FreeBSD News Flash

FreeBSD is a rapidly developing operating system. Keeping up on the latest developments can be a chore! To keep on top of things, check this page periodically. News is also announced on the freebsd-announce mailing list and the RSS feed.

The following projects have their own news pages, which should be checked for project specific updates.

For a detailed description of past, present, and future releases, see the Release Information page.

FreeBSD security information and a list of available Security Advisories are available on the Security Information page.

September 2020

26 September: The third BETA build for the FreeBSD 12.2 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, armv6, armv7, arm64, i386, powerpc, powerpc64, and powerpcspe architectures are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.

18 September: The second BETA build for the FreeBSD 12.2 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, armv6, armv7, arm64, i386, powerpc, powerpc64, powerpcspe, and sparc64 architectures are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.

12 September: The first BETA build for the FreeBSD 12.2 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, armv6, armv7, arm64, i386, powerpc, powerpc64, powerpcspe, and sparc64 architectures are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.

August 2020

July 2020

June 2020

May 2020

April 2020

March 2020

February 2020

January 2020

November 2019

October 2019

September 2019

August 2019

July 2019

16 July: Due to circumstances beyond our control, we need to change the outgoing SMTP server address for FreeBSD.org email. We are aware that there are going to be challenges due to SMTP sender reputation systems.



Please see this announcement for additional information.

9 July: FreeBSD 11.3-RELEASE is now available. Please be sure to check the Release Notes and Release Errata before installation for any late-breaking news and/or issues with 11.3. More information about FreeBSD releases can be found on the Release Information page.

June 2019

May 2019

April 2019

March 2019

February 2019

January 2019

December 2018

November 2018

25 November: The second RC build for the FreeBSD 12.0 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, armv6, armv7, arm64, i386, powerpc, powerpc64, powerpcspe and sparc64 architectures are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.

17 November: The first RC build for the FreeBSD 12.0 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, armv6, armv7, arm64, i386, powerpc, powerpc64, powerpcspe and sparc64 architectures are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.

10 November: The fourth BETA build for the FreeBSD 12.0 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, armv6, armv7, arm64, i386, powerpc, powerpc64, powerpcspe and sparc64 architectures are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.

3 November: The third BETA build for the FreeBSD 12.0 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, armv6, armv7, arm64, i386, powerpc, powerpc64, and sparc64 architectures are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.

October 2018

September 2018

August 2018

July 2018

16 July: New committer: John Hixson (ports)

4 July: Active committers to the project have elected your tenth FreeBSD Core Team. For details, refer to the official announcement.

June 2018

May 2018

April 2018

March 2018

February 2018

14 February: The FreeBSD Project is pleased to announce its participation in Google's 2018 Summer of Code program, which funds summer students to participate in open source projects. This will be the FreeBSD Project's fourteenth year in the program, having mentored over 210 successful students through summer-long coding projects between 2005 and 2017.



Past successful projects have included improvements to Linux ABI emulation, NFSv4 ACLs, TCP regression testing, FUSE file system support, and countless other projects. Many students go on to become FreeBSD developers, as well as participating in FreeBSD developer events around the world through continuing support from the FreeBSD Foundation.



Prospective participants are invited to apply; more information is available, including proposal and deadline information, on the FreeBSD Summer Projects page.

8 February: New committer: Slava Shwartsman (src)

January 2018

25 January: New committer: Jeb Cramer (src)

4 January: About the Meltdown and Spectre attacks: FreeBSD was made aware of the problems in late December 2017. We're working with CPU vendors and the published papers on these attacks to mitigate them on FreeBSD. Due to the fundamental nature of the attacks, no estimate is yet available for the publication date of patches.

December 2017

November 2017

October 2017

September 2017

August 2017

July 2017

June 2017

May 2017

April 2017

March 2017

February 2017

27 February: The FreeBSD Project is pleased to announce its participation in Google's 2017 Summer of Code program, which funds summer students to participate in open source projects. This will be the FreeBSD Project's thirteenth year in the program, having mentored over 200 successful students through summer-long coding projects between 2005 and 2016.



