FreeBSD version history

Last updated

FreeBSD 1

Released in November 1993. 1.1.5.1 was released in July 1994.

Contents

FreeBSD 2

2.0-RELEASE was announced on 22 November 1994. The final release of FreeBSD 2, 2.2.8-RELEASE, was announced on 29 November 1998. FreeBSD 2.0 was the first version of FreeBSD to be claimed legally free of AT&T Unix code with approval of Novell. It was the first version to be widely used at the beginnings of the spread of Internet servers.

2.2.9-RELEASE was released April 1, 2006 as a fully functional April Fools' Day prank. [1]

FreeBSD 3

FreeBSD 3.0-RELEASE was announced on 16 October 1998. [2] The final release, 3.5-RELEASE, was announced on 24 June 2000. [3] FreeBSD 3.0 was the first branch able to support symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) systems, using a Giant lock and marked the transition from a.out to ELF executables. USB support was first introduced with FreeBSD 3.1, and the first Gigabit network cards were supported in 3.2-RELEASE.

FreeBSD 4

4.0-RELEASE appeared in March 2000 [4] and the last 4-STABLE branch release was 4.11 in January 2005 supported until 31 January 2007. [5] FreeBSD 4 was lauded for its stability, was a favorite operating system for ISPs and web hosting providers during the first dot-com bubble,[ dubious ] and is widely regarded[ by whom? ] as one of the most stable and high-performance operating systems of the whole Unix lineage. Among the new features of FreeBSD 4, kqueue(2) was introduced (which is now part of other major BSD systems) and Jails, a way of running processes in separate environments. [6]

Version 4.8 was forked by Matt Dillon to create DragonFly BSD. [7]

FreeBSD 5

After almost three years of development, the first 5.0-RELEASE in January 2003 was widely anticipated, featuring support for advanced multiprocessor and application threading, and for the UltraSPARC and IA-64 platforms. The first 5-STABLE release was 5.3 (5.0 through 5.2.1 were cut from -CURRENT). The last release from the 5-STABLE branch was 5.5 in May 2006.

The largest architectural development in FreeBSD 5 was a major change in the low-level kernel locking mechanisms to enable better symmetric multi-processor (SMP) support. This released much of the kernel from the MP lock, which is sometimes called the Giant lock . More than one process could now execute in kernel mode at the same time. Other major changes included an M:N native threading implementation called Kernel Scheduled Entities (KSE). In principle this is similar to Scheduler Activations. Starting with FreeBSD 5.3, KSE was the default threading implementation until it was replaced with a 1:1 implementation in FreeBSD 7.0.

FreeBSD 5 also significantly changed the block I/O layer by implementing the GEOM modular disk I/O request transformation framework contributed by Poul-Henning Kamp. GEOM enables the simple creation of many kinds of functionality, such as mirroring (gmirror), encryption (GBDE and GELI). This work was supported through sponsorship by DARPA.

While the early versions from the 5.x were not much more than developer previews, with pronounced instability, the 5.4 and 5.5 releases of FreeBSD confirmed the technologies introduced in the FreeBSD 5.x branch had a future in highly stable and high-performing releases.

FreeBSD 6

FreeBSD 6.0 was released on 4 November 2005. The final FreeBSD 6 release was 6.4, on 11 November 2008. These versions extended work on SMP and threading optimization along with more work on advanced 802.11 functionality, TrustedBSD security event auditing, significant network stack performance enhancements, a fully preemptive kernel and support for hardware performance counters (HWPMC). The main accomplishments of these releases include removal of the Giant lock from VFS, implementation of a better-performing optional libthr library with 1:1 threading and the addition of a Basic Security Module (BSM) audit implementation called OpenBSM, which was created by the TrustedBSD Project (based on the BSM implementation found in Apple's open source Darwin) and released under a BSD-style license.

