OpenBSD 7.9 (60th release, May 19 2026) ships heterogeneous CPU scheduling, delayed hibernation, drm updated to Linux 6.18.22, and broad new SoC support.
Key Takeaways
New hw.blockcpu sysctl lets the scheduler exclude SMT, performance, efficient, or lethargic CPU classes on amd64/arm64, enabling heterogeneous core management.
Delayed hibernation via machdep.hibernatedelay wakes a suspended system after N seconds to hibernate, preventing battery drain during suspend.
SpacemiT K1 (riscv64) gains full driver stack including smtclock, smtgpio, smte ethernet, and fixes for random SIGSEGV on X60 cores.
VMM/VMD gets vmboot for sysupgrade in VMs, AMD SEV support in vioscsi/cd, and Apple Virtualization compatibility.
amd64 MAXCPUs raised to 255; bug fixed for machines with >512GB RAM via zeroing DM PTE/PDE pages before use.
Hacker News Comment Review
Commenters debate whether OpenBSD is measurably more secure than Linux, with no hard data cited on either side, only anecdote and architectural argument.
Parking locks, replacing CAS spinlocks in kernel mutexes, drew curiosity; a commenter linked the WebKit locking blog post as the canonical reference for the design.
Bluetooth absence remains a recurring pain point for desktop use cases, though server and homelab deployments on Hetzner VPS and Intel Mac Mini hardware are reported as working well.
Notable Comments
@sanxiyn: Links the WebKit “Locking in WebKit” post as the source design for parking locks, directly answering the mutex question.
