Wikipedia

FreeBSD

(Redirected from TrustedBSD)

FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), a version of Unix developed at the University of California, Berkeley. The project began in 1993 as an outgrowth of 386BSD and released FreeBSD 1.0 later that year.[1] It is developed as a complete operating system, with the kernel, device drivers, userland utilities, build system and documentation maintained in a single source tree.[1][2]

FreeBSD
The Power to Serve
FreeBSD boot loader in version 13.0
DeveloperThe FreeBSD Project
Written inC, shell, assembly language
OS familyUnix-like (BSD)
Working stateCurrent
Source modelOpen source
Initial releaseDecember 1993; 32 years ago (1993-12)
Latest release15.0 / December 2, 2025; 5 months ago (2025-12-02)
Repository
Marketing target
  • Servers
  • workstations
  • embedded systems
  • network appliances
  • storage systems
Package manager
Supported platforms
  • Tier 1: amd64, aarch64
  • Tier 2: armv7, powerpc64, powerpc64le, riscv64
Kernel typeMonolithic with dynamically loadable modules
UserlandBSD
Default
user interface		Unix shell; optional X Window System and Wayland graphical environments
LicenseMostly BSD-2-Clause; components under other open-source licenses
Official websitewww.freebsd.org

FreeBSD is best known for server, networking, storage and embedded-system use. Its project documentation describes TCP/IP networking, OpenZFS, security features, documentation, a unified build system, and the ability to install third-party software through binary packages or the FreeBSD Ports collection.[1][3] FreeBSD is also used as the basis for products and services including the Netflix Open Connect content-delivery network and the pfSense firewall and router distribution.[4][5]

The FreeBSD Project is governed by elected committers and a Core Team, while the FreeBSD Foundation supports development, advocacy, infrastructure and legal matters. Code from FreeBSD has been incorporated into other operating systems, including Darwin (the basis for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS and tvOS), TrueNAS, and the system software for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and PlayStation Vita consoles.[6][7][8][9]

Timeline chart of FreeBSD releases from 1.0 in 1993 through the current production branches
Timeline of FreeBSD releases, by major branch

[10][1] The current major production branch is FreeBSD 15, first released as 15.0 on 2 December 2025; FreeBSD 14 remains a supported production branch, with 14.4 released on 10 March 2026.[11][12] FreeBSD source code is generally distributed under the permissive two-clause BSD license, which permits both open-source reuse and inclusion in proprietary products; individual components may use other open-source licenses.[13][14]

History

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Berkeley Unix and 386BSD background

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FreeBSD is part of the BSD family of operating systems that originated at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1974, Professor Bob Fabry of Berkeley acquired a Unix source license from AT&T, and the Computer Systems Research Group (funded by DARPA) modified Research Unix to add TCP/IP, virtual memory and the Berkeley Fast File System.[15][16] Because early BSD releases contained AT&T Unix code, redistribution required an AT&T license.[16]

In June 1989, "Networking Release 1" (Net-1) was issued as the first public version of BSD under the BSD license. Keith Bostic then led an effort to replace remaining AT&T code with freely redistributable replacements; after about 18 months only six kernel files still contained AT&T code, and the rest of the system was released as "Networking Release 2" (Net-2) in 1991.[16]

The immediate ancestor of FreeBSD was 386BSD, a freely redistributable Unix-like system for Intel 80386-based personal computers written by William and Lynne Jolitz using Net-2 plus replacements for the remaining AT&T files.[16] By the early 1990s, 386BSD development had slowed, and users maintained an "Unofficial 386BSD Patchkit" to fix problems and add updates.[1]

Creation

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The FreeBSD Project began in early 1993 through the work of Nate Williams, Rod Grimes and Jordan Hubbard, the last three coordinators of the 386BSD patchkit.[1] The name "FreeBSD" was coined by David Greenman on 19 June 1993; other suggestions included "BSDFree86" and "Free86BSD".[17][1] The first CD-ROM and network-wide FreeBSD distribution was FreeBSD 1.0, released in December 1993. It was based on Berkeley's 4.3BSD-Lite "Net/2" tape, with additional components from 386BSD and the Free Software Foundation.[1]