FreeBSD 7

FreeBSD 7.0 was released on 27 February 2008. The final FreeBSD 7 release was 7.4, on 24 February 2011. New features included SCTP, UFS journaling, an experimental port of Sun's ZFS file system, GCC4, improved support for the ARM architecture, jemalloc (a memory allocator optimized for parallel computation, [8] which was ported to Firefox 3), [9] and major updates and optimizations relating to network, audio, and SMP performance. [10] Benchmarks showed significant performance improvements compared to previous FreeBSD releases as well as Linux. [11] The new ULE scheduler was much improved but a decision was made to ship the 7.0 release with the older 4BSD scheduler, leaving ULE as a kernel compile-time tunable. In FreeBSD 7.1 ULE was the default for the i386 and AMD64 architectures.[ clarification needed ]

DTrace support was integrated in version 7.1, [12] and NetBSD [13] and FreeBSD 7.2 brought support for multi-IPv4/IPv6 jails. [14]

Code supporting the DEC Alpha architecture (supported since FreeBSD 4.0) was removed in FreeBSD 7.0. [15]

FreeBSD 8

FreeBSD 8.0 was officially released on 25 November 2009. [16] FreeBSD 8 was branched from the trunk in August 2009. It features superpages, Xen DomU support, network stack virtualization, stack-smashing protection, TTY layer rewrite, much updated and improved ZFS support, a new USB stack with USB 3.0 and xHCI support added in FreeBSD 8.2, multicast updates including IGMPv3, a rewritten NFS client/server introducing NFSv4, and AES acceleration on supported Intel CPUs (added in FreeBSD 8.2). Inclusion of improved device mmap() extensions enables implementation of a 64-bit Nvidia display driver for the x86-64 platform. A pluggable congestion control framework, and support for the ability to use DTrace for applications running under Linux emulation were added in FreeBSD 8.3. FreeBSD 8.4, released on 7 June 2013, was the final release from the FreeBSD 8 series. [17]

FreeBSD 9

FreeBSD 9.0 was released on 12 January 2012. Key features of the release include a new installer (bsdinstall [18] ), UFS journaling, ZFS version 28, userland DTrace, NFSv4-compatible NFS server and client, USB 3.0 support, support for running on the PlayStation 3, Capsicum sandboxing, and LLVM 3.0 in the base system. [19] The kernel and base system could be built with Clang, but FreeBSD 9.0 still used GCC4.2 by default. The PlayStation 4 video game console uses a derived version of FreeBSD 9.0, which Sony Computer Entertainment dubbed "Orbis OS". [20] [21] FreeBSD 9.1 was released on 31 December 2012. [22] FreeBSD 9.2 was released on 30 September 2013. [23] FreeBSD 9.3 was released on 16 July 2014. [24]

FreeBSD 10

On 20 January 2014, the FreeBSD Release Engineering Team announced the availability of FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE. [25] Key features include the deprecation of GCC in favor of Clang, a new iSCSI implementation, VirtIO drivers for out-of-the-box KVM support, and a FUSE implementation. [26]

FreeBSD 10.1
Long Term Support Release

FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE was announced 14 November 2014, [27] [28] and was supported for an extended term until 31 December 2016. [29] The subsequent 10.2-RELEASE reached EoL on the same day.

In October 2017 the 10.4-RELEASE (final release of this branch) was announced, and support for the 10 series was terminated in October 2018.

FreeBSD 11

On 10 October 2016, the FreeBSD Release Engineering Team announced the availability of FreeBSD 11.0-RELEASE. [30]

FreeBSD 12

FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE was announced in December 2018.

FreeBSD 13

FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE was published on 13. April 2021. FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE was published on 16. May 2022. FreeBSD 13.2-RELEASE was published on 11. April 2023. FreeBSD 13.3-RELEAE was published on 5. March 2024.

FreeBSD 13.x is the last release cycle to support MIPS architecture based CPUs. [31]

FreeBSD 14

FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE was published on 20. November 2023.

FreeBSD 14.x is the last release cycle to support 32 bit CPU architectures except armv7. [32]

Version history

The following table presents a version release history for the FreeBSD operating system.

