OpenBSD 7.8 has officially arrived, marking the project’s 59th release. As usual, it focuses on stability, correctness, and security rather than hype. The update ships with new artwork by Apsephion and a long list of under-the-hood improvements that reflect how methodical the OpenBSD team continues to be.
The headline change most home lab users will notice is that ARM64 support has matured again, with Raspberry Pi 5 finally joining the list. That’s a big deal for anyone experimenting with ARM hardware, since the Pi remains one of the most popular low-cost systems for testing BSDs. The update also adds several Raspberry Pi-specific RP1 drivers covering clocks, PWM, RTC, and more. Snapdragon X Elite laptops now report CPU speed and power status correctly, and AMD ThinkPads finally have working power buttons again after a GPIO event bug was fixed.
Kernel and SMP work is another major focus this cycle. The network stack can now process TCP traffic across multiple CPUs with up to eight threads. IPv6 fragment reassembly and routing header parsing are now parallelized too, and up to eight softnet threads can handle input at once. The result is smoother performance on multi-core systems and far less contention under load. The developers also moved the kernel’s sleep timer to nanoseconds, improved witness(4) lock tracking, and expanded btrace(8) to resolve symbols for better debugging. SEV and SEV-ES virtualization support continues to improve as well, with new GHCB protocol support and a psp(4) ioctl for encrypted state measurement.
On the graphics side, OpenBSD 7.8 updates drm(4) to match Linux 6.12.50 and introduces new Qualcomm drivers (qcdrm(4) and qcdpc(4)). Suspend and hibernate reliability also get a boost. USB ports now recover correctly after resume, AMD laptops can wake properly from S0ix low-power states, and the ThinkPad Z13 no longer drops devices after sleep. There’s even a debug option that lets the display stay on during suspend.
VMM and VMD keep maturing into truly usable hypervisors. AMD SEV-ES can now be enabled for confidential guests directly in vmd(8), Linux guests can use kvm-clock for better timekeeping, and Virtio devices have been updated to the modern 1.2 specification. Guest memory management has been simplified, error messages are clearer, and vmd(8)’s inter-process communication is now fully sanitized.
Userland sees the usual OpenBSD refinements. The old Perl-based pkg-config has been replaced with the faster and more standard pkgconf 2.4.3. There’s a new watch(1) utility, improved GPT and MBR recovery tools in fdisk(8) and security(8), and a modernized gprof implementation that ditches monstartup(3). vi(1) no longer crashes under certain conditions, FILE structures are now opaque, and ksh(1)’s VI mode handles UTF-8 text far more gracefully.
Networking also sees plenty of love. There’s a new erspan(4) driver for ERSPAN Type II tunnels, SoftLRO support for multiple drivers, and new offloading and queueing improvements across ice(4), bnxt(4), and ixl(4). Wireless reliability has been improved for qwx(4), bwfm(4), and iwx(4), particularly for Intel AX210 chipsets. pf(4) gets smarter too, with better TCP RST handling and a fix for the long-broken “least-states” rule option.
LibreSSL 4.2.0 arrives with cleaner code and improved constant-time cryptography, removing leftover OpenSSL baggage while laying the groundwork for post-quantum work through its new ML-KEM API. Documentation has been heavily revised, and CMS, PKCS7, and RSA implementations received long-awaited fixes. For everyday users, nc(1) now supports ALPN via a new flag.
OpenSSH 10.2 focuses on safety and good hygiene. It blocks control characters in usernames, warns when a non-post-quantum-safe key exchange is used, and overhauls DSCP and IPQoS handling to favor EF priority for interactive sessions. Socket handling has moved from /tmp to ~/.ssh/agent, XMSS keys are gone, and logs are much clearer when authentication fails. As usual, countless small bugs were also crushed.
The ports tree remains one of OpenBSD’s strengths, with over 12,000 pre-built packages on amd64 and aarch64. Major updates include GNOME 48, KDE Plasma 6.4.5, Firefox 143, Chromium 141, Python 3.12.11, Rust 1.90.0, LibreOffice 25.8, and Xfce 4.20. The Xenocara desktop stack now ships with xserver 21.1.18 and Mesa 25.0.7, ensuring solid graphics support across architectures.
Installation remains simple and familiar. Users can download install78.iso or install78.img from a mirror and boot from CD or USB. ARM64 devices often prefer a miniroot image booted via serial, while classic platforms like SPARC64 and PowerPC still have well-documented processes. Verify your install images with signify(1) pubkeys and you’re set. OpenBSD’s installer may not be flashy, but it’s one of the most reliable in the Unix world.
Like most OpenBSD releases, 7.8 isn’t about chasing trends. It’s a thoughtful update that broadens hardware compatibility, strengthens network performance, and continues the project’s slow but steady march toward even tighter security and reliability. It’s exactly what long-time BSD fans expect… quiet excellence.