Past successful projects have included improvements to Linux ABI emulation, NFSv4 ACLs, TCP regression testing, FUSE file system support, and countless other projects. Many students go on to become FreeBSD developers, as well as participating in FreeBSD developer events around the world through continuing support from the FreeBSD Foundation.



Prospective participants are invited to apply; more information is available, including proposal and deadline information, on the FreeBSD Summer Projects page.

13 February: The October to December 2016 Status Report is now available.

10 February: New committer: Mahdi Mokhtari (ports)

8 February: New committer: Tobias Kortkamp (ports)

January 2017

December 2016

November 2016

October 2016

September 2016

August 2016

25 August: The second RC build for the FreeBSD 11.0 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, armv6, i386, aarch64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.

13 August: The first RC build for the FreeBSD 11.0 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, armv6, i386, aarch64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.

10 August: New committer: Toomas Soome (src)

10 August: The FreeBSD Core Team has released a statement about the recent freebsd-update and related vulnerabilities.

6 August: The fourth BETA build for the FreeBSD 11.0 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, armv6, i386, aarch64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.

July 2016

June 2016

May 2016

April 2016

March 2016

20 March: The third Release Candidate build for the FreeBSD 10.3 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, armv6, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.

13 March: The second Release Candidate build for the FreeBSD 10.3 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, armv6, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.

5 March: The first Release Candidate build for the FreeBSD 10.3 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, armv6, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.

1 March: New committer: Christoph Moench-Tegeder (ports)

1 March: The FreeBSD Project is pleased to announce its participation in Google's 2016 Summer of Code program, which funds summer students to participate in open source projects. This will be the FreeBSD Project's twelfth year in the program, having mentored over 180 successful students through summer-long coding projects between 2005 and 2015.



Past successful projects have included improvements to Linux ABI emulation, NFSv4 ACLs, TCP regression testing, FUSE file system support, and countless other projects. Many students go on to become FreeBSD developers, as well as participating in FreeBSD developer events around the world through continuing support from the FreeBSD Foundation.



Prospective participants are invited to apply; more information is available, including proposal and deadline information, on the FreeBSD Summer Projects page.

February 2016

January 2016

18 January: New committer: Wojciech Macek (src)

6 January: The FreeBSD Foundation has released its initial statement about harassment in the FreeBSD community.

3 January: The FreeBSD Core team has released an Initial Statement about harassment in the FreeBSD Community

December 2015

November 2015

October 2015

September 2015

August 2015

July 2015

June 2015

26 June: A new article, FreeBSD Support for Leap Seconds, gives a quick overview of leap second handling. The next leap second will occur at 2015-Jun-30 23:59:60 UTC.

May 2015

April 2015

March 2015

February 2015

January 2015

December 2014

November 2014

14 November: FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE is now available. Please be sure to check the Release Notes and Release Errata before installation for any late-breaking news and/or issues with 10.1. More information about FreeBSD releases can be found on the Release Information page.

02 November: The fourth RC build for the FreeBSD 10.1 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, armv6, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.

02 November: FreeBSD 1.0, the first official production-ready release of FreeBSD was announced 21 years ago today, on November 2nd, 1993. See the original announcement here.

October 2014

September 2014

August 2014

21 August: It all started with this commit from Jordan Hubbard on August 21, 1994:



"Commit my new ports make macros. Still not 100% complete yet by any means but fairly usable at this stage."



A video was prepared to celebrate the event!

14 August: New committer: Alonso Schaich (ports)

10 August: New committer: Dan Langille (ports)

July 2014

June 2014

May 2014

April 2014

March 2014

11 March: The FreeBSD Project is pleased to announce its participation in Google's 2014 Summer of Code program, which funds summer students to participate in open source projects. This will be the FreeBSD Project's tenth year in the program, having mentored over 160 successful students through summer-long coding projects between 2005 and 2013.



