OpenBSD 7.4 Released With New Hardware Support, Security Improvements

Theo de Raadt released OpenBSD 7.4 today as the open-source BSD operating system project's 55th release.

OpenBSD 7.4 features a wide variety of improvements from new kernel features to improved hardware support, security updates, AMD Zenbleed handling updates, and much more. Below is a look at some of the key highlights for this big OpenBSD 7.4 update.

- Dynamic Tracer (DT) and Utrace support on AMD64 and i386 OpenBSD.

- Power savings for those running OpenBSD 7.4 on Apple Silicon M1/M2 CPUs by allowing deep idle states when available for the idle loop and suspend.

- Support for the PCIe controller found on Apple M2 Pro/Max SoCs.

- Allow updating AMD CPU Microcode updating when a newer patch is available.

- A workaround for the AMD Zenbleed CPU bug.

- Various SMP improvements.

- Updating the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) graphics driver support against the upstream Linux 6.1.55 state.

- New drivers for supporting various Qualcomm SoC features.

- Support for soft RAID disks was improved for the OpenBSD installer.

- Enabling of Indirect Branch Tracking (IBT) on x86_64 and Branch Target Identifier (BTI) on ARM64 for capable processors.

Downloads and more details on the hundreds of changes with OpenBSD 7.4 via OpenBSD.org.