OpenBSD 4.2 Released

The OpenBSD team has just announced today the 22nd release of their BSD-based operating system, OpenBSD 4.2. This release provides significant improvements and new features, in nearly
all areas of the system: "We are pleased to announce the official release of OpenBSD 4.2. This is our 22nd release on CD-ROM (and 23rd via FTP). We remain proud of OpenBSD's record of more than ten years with only two remote holes in the default install."

Here are some of the highlights in OpenBSD 4.2:

• Gnome 2.18.
• GNUstep 1.14.
• KDE 3.5.7 and koffice 1.6.3.
• Xfce 4.4.1.
• OpenMotif 2.3.0.
• OpenOffice.org 2.2.1.
• Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.6.
• PostgreSQL 8.2.4.
• GHC 6.6.1 (amd64 and i386 only)

Moreover, there's a new install method for the most popular architectures! The ISO image has now approximately 200MB, which contains the base set, permitting non-network installs.

OpenBSD 4.2 provides improved hardware support, including:

• Native Serial-ATA support
• Intel ICH8M PATA support
• JMicron JMB36x PATA support
• VIA CX700/VX700 PATA support
• JMicron JMB36x SATA II support
• Silicon Image 3124/3132/3531 SATALink chipsets support
• Winbond W83627DHG and W83627E HF-A Super I/O support
• NCR 53C720/770 controllers support
• Tehuti Networks 10Gb Ethernet controllers support
• Marvell 88W8385 802.11g based Compact Flash devices support
• USB touch screens support
• Intel i965GM chips support

Here are the major components included in this release, from outside suppliers :

• Xenocara (based on X.Org 7.2 + patches, freetype 2.2.1, fontconfig 2.4.2, expat 2.0.0, Mesa 6.5.2, xterm 225 and more)
• Gcc 2.95.3 (+ patches) and 3.3.5 (+ patches)
• Perl 5.8.8 (+ patches)
• Our improved and secured version of Apache 1.3, with SSL/TLS and DSO support
• OpenSSL 0.9.7j (+ patches)
• Groff 1.15
• Sendmail 8.14.1, with libmilter
• Bind 9.3.4 (+ patches)
• Lynx 2.8.5rel.4 with HTTPS and IPv6 support (+ patches)
• Sudo 1.6.9p4
• Ncurses 5.2
• Latest KAME IPv6
• Heimdal 0.7.2 (+ patches)
• Arla 0.35.7
• Binutils 2.15 (+ patches)
• Gdb 6.3 (+ patches)

You can read the full changelog here. If you have an OpenBSD 4.1 operating system and you want to upgrade it to version 4.2, please see the upgrade instructions here.

About OpenBSD

The OpenBSD project produces a FREE, multi-platform 4.4BSD-based UNIX-like operating system. Their efforts emphasize portability, standardization, correctness, proactive security and integrated cryptography. OpenBSD supports binary emulation of most programs from SVR4 (Solaris), FreeBSD, Linux, BSD/OS, SunOS and HP-UX.

You can download OpenBSD now from Softpedia.