Past successful projects have included improvements to Linux ABI emulation, NFSv4 ACLs, TCP regression testing, FUSE file system support, and countless other projects. Many students go on to become FreeBSD developers, as well as participating in FreeBSD developer events around the world through continuing support from the FreeBSD Foundation.



Prospective participants are invited to apply; more information is available, including proposal and deadline information, on the FreeBSD Summer Projects page.

February 2014

10 February: We are pleased to announce the availability of the FreeBSD Journal! It is the new online Journal, that the FreeBSD Foundation is publishing, that is all about FreeBSD. Click here to find out how to get the first issue that is focused on FreeBSD 10.

January 2014

December 2013

November 2013

October 2013

September 2013

August 2013

26 August: The third RC build for the FreeBSD-9.2 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.

16 August: The second RC build for the FreeBSD-9.2 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.

6 August: We are pleased to announce the publication of our 2013 Semi-Annual Newsletter! This is a chance for you to read about what we are doing to help make FreeBSD the best operating system available.



Read about funded development projects to improve FreeBSD, sponsored conferences, developer and vendor summits to create face-to-face opportunities, research, how we are doing on our fundraising efforts, and so much more!



The 2013 semi-annual newsletter is available online here.

5 August: The first RC build for the FreeBSD-9.2 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.

July 2013

June 2013

May 2013

27 May: Enhanced commit privileges: Chris Rees (doc, ports)

14 May: Six months have passed since the November security incident which brought the Project's binary package building capacity offline; we are pleased to announce that all services are now restored.



Read the official announcement here.

12 May: The January to March 2013 Status Report is now available with 31 entries.

9 May: The FreeBSD Foundation is pleased to announce Ed Maste's new role as the Foundation's part-time Director of Project Development. Ed has served on the Foundation's board for two years, and has stepped down in order to accept this new position.



Read more...

8 May: The third RC build for the FreeBSD-8.4 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386 and pc98 architectures are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.

April 2013

March 2013

February 2013

January 2013

December 2012

November 2012

October 2012

September 2012

August 2012

23 August: The first RC build for the FreeBSD-9.1 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386 and powerpc64 architectures are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.

21 August: New committer: Andrey Zonov (src)

1 August: New committer: Bryan Drewery (ports)

July 2012

24 July: The FreeBSD Core Team is glad to announce that Gábor Páli has assumed the role of Core Team Secretary.

16 July: The first BETA build for the FreeBSD-9.1 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the architectures amd64, i386, powerpc64, and sparc64 are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.

11 July: The FreeBSD Project is pleased to announce the completion of the 2012 Core Team election. The FreeBSD Core Team acts as the project's "board of directors" and is responsible for approving new src committers, resolving disputes between developers, appointing sub-committees for specific purposes (security officer, release engineering, port managers, webmaster, etc ...), and making any other administrative or policy decisions as needed. The Core Team has been elected by FreeBSD developers every two years since 2000.



More information about the election (together with a list of the new members of the Core Team) can be found in the official announcement.

3 July: New committer: Niclas Zeising (doc/www, ports)

June 2012

May 2012

April 2012

March 2012

February 2012

January 2012

December 2011

16 December: New committer: Jason Helfman (ports)

9 December: The third (and probably last) RC build for the FreeBSD-9.0 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the architectures amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64, and sparc64 are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites. One of the many new features in 9.0 we would like to be tested is the new installer, so we encourage our users to do fresh installation on test systems. Alternatively, users upgrading existing systems may now do so using the freebsd-update(8) utility.

8 December: New committer: Pedro Giffuni (src)

2 December: New member for the Ports Management team: Beat Gätzi

November 2011

October 2011

23 October: The first RC build for the FreeBSD-9.0 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the architectures amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64, and sparc64 are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites. One of the many new features in 9.0 we would like to be tested is the new installer, so we encourage our users to do fresh installation on test systems. Alternatively, users upgrading existing systems may now do so using the freebsd-update(8) utility.

