Darwin's Theories Blog

New Theories for a New Time

OpenBSD 6.9 Released

2021-05-01

OpenBSD 6.9 was released on May 1, 2021, marking the 50th consecutive release from this project. Using a cadence of two releases a year (recently copied by e.g., the developers of Java), they’ve made two releases every year, through the dot-com bust, Y2K, the 2008 downturn, the 2021 pandemic. Unstoppable. Sheesh, has it really been going for 25 years? Yes! And in fact, "I do believe it’s growing stronger every day" as more people find out how good it is.

For those that don’t yet know, OpenBSD is a fine free (open source) Unix-like operating system. It runs on many kinds of computers (different CPU architectures, not merely those based on the AMD/Intel duopoly), and works on a wide range of computer sizes and shapes, from servers to desktop/laptop computers and even tiny edge/IoT devices like the Raspberry Pi. Many of the volunteers who contribute to the project use it on a daily basis on both servers and laptops (for example, both this website and my everyday laptop run on OpenBSD). This release features better support for Arm64 and PowerPC64-based computers, many new and improved device and network drivers, new and improved servers ("daemons"), and much, much more. So much that I’m just going to refer you to the official release page. If you’re looking for a secure, stable, consistent and well-documented operating system, please check it out!