The latest release of FreeBSD contains a lot of crucial under-the-hood changes – and drops 32-bit support on both x86 and POWER, although ARM-v7 survives.

FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE arrived this week, the latest release of the Unix world’s leading alternative to Linux. As well as numerous bug fixes and upgrades to many of its components, the major changes in this version are reductions in the number of platforms the OS supports, and in how it’s built and how its component software is packaged.

FreeBSD 15 has significantly reduced support for 32-bit platforms. Compared to FreeBSD 14 in 2023, there are no longer builds for x86-32, POWER, or ARM-v6. As the release notes put it:

Now FreeBSD supports five CPU architectures – two Tier-1 platforms, x86-64 and AArch64, and three Tier-2 platforms, armv7 and up, powerpc64le, and riscv64.

FreeBSD has its own native desktop environment, the Windows-like Lumina

Arguably, it’s time. AMD’s first 64-bit chips started shipping 22 years ago. Intel launched the original x86 chip, the 8086 in 1978. These days, 64-bit is nearly as old as the entire Intel 80x86 platform was when the 64-bit versions first appeared. In comparison, a few months ago, Debian 13 also dropped its x86-32 edition – six years after Canonical launched its first x86-64-only distro, Ubuntu 19.10.

Another significant change is that this is the first version built under the new pkgbase system, although it’s still experimental and optional for now. If you opt for a pkgbase installation, then the core OS itself is installed from multiple separate software packages, meaning that the whole system can be updated using the package manager.

Over in the Linux world, this is the norm, but Linux is a very different beast. All the components of Linux distributions are developed and maintained by different teams. The kernel is a separate project from the init system, and both are separate projects from the core command-line OS (much of which is from the GNU Project in most distros), which are entirely independent from the packaging system, and the desktops, and the shells, and so on. That’s why Linux exists in the form of distributions. The distributor chooses from a variety of components, and puts together something they like from all the disparate pieces. It’s something like assembling a unique model from a hundred different kits.

FreeBSD, like the other BSDs and indeed most other OSes, is constructed very differently. The core OS is a single integrated whole. All its components are built from a single codebase managed by a single team. The classic way to install a BSD is to install several distribution sets, including the base OS image as a single unit. This gives you a complete working OS, to which you can add whatever software you need on top using the package manager. This works perfectly well, but the downside is that it forces you to update the OS in two separate operations, using one tool to update the core OS, and a different tool to update the installed applications. As we recently discovered for ourselves trying to update NetBSD 10.0 to 10.1, if you don’t update the kernel, the userland, and the apps in precisely the correct sequence, the result is mismatched parts that won’t work together – and a broken OS. (We have since learned – too late – that the correct method is, apparently, to boot from an installation medium and use that to do an in-place upgrade.)

The BSD base-system-plus-apps model works, but it does have drawbacks. One example is that it’s difficult to remove components from the base image, which makes it difficult to cut down the OS for a minimal installation – such as an embedded system or a lightweight VM. (As an example, the GNU groff typesetting tool is part of the base image, and few people need that in 2025.) Having the whole thing constructed from packages facilitates this.

FreeBSD has a tool for automating package building called the Poudriere build system, but this couldn’t build the base OS. It will be much more capable used with the pkgbase system. There’s still an option in FreeBSD 15 to install the monolithic base system, and also a pkgbasify command to convert that layout into the newer componentized one.

The change is controversial in some places. Prolific BSD blogger Vermaden wrote a long piece about it after finding that the command to remove all packages – pkg delete -af, which was safe in earlier releases – destroyed the entire OS, for which he filed a bug. The Reg FOSS desk spoke to an OpenBSD developer recently, who thought the change was rash and profoundly counter to established BSD practice.

Even with such views, though, the older FreeBSD construction model is very different from how a Linux distro is assembled and maintained. These days, the majority of Unix tech folks are familiar with Linux first, and everything else a distant second.

The plan is that by FreeBSD 16, scheduled for December 2027, the restructure will be complete, the old distribution sets will be removed, and the current freebsd-update command and its associated infrastructure can be turned off.

Another significant change is reproducible builds, a milestone the project reached in late October. This change is part of a multi-project initiative toward ensuring deterministic compilation: to be able to demonstrate that a certain set of source files and compilation directives is guaranteed to produce identical binaries, as a countermeasure against compromised code. A handy side-effect is that building the whole OS, including installation media images, no longer needs root access.

