WireGuard VPN Tunnel Software Publishes New Snapshot But It Won't Be In Linux 5.1

Jason Donenfeld, the lead developer of WireGuard, has released a new snapshot version of this secure VPN tunnel cross-platform software.

WireGuard 0.0.20190227 is the new testing version of this very useful and practical alternative to the likes of OpenVPN. This pre-release version has changes for FreeBSD, various low-level code improvements, mitigating potential side-channel attacks, fixing allocation stalls, fixes for compatibility with older kernel versions, and other changes.

There is also optimizations to help WireGuard to be "much much faster" for operations involving thousands of peers. Jason particularly noted, "Batch peer/allowedip addition and clearing is several orders of magnitude faster now."

While WireGuard had a goal of making it into the mainline Linux kernel in 2018, that didn't happen and it's still not quite over the finish line yet. The Linux 5.1 merge window will be opening up on Sunday/Monday following the 5.0 kernel release, but WireGuard will not be part of it. WireGuard hasn't been staged in net-next and would still need a final round of review by other upstream kernel developers. Here's to hoping WireGuard will be ready for mainlining in a few months with Linux 5.2.

While WireGuard isn't mainlined in the Linux kernel yet, it is easily deployable as a DKMS out-of-tree kernel module. Several Linux distributions even have WireGuard packaged/available in this form for those interested. WireGuard also continues making inroads on other platforms including macOS/iOS and Android.

Those wanting to learn more about WireGuard can do so at WireGuard.com. More details on the v0.0.20190227 release via its mailing list.