14 DAY TRIAL // OpenBSD, a free, multi-platform BSD-based UNIX-like operating system, which emphasizes portability, standardization, correctness, proactive security, and integrated cryptograph, is now at version 5.5.
OpenBSD is one of the few projects that manage to stick to a specific release schedule, so a new version of this operating system is usually made available twice a year. The previous OpenBSD release was on November 3, which means that now it's time for another one.
This is not your average operating system. It's mostly used by people who know what they are doing. It's not easy to install and it's not easy to get a friendly desktop environment ready for use. This being said, users need to be sure before getting involved with OpenBSD.
OpenBSD 5.5 has been dubbed "Wrap in Time" because one of the issues solved in this release is the Year 2038 problem. Apparently, an integer overflow will cause Unix systems that store the system time as a signed 32-bit integer to revert to January 1, 1970. This is a common problem for the Unix system, but 2038 is a long way off.
According to the changelog, starting with OpenBSD 5.5 the system is ready for the year 2038 and will run well beyond Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 2038 UTC. This means that the entire source tree (kernel, libraries, and userland programs) has been carefully and comprehensively audited to support 64-bit time_t.
Also, time_t has been removed from network, on-disk, and database formats, format strings have been converted to use %lld and (long long) casts, a few components of the system that could not use 64-bit time_t have been converted to use unsigned 32-bit instead, the installer will verify all sets before installing, the installer now supports a scriptable auto-installation method that enables unattended installation, and disk images which can be written to a USB flash drive are now ready for the 64-bit and 32-bit architectures.
Also, the installer now parses nwids with embedded blanks correctly, OpenBSD/armv7 has replaced OpenBSD/beagle, multiprocessor support has been implemented, virtual extensible local area network tunnel interface vxlan has been added, IPv6 routing domain support has been enabled, a new queuing system with new syntax has been added, it's no longer possible to create a route to the bound address via 127.0.0.1, and OpenSMTPD has been updated to version 5.4.2.
Check out the massive changelog for a complete list of updates and new features. You can download OpenBSD 5.5 right now from Softpedia.