Walnut Creek CDROM played a substantial early role by distributing FreeBSD on CD-ROM and by providing hardware, network access and employment for project members, including Hubbard and Greenman. The company also sponsored conferences and published FreeBSD books such as Greg Lehey's The Complete FreeBSD; by 1997 FreeBSD was its top-selling product. The company later renamed itself The FreeBSD Mall and ultimately iXsystems.[18][19][20]

Lawsuit

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In January 1992, Berkeley Software Design Inc. (BSDi) began releasing BSD/386 (later BSD/OS), a commercial operating system also derived from 4.3BSD Net/2. AT&T sued BSDi alleging distribution of AT&T source code in violation of license agreements; the case was settled out of court, and the only public condition was that BSDi migrate to the newer 4.4BSD-Lite2 sources. Although FreeBSD was not a party to the litigation, the project was encouraged to move to 4.4BSD-Lite2 as well.[16][21] FreeBSD 2.0, released in November 1994, was the first FreeBSD without any code from AT&T.[21][22]

Growth and current situation

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During the late 1990s and early 2000s, FreeBSD became prominent among Internet service providers, web companies and network-appliance vendors. Wired described FreeBSD as one of the defining open-source projects of the period, alongside Linux and the Apache HTTP Server, and noted its use in servers and embedded network devices.[23] FreeBSD 4.x became known for production stability and network performance, while FreeBSD 5.x introduced larger architectural changes, including more extensive symmetric multiprocessing work and new kernel subsystems.[22] Later versions added or expanded features including jails, OpenZFS, DTrace, Capsicum, bhyve virtualization, and modern package management.[1][24][3]

FreeBSD is used by companies including IBM, Nokia, Juniper Networks and NetApp to build products.[25] Components of macOS are derived from FreeBSD,[6] and the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch system software include code from FreeBSD.[7][8] Netflix, WhatsApp and FlightAware also run FreeBSD on large-scale production infrastructure.[4][26]

FreeBSD 15.0, released on 2 December 2025, was the first release of the stable/15 branch. Its announcement identified pkg-managed base-system installation, rootless release-image creation, native inotify support, OpenZFS 2.4.0-rc4, OpenSSL 3.5.4 and OpenSSH 10.0p2 as major highlights.[12] The release was made available for amd64, aarch64, armv7, powerpc64, powerpc64le and riscv64 architectures.[12]

Features

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Complete operating-system model

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FreeBSD is developed as a complete operating system rather than only a kernel. The source tree contains the kernel, device drivers, system libraries, command-line utilities, documentation, build infrastructure and release tools.[1][2] This distinguishes it from systems commonly described as Linux distributions, which combine the Linux kernel with userland software from many separately governed projects.

The project emphasizes a consistent base system, a central source repository and a unified build process. The Handbook states that this single-repository structure helps developers and vendors integrate FreeBSD into third-party or derived products.[1]

Use cases

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FreeBSD contains server-related software in the base system and the ports collection, allowing it to be configured as a mail server, web server, firewall, FTP server, DNS server or router, among other roles.[1]

FreeBSD can also be installed on a desktop or laptop. The X Window System is not installed by default, but is available in the FreeBSD ports collection; Wayland is also available.[1] Desktop environments including GNOME, KDE, Xfce and Lumina, and window managers such as Openbox, Fluxbox and dwm, are packaged in the ports tree. Major web browsers including Firefox and Chromium are available through the ports collection. From FreeBSD 12 onward, a modern graphics stack is available via drm-kmod.[27]

Networking

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Networking has been one of FreeBSD's strongest areas. FreeBSD's TCP/IP stack derives from the 4.2BSD implementation of TCP/IP, which contributed to the wide adoption of those protocols.[28] The system supports IPv6, SCTP, IPsec and Wi-Fi;[29][30] the IPv6 and IPSec stacks were imported from the KAME project.[31] Before version 11.0, FreeBSD supported IPX and AppleTalk, which were later removed as obsolescent.[32]

FreeBSD ships three firewall packages: IPFW, pf (imported from OpenBSD) and IPFilter.[1] As of FreeBSD 5.4, support for the Common Address Redundancy Protocol (CARP) was imported from OpenBSD, allowing several nodes to share a set of IP addresses for failover.[33] FreeBSD is used as the basis for network-appliance systems including pfSense, whose documentation states that pfSense is based on FreeBSD and uses the FreeBSD hardware compatibility list and drivers.[5]

Storage and filesystems

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FreeBSD supports several storage features. Soft updates protect the consistency of the UFS filesystem in the event of a crash,[34] and UFS snapshots provide a point-in-time image used for backup. GEOM is a modular framework that provides RAID (levels 0, 1 and 3), full disk encryption, journaling, concatenation, caching and access to network-backed storage, and allows complex storage stacks to be built by chaining these mechanisms.

