Welcome back!

No, we would not say it was easy getting here, but booting into 16.1 for the first time sure is as relieving (and exciting) as it could get for our project growing beyond what we had ever imagined. It has been more than a year since OPNsense first came out. Back then it was FreeBSD 10.0. Not even two months after, 10.1 was introduced along with the opnsense-update utility. Today is the day for FreeBSD 10.2, the latest and greatest release currently available for broader driver support and stability improvements.

16.1 is nicknamed "Crafty Coyote" in honour of our beloved childhood TV sessions. It is the accumulation of 6 months of work, having had our focus on reengineering the captive portal, native intrusion prevention, plugin support, and transforming the reporting frontend into something more modern and flexible just to name a few[1]. Apart from the recently published security advisories (see patch notes below), we have included a quick navigation feature which can be activated by pressing (TAB) followed by search keywords and hitting (ENTER) to go to the desired page. Last but not least, a larger batch of improvements and fixes went into assorted sections of the GUI that certainly help to get your work done without ending up dazed and confused.

Speaking of clearing things up, there is more... While Ad, Franco and a couple of amazing external contributors have been busy writing and reviewing code, Jos worked in the shadows to bring to you a fully revised set of project documentation in the form of an online handbook[2]. More content will follow as we slow down development speed a bit in order to catch up. We will have to see how that works out. ;)

Another thing we have noticed is that translations are hard! We have planned to finish a translation for this iteration, but the sheer amount of work overwhelmed even the sizeable German translation team. The German translation is now at 77% percent completed with Japanese, Chinese and French chasing tails. If you want to help drop us a line at project@opnsense.org for details on how to contribute.

All images have been pushed as well, although may take a bit more time to reach a mirror near you. You can find the checksums attached at the end of this announcement.

https://opnsense.org/download/

Finally, here are the full patch notes:

We thank all our contributors and users for their ongoing love and support. <3

Cheers, Ad, Franco and Jos

SHA256 (OPNsense-16.1-OpenSSL-cdrom-amd64.iso.bz2) = bd94c4bf304fa99d7fb426061cf17f45fa2e427cef3ab089704e14b2b570b261
SHA256 (OPNsense-16.1-OpenSSL-nano-amd64.img.bz2) = abd0c9beb843ad8232f9fc5f0b6c68318993b55529bc06a8c331587863a6c13f
SHA256 (OPNsense-16.1-OpenSSL-serial-amd64.img.bz2) = 9a5faaebc6cba481199bbc2ae5395877c8acf0dfa225e643ec5c3258e5014c4f
SHA256 (OPNsense-16.1-OpenSSL-vga-amd64.img.bz2) = 85e3c4275460758565cb0eced8c69afd13a26eb8b9116d86db80be098b6d3e4b

SHA256 (OPNsense-16.1-OpenSSL-cdrom-i386.iso.bz2) = 8346db1a23563895f071a51ea86be00f7e405e5df709943b26435c13f1c898f1
SHA256 (OPNsense-16.1-OpenSSL-nano-i386.img.bz2) = 380819194a3c5a508b161153cc532e8c1caaba31b08bdb01643493438634d2ab
SHA256 (OPNsense-16.1-OpenSSL-serial-i386.img.bz2) = 1a413fb0563cc63e1b80278df303b092b219d6d58a87f841b7389a1a4939734a
SHA256 (OPNsense-16.1-OpenSSL-vga-i386.img.bz2) = 16a360b05d3fd325499baa6bd38fcd19090ac1d5c3d8ba2a8fa3e763137e87fc

MD5 (OPNsense-16.1-OpenSSL-cdrom-amd64.iso.bz2) = 941e9cd797e4189868398fcd057a428e
MD5 (OPNsense-16.1-OpenSSL-nano-amd64.img.bz2) = ededf0767412daafcb8209a3fbf85714
MD5 (OPNsense-16.1-OpenSSL-serial-amd64.img.bz2) = 0094c6275128a35e6f8bf965178245eb
MD5 (OPNsense-16.1-OpenSSL-vga-amd64.img.bz2) = ddaae54fe90634ca8223f483cebebaa2

MD5 (OPNsense-16.1-OpenSSL-cdrom-i386.iso.bz2) = d1a216d5eed3534d7f33a6a4482851e2
MD5 (OPNsense-16.1-OpenSSL-nano-i386.img.bz2) = 871f23a40d3eee49350fe06cadb37884
MD5 (OPNsense-16.1-OpenSSL-serial-i386.img.bz2) = be04acd8c51347711c4a5f58b711da8e
MD5 (OPNsense-16.1-OpenSSL-vga-i386.img.bz2) = 549267467adbf194505c6daaae589ee8