OpenBSD candle

2026-05-20
That time of the year when all people around the world are connecting to their OpenBSD machines and smashing their keyboard to enter the command "doas sysupgrade" before they go to their beds.

OpenBSD release 7.9

No firework. No ceremony. Just something changed number 7.8 to 7.9. New poster and new mp3 song.

Sometimes I compare things. How long does it take to upgrade macOS or Windows? Too long. Compared to OpenBSD upgrade, you usually get new colors, emojis, bugs, and headaches. Currently, you also get some new cool magic.

Boring life

Some things are boring. They work and don't require much. Some are the opposite. You upgrade some ancient fossil like OpenBSD and all you get are higher numbers in software versions. The detailed changelog is long, changed lines of code are many. Things mostly work like they did before.

Nothing changed

There are no new features, no magic automation. Nothing is running behind the scene that wasn't before. Zero new features. Here and there, some options in a manual page changed. Nobody cares. It works as it should, most of the time. This year, no account is required in OpenBSD. Like past 30 years. The window manager cwm has the same design as 19 years ago. No background image, just empty desktop. Nothing there. Not one icon, not any color, not any sign of life. Yet it has managed to survive so long.

The humble candle is just trying to keep burning.