FreeBSD provides two disk-level encryption frameworks: GBDE, written by Poul-Henning Kamp, and Geli, written by Pawel Jakub Dawidek and first available in FreeBSD 6.0.[35][36]

From version 7.0 onward, FreeBSD has supported the ZFS filesystem.[37] After Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems made ZFS proprietary, the FreeBSD project moved its implementation onto the OpenZFS codebase, which is developed jointly with other consumers.[37] The Handbook describes FreeBSD as having fully integrated OpenZFS support, including root-on-ZFS, boot environments, fault management, administrative delegation, jail support and installer support.[1]

Security

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FreeBSD includes discretionary access controls, access-control lists, file flags, securelevels, Mandatory Access Control framework modules, Capsicum capabilities and audit support.[1] OpenSSH was imported from OpenBSD as the default remote-access tool.

The project maintains a formal security-advisory process. Security issues in the base operating system are reported to the FreeBSD Security Team or Security Officer; issues in third-party ports are handled by the Ports Security Team.[38] Supported releases receive advisories on stable and release/security branches, with end-of-life dates published on the FreeBSD Security Information page.[39]

In November 2012, the FreeBSD Security Team disclosed that two project servers used to build third-party packages had been accessed by intruders using stolen SSH keys from a developer's workstation. The team stated that no unauthorized changes to binary packages were detected, but cautioned that it could not guarantee the integrity of packages downloaded between 19 September and 11 November.[40][41]

TrustedBSD

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Several FreeBSD security features were developed under the TrustedBSD project, founded by Robert Watson to implement concepts from the Common Criteria and the Orange Book.[42][43] TrustedBSD has contributed access-control lists, security event auditing, extended filesystem attributes, mandatory access controls through the MAC Framework, and fine-grained capabilities (Capsicum) to FreeBSD.[44][45][43] Sponsors and collaborators have included DARPA, the NSA, McAfee Research, Apple, Google and the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory.[46]

TrustedBSD work also produced OpenBSM, an open-source implementation of Sun's Basic Security Module API and audit-log format, first shipped in FreeBSD 6.2, and contributed to GEOM and OpenPAM.[43] OpenPAM was later adopted by NetBSD,[47] and the TrustedBSD MAC Framework was adopted by Apple for macOS.

Portability and platforms

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FreeBSD has been ported to several instruction set architectures, which the project organizes into tiers. Tier 1 architectures are fully supported and covered by the Security Officer; Tier 2 architectures are under active development but not fully supported; Tier 3 architectures are experimental or no longer actively developed.[48]

FreeBSD 15.x supported platforms
ArchitectureTarget nameSupport tierNotes
x86-64amd64Tier 1
64-bit ARMv8aarch64Tier 1
32-bit ARMv7armv7Tier 2Embedded focus
64-bit PowerPC big-endianpowerpc64Tier 2
64-bit PowerPC little-endianpowerpc64leTier 2
64-bit RISC-Vriscv64Tier 2

DEC Alpha, 32-bit ARMv4/v5/v6, IA-32, IA-64, 32-bit and 64-bit MIPS, 32-bit PowerPC and 64-bit SPARC were supported in earlier releases but are not supported in FreeBSD 15.x.[49][50] Interest in the RISC-V target has been growing during the FreeBSD 13 and 14 cycles.[51]

Hardware compatibility

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Devices known to be supported are listed in the FreeBSD release Hardware Notes.[52] Other configurations may work but are not formally tested. A community-maintained project also collects automatic reports of tested hardware configurations.[53] FreeBSD runs on a range of 32-bit ARM single-board computers, including the BeagleBone Black and Raspberry Pi.[54][55]

