14 DAY TRIAL // The OpenBSD Project has announced the release of the OpenBSD 5.8 BSD-based computer operating system today, October 18, 2015, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the OpenBSD source tree.
OpenBSD 5.8 is a massive update that adds a great number of improvements to the hardware support, generic network stack, installer, routing daemons, userland network, security, as well as to various core components and packages, including the Apache web server, OpenSMTPD, OpenSSH, LibreSSL, and Syslogd.
The following major components have been added to OpenBSD 5.8: Xenocara, OpenBSD's graphics stack based on X.Org 7.7 and X.Org Server 1.16.4 with extra patches, Mesa 10.2.9, FreeType 2.6, FontConfig 2.11.1, Xterm 314, GCC 4.2.1 and 3.3.6, Perl 5.20.2, SQLite 3.8.9, Ncurses 5.7, Binutils 2.17, Unbound 1.5.4, NSD 4.1.3, GDB 6.3, and Less 458.
"This is our 38th release on CD-ROM (and 39th via FTP/HTTP). We remain proud of OpenBSD's record of twenty years with only two remote holes in the default install. As in our previous releases, 5.8 provides significant improvements, including new features, in nearly all areas of the system," said the OpenBSD developers.
Numerous apps and core components have been updated
Among the updated applications included in OpenBSD 5.8, we can notice Chromium 44.0.2403.125, Mozilla Thunderbird 38.1.0, Mozilla Firefox 38.1.1 ESR, Emacs 24.5, Vim 7.4.769, GCC 4.9.3, PHP 5.6.11, GNOME 3.14.2, Python 3.4.2, KDE SC 4.14.3, LibreOffice 4.4.4.3, Xfce 4.12, Go 1.4.2, MariaDB 10.0.20, Mono 3.12.1, and OpenJDK 1.8.0.45.
OpenBSD 5.8 is available for download as installable-only ISO images for the 64-bit (amd64), 32-bit (i386), MIPS64, MIPS64el, PPC (PowerPC), Alpha, Sparc, Sparc64, Sh, Vax, and HPPA. We recommend reading the official release notes if you want to know what exactly has been changed since OpenBSD 5.7, if not proceed to the download section.
OpenBSD users are being informed that the lmc(4) driver that supported the Lan Media Corporation SSI/T1/DS1/HSSI/DS3 devices has been removed, along with the san(4) driver that supported Sangoma Technologies AFT T1/E1 devices. Detailed upgrade instructions can be also be found in the release notes of OpenBSD 5.8.