be under extreme load, updating mirrors. For those in Australia, the mirror that is probably the best for all ISPs would be Aarnet. You can directly go to your architecture of choice via this link.