Version [33] Release date [34] Supported until [35] Significant changes
Old version, no longer maintained: 1.01 November 1993 ?
Old version, no longer maintained: 1.1May 1994 ?fix some outstanding bugs from import of 386BSD, addition of some ported applications (XFree86, XView, InterViews, elm, nntp) [36]
Old version, no longer maintained: 1.1.5 ? ?
Old version, no longer maintained: 1.1.5.1July 1994 ?
Old version, no longer maintained: 2.022 November 1994 ?replace code base with BSD-Lite 4.4 (to satisfy terms of the USL v. BSDi lawsuit settlement), new installer, new boot manager, support for more filesystems (MS-DOS, unionfs, kernfs), 64-bit offsets for large filesystems, loadable filesystems, imported loadable kernel modules from NetBSD [37]
Old version, no longer maintained: 2.0.510 June 1995 ?revamped VM system, full NIS client and server support, transaction TCP support, ISDN support, support for FDDI and Fast Ethernet (100Mbit) adapters, multi-lingual documentation, FreeBSD Ports bundled with installation media [38]
Old version, no longer maintained: 2.119 November 1995 ?
Old version, no longer maintained: 2.1.5July 1996 ?bug and security fixes, PCI bus probing, addition of some drivers [39]
Old version, no longer maintained: 2.1.6December 1996 ?bug and security fixes, improvements to installation [40]
Old version, no longer maintained: 2.1.7February 1997 ?bug and security fixes [41]
Old version, no longer maintained: 2.2March 1997 ?NFSv3, replaced BSD malloc with phkmalloc, Linux emulation with ELF, man section 9 for kernel routines [42]
Old version, no longer maintained: 2.2.1April 1997 ?Bugfix release to replace 2.2. Update the Adaptec 2940 and Intel EtherExpress Pro drivers, fix CD-ROM package installer. [43]
Old version, no longer maintained: 2.2.2May 1997 ?NFSv3 made default, virtual FTP hosting [44]
Old version, no longer maintained: 2.2.522 October 1997 ?update support for Cyrix and AMD processors, new VGA library [45]
Old version, no longer maintained: 2.2.625 March 1998 ?ATAPI floppy drives, improved Linux emulation, new sound driver, new Plug and Play (PnP) support [46]
Old version, no longer maintained: 2.2.722 July 1998 ? FAT32 support, update to PC98 architecture [47]
Old version, no longer maintained: 2.2.829 November 1998 ? Dummynet traffic shaping, bridging on multiple interfaces, support use of IDE drives larger than 8GiB [48]
Old version, no longer maintained: 2.2.91 April 2006 ?fully functional April Fools' Day celebration [49]
Old version, no longer maintained: 3.016 October 1998 ? symmetric multiprocessing (SMP), CAM (Common Access Method) SCSI system, ELF executables, secure RPC, ATAPI/IDE CD burner and tape drive support, VESA video modes, Perl 5 replaced Perl 4 in base system, KerberosIV [50]
Old version, no longer maintained: 3.115 February 1999 ?initial USB device support, Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) [51]
Old version, no longer maintained: 3.217 May 1999 ?addition of Internet Software Consortium DHCP client to base, expanded USB device support, improved filesystem support (direct access to NTFS, Joliet extensions for ISO 9660) [52]
Old version, no longer maintained: 3.317 September 1999 ?improved USB support, major vinum updates, improvements to IPFW, Advanced power management, Berkeley Packet Filter enabled by default, addition of many drivers [53]
Old version, no longer maintained: 3.420 December 1999 ? Netgraph, RAID-5 support in vinum, ICMP and other security fixes [54]
Old version, no longer maintained: 3.524 June 2000 ?substantial vinum update, audio mixer updated, HTTP installation option [55]
Old version, no longer maintained: 4.014 March 2000 ?addition of jails, IPv6 support and IPsec with KAME (applications were also updated to support IPv6), OpenSSH integrated into the base system, new ATA/ATAPI driver (for all ATA compliant disks and ATAPI CDROM, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, DVD-RAM, LS120, ZIP and tape drives), emulator for SVR4 binary files, burncd, USB Ethernet adapter support, accept() filters, telnet encryption [56]
Old version, no longer maintained: 4.127 July 2000 ? Kqueue, improved IPsec, expanded DEC Alpha support, support for USB devices in default installation [57]
Old version, no longer maintained: 4.1.127 September 2000 ?virtual Ethernet device driver for bridged configurations, ATA100 controller support [58]
