The OpenBSD project released version 8.0 of its operating system on Tuesday, adding support for Intel’s Arc graphics cards, hibernation on ARM64 machines and virtual machines with up to 64 virtual processors.
It is the project’s 61st release, according to the OpenBSD 8.0 release page, which dates it Oct. 20. OpenBSD has shipped a new version every six months since 1996. The change most likely to reach ordinary desktop users is in memory. The kernel’s virtual address space on amd64 grew from 4G to 512G, and that lets the system map more than 4GB of VRAM, which modern graphics cards carry.
Theo de Raadt, who founded OpenBSD, announced the release on the project’s mailing list, Ars Technica reported. He repeated the line the project has carried for years, saying it was “proud of OpenBSD’s record of more than thirty years with only two remote holes in the default install.”
That record is the project’s calling card. OpenBSD began more than 30 years ago as a fork of NetBSD and has built its name on security since.
The Arc support covers the A-Series cards, known as DG2 or Alchemist, through the inteldrm(4) driver, according to the release notes. Phoronix also reported the Arc support as the headline hardware addition.
Networking got a new tool. The base system now includes rtrd(8), a daemon for the RPKI-to-Router protocol, along with a control program, rtrctl(8). The qwx(4) wireless driver picked up 802.11n support and 40 MHz channels.
RISC-V machines gain kernel support for the “V” vector extension and for the Advanced Interrupt Architecture, with two new drivers, imsic(4) and aplic(4). The vmm/vmd virtualization stack was improved too, and it’s where the 64-processor ceiling for guest machines comes from.
The release ships LibreSSL 4.4.0 and OpenSSH 10.6, both with security and internal changes.
One architecture is gone. OpenBSD retired its Loongson port because it no longer worked with Clang 22, according to the release page. The base system now builds with LLVM/Clang 22.1.6 plus the project’s own patches.