Third-party software

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FreeBSD separates the base system from third-party applications. Third-party software can be installed as prebuilt binary packages using `pkg` or built from source through the FreeBSD Ports Collection.[3] The Handbook describes the ports collection as a set of files that automate downloading, patching, configuring, compiling and installing applications from source, with package counterparts where licensing permits.[3][56][57]

The ports tree contains tens of thousands of applications. The Handbook states that over 36,000 third-party applications have been ported to FreeBSD and that, where feasible, they are also provided as precompiled packages.[3] FreeBSD users can audit installed packages against known vulnerabilities using `pkg audit -F`, which checks the FreeBSD VuXML database.[3]

FreeBSD 10.0 introduced the modern `pkg` package manager (also called pkgng) as a replacement for the older package tools.[58] FreeBSD 15.0 introduced pkg-managed installation of the base system itself, described in the 15.0 announcement as a technology preview expected to become the standard method of base-system management in future releases.[12]

Jails

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FreeBSD jails, first introduced in FreeBSD 4.0, are an OS-level virtualization mechanism that extends the chroot concept by isolating filesystems, users, processes and networking. Each jail has its own hostname and IP configuration; multiple jails share the host kernel, so only software supported by the FreeBSD kernel runs inside a jail.[24][59][60] Jails are used for service isolation, package building, development environments, multi-tenant hosting and lightweight container-like deployments. VNET jails provide separate virtual network stacks, while simpler jails share the host's networking configuration.

Virtualization

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bhyve, introduced in FreeBSD 10.0, is a type-2 hypervisor that runs FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Linux and Microsoft Windows guests. Written by Neel Natu and Peter Grehan and first announced at BSDCan 2011, bhyve is comparable to KVM on Linux, whereas jails are closer to LXC containers or Solaris Zones.[61][62][63]

FreeBSD has supported running as a Xen DomU guest since version 8.0, and as a Dom0 privileged domain since version 11.0.[64] VirtualBox (without the closed-source Extension Pack) and QEMU are also available through ports.[65]

OS compatibility layers

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FreeBSD includes a Linux binary compatibility layer that implements the Linux system-call interface inside the FreeBSD kernel, allowing many Linux executables and shared libraries to run alongside native FreeBSD binaries.[66][1] Reported performance under the compatibility layer has been close to native, and in some cases higher than on Linux itself.[67][68] As of FreeBSD 14.0, the layer implements system calls up to Linux 4.4.0;[69] from FreeBSD 10.3, 64-bit Linux binaries are supported.[70]

Compatibility layers for BSD/OS and SVR4 are also available, though most users compile such programs natively.[66] FreeBSD has implemented Microsoft Windows NDIS kernel interfaces to allow some Windows-only network drivers to be used on FreeBSD.[71] The Wine compatibility layer is also available through ports for running Windows applications on FreeBSD.

Kernel

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FreeBSD has a monolithic kernel with dynamically loadable modules. The kernel provides process scheduling, virtual memory, networking, storage, filesystems, security frameworks and device-driver support. Different parts of the kernel, including most device drivers, are designed as modules that can be loaded and unloaded at runtime.[1][2]

ULE has been the default scheduler since FreeBSD 7.1 and supports SMP and SMT.[72] The kernel also provides a scalable event-notification interface, kqueue, which has been ported to OpenBSD and NetBSD.[73] Kernel threading was introduced in FreeBSD 5.0 with an M:N threading model, but from version 7.0 onward FreeBSD adopted a 1:1 threading model (libthr) for better performance under typical workloads.

Documentation and support

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FreeBSD's documentation is maintained by the FreeBSD Documentation Project and includes the Handbook, manual pages, mailing-list archives, FAQs and articles. All official documentation is released under the FreeBSD Documentation License, described by the GNU Project as "a lax, permissive non-copyleft free documentation license that is compatible with the GNU FDL".[74] The documentation has been translated into several languages and has been described as high quality.[75]

The project maintains numerous mailing lists; the FreeBSD-questions list is used for general questions and FreeBSD-hackers for technical discussion.[76] Since 2004, the New York City BSD Users Group has operated a database of dmesg output collected from FreeBSD-running laptops, workstations, single-board computers, embedded systems and virtual machines.[77]

Installers

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From FreeBSD 2.0 through 8.4, the main installer was sysinstall, a text-based tool written in C by Jordan Hubbard that also installed ports and packages.[78] Sysinstall was deprecated in favor of bsdinstall, a lighter installer introduced in FreeBSD 9.0 and written in the Bourne shell.[60][79]

Shell

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Before FreeBSD 14.0, the default login shell was tcsh for root and the Almquist shell (sh) for regular users. Starting with 14.0, the default login shell for all users is sh; the default scripting shell remains sh.[80] Alternative shells, including bash, zsh and fish, are available through the ports collection.