Old version, no longer maintained: 4.221 November 2000 ?basic USB scanner support, USB modem support, bug fixes for buffer overflows, FreeBSD Ports restructured [59]
Old version, no longer maintained: 4.320 April 2001 ?sound driver updates, TCP bug fixes, kqueue extended to the device layer [60]
Old version, no longer maintained: 4.420 September 2001 ?detection for new processors (Transmeta Crusoe et al.), support for Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE), kernel support for smbfs (CIFS), update to IPv6 stack [61]
Old version, no longer maintained: 4.529 January 200231 December 2002 TCP improvements (throughput, performance, and Denial-of-service mitigation), Soft updates enabled by default, improved Linux emulation, boot loader updated to boot from filesystems with 16K disk blocks (from 8K) [62]
Old version, no longer maintained: 4.615 June 2002May 2003update XFree86 to version 4.2.0, driver additions and updates [63]
Old version, no longer maintained: 4.6.215 August 2002May 2003fixed ATA-related problems, fix security-related problems [64]
Old version, no longer maintained: 4.710 October 2002December 2003new USB devices and disk controllers, IPFW version 2 (disabled by default) [65]
Old version, no longer maintained: 4.83 April 200331 March 2004basic FireWire and HyperThreading support, in-kernel cryptographic framework imported from OpenBSD, ata driver support for accessing ATA devices as SCSI devices using Common Access Method (CAM) [66]
Old version, no longer maintained: 4.928 October 200331 October 2004 Physical Address Extensions, IPFW fixes [67]
Old version, no longer maintained: 4.1027 May 2004May 2006 USB2 support, added ports/CHANGES and ports/UPDATING to FreeBSD Ports [68]
Old version, no longer maintained: 4.1125 January 200531 January 2007update XFree86 to version 4.4.0, implementation of per-interface polling for network interfaces [69]
Old version, no longer maintained: 5.014 January 200330 June 2003support for UltraSPARC and IA-64 processors, SMP support via changes to kernel locking (release most of kernel from the Giant lock), GEOM, Kernel Scheduled Entities, Mandatory Access Control imported from TrustedBSD, background fsck, Bluetooth, ACPI, CardBus, devfs, UFS2 support, support for Universal Disk Format, drivers for Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI), Pluggable Authentication Modules, remove support for 80386 in default kernel, removal of kernfs and UUCP, traditional BSD games moved from base to FreeBSD Ports, Perl removed from base system, imported rc.d framework from NetBSD, addition of BSDPAN, cdboot boot loader used by default [70]
Old version, no longer maintained: 5.19 June 2003February 2004experimental support for AMD64, experimental 1:1 and M:N thread libraries for multithreaded processing, experimental Name Service Switch, Physical Address Extensions, GEOM and devfs mandatory, IPv6 support in Linux emulator, experimental ULE scheduler, removed support for Xerox Network Systems, CAM layer support for devices with more than 232 blocks, removed historic BSD boot scripts, update XFree86 to version 4.3.0, start of Danish document translations [71]
Old version, no longer maintained: 5.29 January 200431 December 2004 AMD64 a Tier1 supported architecture, updated swap pager, Protocol Independent Multicast, updates to IPv6, IPSec and Bluetooth, major changes to ata driver (removed from Giant lock), NFSv4 client support, start of Turkish document translation, [72] remove floating point emulation support for i386, [73] new or improved IDE, SATA, and 802.11a/b/g device drivers, experimental support for multithreaded filtering and forwarding of IP traffic [74]
Old version, no longer maintained: 5.2.125 February 200431 December 2004bugfix release, improved ATA/IDE and SATA handling [75]
Old version, no longer maintained: 5.36 November 200431 October 2006 ALTQ, multi-threaded and reentrant network and socket subsystems, addition of new debugging framework KDB, dynamic and static linker support for Thread Local Storage, import pf from OpenBSD, binary compatibility interface for native execution of NDIS drivers, replace XFree86 with X.org 6.7, sound card driver reorganization, cryptography enabled by default in base [76]
Old version, no longer maintained: 5.49 May 200531 October 2006import Common Address Redundancy Protocol from OpenBSD [77]
Old version, no longer maintained: 5.525 May 200631 May 2008both cores of dual core processors made available for use by default in SMP-enabled kernels [78]
