The OpenBSD project was founded by Theo de Raadt in 1995 after a conflict with NetBSD developers, leading to the closure of the NETBSD repository to the CVS. Subsequently, a feasibility study was conducted with a group of like-minded individuals to create a new open operating system based on the NETBSD starting wood tree. The main development goals of the project were to support 13 hardware platforms, standardization, correct operation, proactive security, and integrated cryptographic agents. The full installation ISO image size of the base system OpenBSD 7.6 is 702 MB.
Aside from the operating system itself, the OpenBSD project is renowned for its components that have been integrated into other systems, known for their high quality and safety. These components include LibreSSL (a fork of OpenSSL), OpenSSH, the package filter PF, routing daemons Openbgpd and Openospfd, NTP server Openntpd, mail server opensmtpd, a text terminal multiplexer called tmux, an IDENTD daemon, BSDL alternative to GNU Groff package called mandoc, Carp protocol for fault-resilience, lightweight http server, and the file synchronization utility Openrsync.
The main improvements in OpenBSD 7.6 include:
- Expanded support for Arm64 architecture, with added protection against Spectre-V4 and Spectre-BHB vulnerabilities.
- Added support for AVX-512 instructions for systems based on AMD64 architecture and addressed an RFDS vulnerability in Intel Atom processors.
- Included support for the Milk-V Pioneer board based on the RISC-V architecture.
- Removed the msyscall mechanism used for marking memory areas from which system calls are allowed, replaced by system calls mimutable and PinSyscalls.