FreeBSD 15: Why You’ll Want It

[Mark Phillips]

Original article here.
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FreeBSD 15.0 landed earlier this week, and we read through the release notes with a fine-toothed comb to highlight some of the key improvements. Here are the standouts.

The BIG One: “pkgbase”​

After roughly a decade of work, the base system can now be managed using pkg. Now that it’s here, what does pkgbase mean for everyday users? Drawing from a talk by Baptiste Daroussin, here are the key benefits:

• • Allows users to do fine grained installations (no toolchain, no debug symbols, etc.)
  • Offers more precise merging of configuration files.
  • Developers can easily ship packages for testing.
  • Permits simpler binary upgrades, including smoother tracking of STABLE and CURRENT.

This gives administrators much more flexibility in keeping systems minimal, consistent, and up to date.

Improved Desktop & Laptop Support​

Several updates directly benefit laptop and desktop users:

Wi-Fi enhancements​

• • The rtwn(4) driver now supports 802.11ac (VHT) for supported Realtek chipsets (RTL8812A and RTL8821A).
  • The new iwx(4) driver, FreeBSD’s native driver for newer Intel wireless chipsets, appears in this release as an alternative to iwlwifi(4).

Audio & device handling​

• • Asynchronous device detach is now supported. This improves hot-plug behavior (e.g., USB headsets) and eases use of PulseAudio in cases that require operating system sleep/wake.

AMD GPU stability​

• • Fixes landed for gradual slowdowns and freezes affecting certain AMD GPUs when using the amdgpu DRM driver from the drm-kmod ports package.

Offline Help for New Users​

Brand new FreeBSD users often need guidance right after install, especially before their system is online.


To help:

• • The existing freebsd-base man page remains an invaluable starting point.
  • A new networking man page provides quick, offline guidance for troubleshooting early network setup.

This is extremely handy if a freshly installed system isn’t connecting to the network.

Major Improvements on Amazon Web Services​

Running FreeBSD in AWS? You’ll notice some meaningful improvements:

• • FreeBSD “base” EC2 images now boot up to 76% faster than corresponding 14.0-RELEASE images, with the largest improvements found on arm64 (“Graviton”) instances.
  • The FreeBSD project now publishes “small” EC2 images; these are the “base” images minus debug symbols, tests, 32-bit libraries, the LLDB debugger, the Amazon SSM Agent, and the AWS CLI. This reduces the amount of disk space in use when the EC2 instance finishes booting from ~5 GB to ~1 GB. (wow!)
  • The FreeBSD project now publishes “builder” EC2 images; these boot into a memory disk and extract a clean “base” image onto the root disk (mounted at /mnt) to be customized before creating an AMI. 584265890303 (Sponsored by Amazon)

Other Noteworthy Updates​

A few additional items that deserve attention:

• • Possibly bigger news than it appears – bhyve(8) and vmm(4) now support arm64 and riscv platforms.
  • FreeBSD introduces a native mechanism for controlled privilege escalation via mdo(1) and mac_do(4). This provides a built-in alternative to installing tools like sudo or doas when users need limited administrative capabilities.

But Wait! There’s More!​

These highlights only scratch the surface. If you’re planning to upgrade—or just want a deeper look—reading the full FreeBSD 15.0 release notes is absolutely worthwhile.


The post FreeBSD 15: Why You’ll Want It first appeared on FreeBSD Foundation.

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[sidetone]

Possibly bigger news than it appears – bhyve(8) and vmm(4) now support arm64 and riscv platforms.

That one is great. Then you can try AOSP to see if Android apps will run on it, or Public Domain OS which has ARM versions. RiscOS may not be able to use it, bc it's is 32bit. I recall running RiscOS on a Raspberry Pi which was 64 bit, but it may have been in 32bit mode. If it doesn't work in VM mode, while the emulation mode may otherwise allow it, that's ok, bc FreeBSD is primarily a 64 bit system now.

RiscV VM will get the ball rolling on that for testing.

It proves that there can be a binary compatibility layer.


2 new or improved Wifi drivers if you have those chipsets is good.

We'll have to see how pkgbase is implemented.

GPU improvements for Radeon is always good.

Supports RiscV: https://www.freebsd.org/releases/15.0R/hardware/

 

[sidetone]

It has usbhid(4) on by default, with associated newer HID drivers.

usbconfig(8) shows more information about USB devices as more of what was downloaded from ports to perform that function.

ftpd(8) removed from base, and is now in ports.

A few GNU tools for configuration and build removed and replaced with BSD tools. There were very few left, so perhaps all of them?

Gallant font updated. Affiliated with Thread the-gallant-console-font-got-supercharged.99074: schweikh 's work & vmisev for testing.

scons(4) phasing out.

umb(4) & umbctl(4) for Mobile broadband (fixed wireless?) USB dongles. Thread fixed-wireless-3g-4g-5g-internet-through-dongles-phones-standalone-modems.100141

RiscV and Arm hardware installs. No Raspberry Pi 5 according to Hardware notes though. However, there's a RP5 build available: Thread raspberry-pi-5-status.91406. RiscV support seems new.

Fido/U2F is mentioned. Some users can give feedback on how u2f(4) & this hardware works out.

There's more, some pertaining to sound and graphics.

This looks like a major overhaul compared to previous major version releases.