OpenBSD boosts hardware support
Lead developer of the OS, which recently marked its 10th birthday, says new version offers "significant improvements."
Theo de Raadt, the founder and lead developer of the open-source OpenBSD, said Tuesday's release includes changes in various subsystems.
"Version 3.8 provides significant improvements, including new features, in nearly all areas of the system," de Raadt said in an e-mail announcing the release.
OpenBSD, which celebrated its 10th birthday on Oct. 18, now includes support for the accelerometer found in some IBM ThinkPad laptops and for additional Ethernet adapters.
Developers have also added a number of new utilities, including a RAID management program. The tool only carries out basic administrative functions to make it easier to support all types of controllers, de Raadt said in an e-mail last month.
"The functionality supplied is very basic, almost minimal. But this is done like this on purpose since we believe that we could support this functionality on all RAID controllers in the same way, without special--'but that controller is so different'--mindsets entering the picture," said de Raadt.
The tool will only work for AMI RAID controllers initially, but de Raadt hopes that support will be added for controllers from other vendors at a later stage, according to the e-mail.
Earlier this year, de Raadt criticized the quality of the code in the Linux operating system, claiming that it was full of "cheap little hacks."
The latest version of OpenBSD can be downloaded from the organization's Web site.
Ingrid Marson of ZDNet UK reported from London.