Old version, no longer maintained: 6.04 November 200531 January 2007experimental support for PowerPC, WPA wireless security, more wireless networking adapter drivers, complete support for 802.11g, 802.11i, 802.1x and WME/WMM, filesystem and direct disk access performance improvements [79]
Old version, no longer maintained: 6.18 May 200631 May 2008keyboard multiplexer, filesystem stability fixes, automatic configuration for many Bluetooth devices, drivers for Ethernet, SAS and SATA RAID controllers [80]
Old version, no longer maintained: 6.215 January 200731 May 2008support for Xbox architecture, OpenBSM, security event auditing, IPFW packet tagging, freebsd-update (binary updates for security fixes and errata patches), OpenIPMI (see Intelligent Platform Management Interface) [81]
Old version, no longer maintained: 6.318 January 200831 January 2010 X.org updated to version 7.3, reimplementation of UnionFS, addition of upgrade command to freebsd-update [82]
Old version, no longer maintained: 6.428 November 200830 November 2010support for Camellia cipher, boot loader changes (enabling booting from USB devices, and GPT-labeled devices with GPT-enabled BIOSes), malloc buffer corruption protection, DVD install ISO images for AMD64 and i386 [83]
Old version, no longer maintained: 7.027 February 200830 April 2009 ZFS and GPT, reference implementation of SCTP, add support for ARM architecture, support for Intel High Definition Audio (HDA), replacing phkmalloc with jemalloc, [84] drop support for DEC Alpha [85]
Old version, no longer maintained: 7.14 January 200928 February 2011 DTrace, ULE scheduler made default scheduler for i386 and AMD64 platforms [86]
Old version, no longer maintained: 7.24 May 200930 June 2010support for UltraSPARC III processors, transparent use of superpages in virtual memory subsystem, improvements to jail [87]
Old version, no longer maintained: 7.323 March 201031 March 2012new boot loader gptzfsboot (support for GPT and ZFS), ZFS updated to version 13, Perl updated to version 5.10, support for VIA Nano processors [88] [89]
Old version, no longer maintained: 7.424 February 201128 February 2013add support for UltraSPARC IV, IV+, and SPARC64 V processors, IEEE 802.3 full duplex flow control (in miibus). [90] This is the final release in the 7-STABLE branch.
Old version, no longer maintained: 8.025 November 200930 November 2010new USB stack, update FreeBSD jails to support modern features, ULE 3.0 scheduler, superpages, NFSv4 support [91]
Old version, no longer maintained: 8.123 July 201031 July 2012High Availability Storage, IPFW and dummynet improvements, SMP in PowerPC G5 systems, MP-safe MS-DOS filesystem, zfsloader, NFSv4 ACL for UFS and ZFS [92]
Old version, no longer maintained: 8.224 February 201131 July 2012import V4L into Linux emulator [93]
Old version, no longer maintained: 8.318 April 201230 April 2014graid replaces ataraid; update ZFS to version 28; DTrace ability on Linux emulated binaries; mod_cc pluggable congestion control framework for TCP/IP stack [94]
Old version, no longer maintained: 8.47 June 20131 August 2015Various kernel changes and security fixes were implemented. [95] [96]
Old version, no longer maintained: 9.012 January 201231 March 2013Userland DTrace, substitute GCC with Clang and LLVM for base system, USB 3.0 support, UFS SoftUpdates+Journal, moving ATA disk drivers to the CAM system, update ZFS to version 28, replaced sysinstall with bsdinstall. [97]
Old version, no longer maintained: 9.130 December 201231 December 2014Update of sound drivers; improved performance of IPv6 stack; new C++ stack; jail support for devfs, nullfs, and ZFS; sched_ule SMT load balancing improvements [98]
Old version, no longer maintained: 9.230 September 201331 December 2014ZFS support for LZ4 compression and TRIM; removal of FireWire drivers from GENERIC kernel [99]
Old version, no longer maintained: 9.316 July 201431 December 2016ZFS support for bookmarks [100]
Old version, no longer maintained: 10.020 January 201431 January 2015Virtualization improvements (bhyve, virtio); USB upgrades; use clang and LLVM by default; capsicum; pkgng; remove BIND; add LDNS and Unbound to base system; update ipfilter to 5.1.2; add support for Raspberry Pi, IEEE 802.11s, and FUSE; ZFS on root filesystem; replaced GNU tools with BSD-licensed versions [101]
