April 21, 2022: OpenBSD 7.1 Released

The long spring (or fall) wait is over, the OpenBSD project today formally released OpenBSD 7.1, the 52nd release of our favorite open source operating system.

As usual, the release page lists the main highlights of the new release, which include

• OpenBSD/arm64 contains greatly improved support for Apple M1 systems[See earlier article].
• loongson platform retired.
• Many improvements to wireless networking.iwm(4) andiwx(4)have gained 80MHz channel support[See earlier article].mtw(4),a driver for MediaTek MT7601U Wi-Fi devices, was added[See earlier article].
• Utilityrealpath(1)has been added.
• httpd(8)gained support forcustomised error pages andpre-compressed gzip files.
• Sysctlhw.perfpolicyis now set to auto by default at startup.
• igc(4),a driver for Intel 2.5Gb Ethernet controllers, has been added.
• Mouse tracking is now disabled by default inxterm(1).Setting X resourceallowMouseOpsto true reinstates the earlier behaviour.
• OpenSSH has been updated to version 9.0[See earlier article].
  • This includes support forssh-agentrestriction [See earlier article].
  • Post-quantum KEX algorithm sntrup761x25519-sha512@openssh.comis now the default.
  • sftp(1)client has gained a "cp" command that supports server-side copyingof files (using the new "copy-data" protocol extension).
• The login class capability databasenow supports /etc/login.conf.d/${class},and this is used by the ports system.
• Base now includes (optional) support for minimal runtime detection ofundefined behaviour.As described inclang-local(1),this requires use ofclang(1)'s-fsanitize-minimal-runtimeflag.

The new release supports 13 distinct hardware platforms with thousands of prebuilt packages for all platforms.

If you want to delve further into the details before (or while, after) installing or upgrading to the new release, the detailed changelog has all the details.Those upgrading from the 7.0 release (or earlier) should consult theUpgrade Guide.

If you enjoy this release, please remember to donate to the project as a way of saying thanks to the developers for their work.