The OpenBSD project produces a free, multi-platform UNIX-like operating system. Recently, OpenBSD 6.8 that includes new features and systems has been released on the project’s 25th anniversary. The project’s latest release, OpenBSD 6.8, introduces support for the powerpc64 CPU architecture, improves the speed of time-related operations, and offers several fixes.
What is new?
There are various Kernel improvements, new userland features, bugfixes and tweaks in userland, improved hardware support, driver bugfixes, and more. Let’s see the key changes in OpenBSD 6.8:
- New powerpc64 platform, supporting PowerNV (non-virtualized) systems with POWER8 and POWER9 CPUs, such as Raptor Computing Systems Talos II and Blackbird systems. POWER8 support has not been tested on real hardware yet.
- Improvements to time measurements, mostly in the kernel: Added support in the kernel and libc for time counting in userland, eliminating the need for a context switch every time a process requests the current time, thereby improving speed and responsiveness in programs which make many gettimeofday calls, especially browsers and office software.
- The userland time counters are enabled on the amd64, arm64, macppc, octeon and sparc64 architectures.
To see all changes in detail, you can visit here. To download OpenBSD 6.8 via HTTP/FTP, please visit OpenBDS.org.