Old version, no longer maintained: 10.114 November 201431 December 2016 UEFI; [102] UDP-Lite support for IPv4 and IPv6; new filesystem automounting utility; bhyve booting from ZFS; new console driver [103]
Old version, no longer maintained: 10.213 August 201531 December 2016Update linux compatibility layer to support Centos 6 ports; ZFS performance and reliability improvements; update DRM for multiple X servers support [104]
Old version, no longer maintained: 10.328 March 201630 April 2018improvements to UEFI boot loader and Linux compatibility; ZFS boot support and root on ZFS for UEFI; CAM Target Layer support for high availability services [105]
Old version, no longer maintained: 10.43 October 201731 October 2018Full support for eMMC storage; support for Mellanox ConnectX-4 adapters; driver and software updates [106]
Old version, no longer maintained: 11.010 October 201630 November 2017Improvements for wireless networking; support for the 64-bit ARM architecture [107]
Old version, no longer maintained: 11.126 July 201730 September 2018Support for Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor; support for Amazon Elastic File System in Network File System client; ZFS boot configuration utility [108]
Old version, no longer maintained: 11.228 June 201831 October 2019 Meltdown and Spectre fixes; driver and software updates [109]
Old version, no longer maintained: 11.39 July 201930 September 2020driver and software updates [110]
Old version, no longer maintained: 11.423 June 202030 September 2021Support for ZFS bookmark renaming; tunable ZFS intent log; upgrades for GNOME, KDE, clang, llvm, unbound, and others [111]
Old version, no longer maintained: 12.011 December 201829 February 2020Improved support for Ryzen and Epyc CPUs; Better support for modern AMD/Intel graphic cards; various kernel configuration tweaking [112]
Old version, no longer maintained: 12.14 November 201931 January 2021Added BearSSL to base system [113]
Old version, no longer maintained: 12.227 October 202031 March 2022Expanding jail functionality to allow Linux to run in a jailed environment; upgrades to wireless networking stack (improvements to 802.11n and 802.11ac support) [114]
Old version, no longer maintained: 12.37 December 202131 March 2023 [115]
Old version, no longer maintained: 12.45 December 2022 [116] 31 December 2023
Old version, no longer maintained: 13.013 April 202131 August 2022In-kernel framing and encryption of Transport Layer Security (TLS) versions 1.0 to 1.3; 64-bit ARM architecture promoted to Tier 1 support; upgrade of clang, LLVM, and related utilities to version 11.0.1; all supported architectures now use clang and LLVM toolchain by default; removal of deprecated utilities and libraries (binutils, gcc, GNU grep, CU-SeeMe); addition of driver for Intel QuickAssist (QAT) device; some drivers upgraded to support PowerPC64 architecture [117]
Old version, no longer maintained: 13.116 May 2022 [118] 31 July 2023FIDO/U2F hardware authenticators enabled in ssh; ice(4) driver for Intel E800 Ethernet controllers update to 1.34.2-k, with firmware logging and initial DCB support; iwlwifi(4) driver for Intel IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax along with a LinuxKPI 802.11 compatibility layer; EC2 images built by default to boot using UEFI
Older version, yet still maintained: 13.211 April 2023 [119] 30 June 2024bhyve hypervisor support more than 16 vCPUs in a guest; ASLR enabled for 64-bit executables by default; UFS filesystems snapshots when running with journaled soft updates; Add kernel wg(4) WireGuard driver; Add kernel netlink(4) network configuration protocol
Older version, yet still maintained: 13.35 March 2024 [120]  ?update of LLVM & clang (to 17.0.6), OpenSSH (to 9.6p1), sendmail (to 8.18.1), OpenZFS (to 2.1.14); stability fixes to WiFi drivers; NFS server can now run in a vnet jail [121]
Current stable version:14.020 November 2023 [122]  ?update OpenSSH (to 9.5p1), OpenSSL (to 3.0.12), OpenZFS (to 2.2); bhyve support for TPM & GPU passthrough; raise limit of cpu core count to 1024 on amd64 arm64 platforms; possibility to perform background filesystem checks on UFS file systems running with journaled soft updates [123]
Latest preview version of a future release: 14.118 June 2024 ?
Future release: 15.0 ? ?drop support for all 32 Bit CPU instruction set architectures except armv7 [124]
VersionRelease dateSupported untilSignificant changes
Legend:
Old version
Older version, still maintained
Latest version
Latest preview version
Future release