6 October: New committer: Alexander V. Chernikov (src)

September 2011

August 2011

22 August: New committer: Raphael Kubo da Costa (ports)

17 August: New committer: Eitan Adler (ports)

9 August: The FreeBSD Foundation has published their first Semi-Annual 2011 newsletter which summarizes what they have done to help the FreeBSD Project and community.

1 August: The first test build for the FreeBSD-9.0 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the architectures amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64, and sparc64 are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites. One of the many new features in 9.0 we would like to be tested is the new installer, so we encourage our users to do fresh installation on test systems.

July 2011

June 2011

May 2011

April 2011

27 April: The January-March, 2011 Status Report is now available with 34 entries.

March 2011

29 March: New committer: Artem Belevich (src)

27 March: The FreeBSD Project is pleased to announce its participation In Google's 2011 Summer of Code program, which funds summer students to participate in open source projects. This will be the FreeBSD Project's seventh year in the program, having mentored over 100 successful students through summer-long coding projects between 2005 and 2010.



Past successful projects have included improvements to Linux ABI emulation, NFSv4 ACLs, TCP regression testing, FUSE file system support, and countless other projects. Many students go on to become FreeBSD developers, as well as participating in FreeBSD developer events around the world through continuing support from the FreeBSD Foundation.



Prospective participants are invited to apply; more information is available, including proposal and deadline information, on the FreeBSD Summer Projects page.

18 March: New committer: Sofian Brabez (ports)

13 March: New committer: Pawel Pekala (ports)

10 March: The FreeBSD Ports Management Team is pleased to announce Thomas Abthorpe as a full voting member.

5 March: New committer: Steven G. Kargl (src)

February 2011

January 2011

25 January: The October-December, 2010 Status Report is now available with 37 entries.

23 January: The second Release Candidate build for the FreeBSD-7.4 release cycle is now available. ISO images for Tier-1 architectures can be downloaded from most of the FreeBSD mirror sites. Please see the official announcement for further details about this release.

16 January: The second Release Candidate build for the FreeBSD-8.2 release cycle is now available. ISO images for Tier-1 architectures can be downloaded from most of the FreeBSD mirror sites. Please see the official announcement for further details about this release.

December 2010

27 December: The first Release Candidate builds for the FreeBSD-7.4/8.2 release cycles are now available. ISO images for Tier-1 architectures can be downloaded from most of the FreeBSD mirror sites. Please see the official announcement for further details about these releases.

16 December: The FreeBSD Foundation has published their End-of-Year newsletter which summarizes what they have done in 2010 to help the FreeBSD Project and community.

11 December: The first of the test builds for the FreeBSD-7.4/8.2 release cycles is now available. ISO images for Tier-1 architectures are now available on most of the FreeBSD mirror sites.

7 December: New committer: Florian Smeets (ports)

November 2010

October 2010

September 2010

August 2010

July 2010

June 2010

May 2010

29 May: The first of the test builds for the FreeBSD-8.1 release cycle is now available. ISO images for Tier-1 architectures are now available on most of the FreeBSD mirror sites.

24 May: The FreeBSD Project again received many high quality applications from students participating in Google's Summer of Code program. This year 18 student proposals to work with the FreeBSD Project were accepted as part of this program. For those with projects that were not accepted this year, we'd like to note that the FreeBSD Project is always willing to help mentor students so they can learn more about operating system development through our normal community mailing lists and development forums.



Please read the official announcement for more information. The complete list of student projects selected for funding can be found in the FreeBSD Summer of Code wiki. Coding started on May 24, so please join us in welcoming the 18 new students to our community.

19 May: New committer: Jayachandran C. (src)

April 2010

March 2010

February 2010

January 2010

Old announcements: 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, 1993