There are of course other new features. Lots of drivers and subsystems have been updated, and this release has better power management, including suspend and resume. There’s improved wireless networking, with support for more Wi-Fi chipsets and faster wireless standards, plus updated graphics drivers. The Hardware Notes document has an extensive list including what standards are supported on what devices. The release announcement calls out the inclusion of OpenZFS 2.4.0-rc4, OpenSSL 3.5.4, and OpenSSH 10.0 p2, and notes the inclusion of some new quantum-resistant encryption systems. A new inotify subsystem, compatible with the Linux equivalent, allows the OS to watch folders for any changes. This is very useful for tools like malware scanners and file system indexers.

Both the latest Firefox and a recent version of GNOME Web are in the repositories, covering most bases

A feature that didn’t make it was one we wrote about earlier this year – the plan for the installation program to offer the option of installing a system with a graphical login session. This is something FreeBSD’s smaller siblings, NetBSD and OpenBSD, both do without difficulty.

• FreeBSD Project isn’t ready to let AI commit code just yet
• GhostBSD 25.02 adds ‘Gershwin’ desktop for a Mac-like twist
• FreeBSD 15 installer to offer minimal KDE desktop
• From PlayStation to routers, you’ve probably been using FreeBSD without knowing it

We installed version 15.0 in a VirtualBox VM. As we’ve been learning our way around it since FreeBSD 13.1 a few years ago, we have a better idea of what it expects now. We configured the VM with UEFI instead of its default BIOS, as this works better with FreeBSD’s default ZFS-on-GPT disk setup.

We manually added the desktop-installer script, just like in previous versions, then ran it. It detected that it was running inside VirtualBox and offered to install the guest extensions automatically, which is impressive. It offers 12 environments as well as a roll-your-own option:

The capitalization, spacing, summaries, and punctuation are direct from the program itself – although we can’t really fault the descriptions.

We were pleasantly surprised to see CDE in the list, so we tried it. It installed version 2.5.2, rather than the very latest 2.5.3 – understandable as it only came out a week ago — but we couldn’t find a way to launch it. However, the originally FreeBSD-native Lumina desktop worked perfectly. Although there hasn’t been a new release since version 1.6.1 in 2021, it’s improved considerably compared to the last time we saw it. On FreeBSD 15, Lumina now includes a file manager, text editor, PDF viewer, and most of the other components you’d expect. In general, we found FreeBSD 15 easier and less complicated to work with than either of the previous major releases.

It should be easier on servers too. The new OCI container support in FreeBSD 14.2, which we wrote about a year ago, is more mature now. FreeBSD has its own version of Podman, and you can run Linux containers on FreeBSD. This means you can use Docker commands and tools, which are familiar to many more developers than FreeBSD’s native Jail system.

FreeBSD has its own place in servers and the public cloud, but it’s getting easier to run it as a desktop OS as well. It can run all the main Linux desktops, including GNOME on Wayland. There’s no systemd here, and never will be – and no Flatpak or Snap either, for that matter.

Even compared to Debian, it’s a considerably more Spartan environment. There’s no native version of Chrome (although there is a port of Chromium) and no Electron apps, which means no VSCode, Slack, Discord, or anything. There’s no native version of Steam either, but there’s a launcher for the Linux version.

For some people, these absences will be deal-breakers, but for others, they may sound like a positive advantage. You do get Firefox – at the time of writing, the very latest version 145.0.2. For anything that doesn’t work right in Firefox, you can install GNOME Web, still known here as Epiphany. FreeBSD 15 includes version 47.7 of this WebKit-based browser.

It’s not the most lightweight OS. Although the root partition only contained 5.3 GB of files, by default, the user’s home directories are installed in separate ZFS datasets. In an 8 GB VM, FreeBSD used a non-trivial 1.8 GB of RAM. In our experience, dual-booting any of the BSDs is not a simple task, so if you want to try it, we suggest dedicating a whole drive to it. That said, we found version 15 easier to install than ever. Good news for the curious, although possibly bad news for GhostBSD – but that still has a considerable edge. You may find that you like it. Some people certainly do. Late last month, we enjoyed reading this Love Letter to FreeBSD. ®