Timeline

FreeBSD version history

The timeline shows that the span of a single release generation of FreeBSD lasts around 5 years. Since the FreeBSD project makes effort for binary backward (and limited forward) compatibility within the same release generation, [125] this allows users 5+ years of support, with trivial-to-easy upgrading within the release generation.

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ULE is the default scheduler for the FreeBSD operating system for the i386 and AMD64 architectures. It was introduced in FreeBSD version 5, but it was disabled by default for a time in favor of the traditional BSD scheduler until it reached maturity. The original BSD scheduler does not make full use of SMP or SMT, which is important in modern computing environments. The primary goal of the ULE project is to make better use of SMP and SMT environments. ULE should improve performance in both uniprocessor and multiprocessor environments, as well as interactive response under heavy load. The user may switch between the BSD scheduler and ULE using a kernel compile-time tunable.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">OpenBSD</span> Operating system

OpenBSD is a security-focused, free and open-source, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by forking NetBSD 1.0. The OpenBSD project emphasizes portability, standardization, correctness, proactive security, and integrated cryptography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NetBSD</span> Free and open-source Unix-like operating system

NetBSD is a free and open-source Unix operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was the first open-source BSD descendant officially released after 386BSD was forked. It continues to be actively developed and is available for many platforms, including servers, desktops, handheld devices, and embedded systems.

Supervisor Mode Access Prevention (SMAP) is a feature of some CPU implementations such as the Intel Broadwell microarchitecture that allows supervisor mode programs to optionally set user-space memory mappings so that access to those mappings from supervisor mode will cause a trap. This makes it harder for malicious programs to "trick" the kernel into using instructions or data from a user-space program.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Debian version history</span> Releases of Debian GNU/Linux, a computer operating system

Debian releases do not follow a fixed schedule. Recent releases have been made around every two years by the Debian Project. The most recent version of Debian is Debian version 12, codename "Bookworm". The next up and coming release of Debian is Debian 13, codename "Trixie".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">OpenZFS</span> Open-source implementation of the ZFS file system

OpenZFS is an open-source implementation of the ZFS file system and volume manager initially developed by Sun Microsystems for the Solaris operating system and now maintained by the OpenZFS Project. It supports features like data compression, data deduplication, copy-on-write clones, snapshots, and RAID-Z. It also supports the creation of virtual devices, which allows for the creation of file systems that span multiple disks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LibreSSL</span> Open-source implementation of TLS protocols; forked from OpenSSL in 2014

LibreSSL is an open-source implementation of the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol. The implementation is named after Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), the deprecated predecessor of TLS, for which support was removed in release 2.3.0. The OpenBSD project forked LibreSSL from OpenSSL 1.0.1g in April 2014 as a response to the Heartbleed security vulnerability, with the goals of modernizing the codebase, improving security, and applying development best practices.

A virtual kernel architecture (vkernel) is an operating system virtualisation paradigm where kernel code can be compiled to run in the user space, for example, to ease debugging of various kernel-level components, in addition to general-purpose virtualisation and compartmentalisation of system resources. It is used by DragonFly BSD in its vkernel implementation since DragonFly 1.7, having been first revealed in September 2006, and first released in the stable branch with DragonFly 1.8 in January 2007. The long-term goal, in addition to easing kernel development, is to make it easier to support internet-connected computer clusters without compromising local security. Similar concepts exist in other operating systems as well; in Linux, a similar virtualisation concept is known as user-mode Linux; whereas in NetBSD since the summer of 2007, it has been the initial focus of the rump kernel infrastructure.

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