Development

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The FreeBSD Project is developed by a distributed community of contributors and committers using Internet-based collaboration; many developers have never met in person. An annual conference, USENIX BSDCon, addresses BSD-derived systems generally; EuroBSDCon, AsiaBSDCon and BSDCan are also held annually in Europe, Japan and Canada respectively.[81][82][83]

Governance structure

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Around 500 committers hold commit access to FreeBSD repositories and work on the base system, the ports tree, documentation or infrastructure. The Core Team, elected every two years from active committers, is the highest body of project governance and sets overall direction, project rules and the granting of commit access. Specialised teams handle ports management, documentation, security, release engineering, cluster administration and vendor relations.[10][1]

Contributors who do not hold commit access submit patches through the project's review and bug-tracking systems. Committers review submissions and decide what to accept; contributors who consistently submit high-quality patches are often invited to become committers.

Branches

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FreeBSD developers maintain several parallel branches. The -CURRENT branch carries active development and is the basis for new features. A -STABLE branch is created for each major version and is intended to provide a more conservative platform from which -RELEASE builds are produced approximately every four to six months. Features developed on -CURRENT are merged into the relevant -STABLE branch ("MFC", merge from current) once they are considered mature.[2] Each release also has a release/security branch that receives only security and errata fixes for the duration of its support window.[39]

From FreeBSD 15 onward, each stable branch is supported for four years from its dot-zero release; stable/15 is supported until 31 December 2029.[39]

Foundation

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The FreeBSD Foundation is a United States 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that supports the project. The Handbook states that the Foundation funds software-development projects, supports infrastructure and testing, advocates for FreeBSD, provides educational material, and represents the project in contracts and legal arrangements when a recognized legal entity is needed.[1][84]

In November 2014, the FreeBSD Foundation received a US$1 million donation from Jan Koum, co-founder and CEO of WhatsApp, the largest single donation in the Foundation's history at that time; Koum donated a further US$500,000 in December 2016. WhatsApp itself runs on FreeBSD servers.[84]

Licensing

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FreeBSD is generally distributed under permissive BSD-style licenses. The FreeBSD licensing policy states that the project's compilation of software is licensed under the BSD-2-Clause license, while individual files may have their own licenses. Files without an explicit license are licensed under BSD-2-Clause.[13][14] The two-clause BSD license is recognized as a free-software license by the Free Software Foundation and as an open-source license by the Open Source Initiative.[85][86]

The project discourages new code using the older BSD advertising clause and standardizes new contributions around BSD-2-Clause where possible.[13] Some components use other open-source licenses, including the CDDL (covering DTrace and the OpenZFS implementation), GPL and LGPL (covering some imported tooling) and ISC. The licensing policy identifies CDDL-licensed components such as DTrace and ZFS and notes that import of non-BSD or non-BSD-like software requires Core Team approval.[13][87]

GPL and CDDL components are kept clearly separated from permissively licensed code so that vendors of embedded devices and appliances can produce builds using only permissive licenses. The ClangBSD effort to replace GCC with the BSD-licensed LLVM/Clang compiler became self-hosting on 16 April 2010 and has since been merged into the base system.[88]

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For many years the system was associated with the BSD Daemon, commonly called Beastie, a mascot also used by other BSD-related projects. Beastie first appeared in 1976 on Unix T-shirts drawn by Phil Foglio for Mike O'Brien.[89][90] More widely circulated versions were drawn from 1984 by animation director John Lasseter,[90] and FreeBSD-specific versions were later drawn by Tatsumi Hosokawa.[91]

Because the Lasseter daemon was not line art and reproduced poorly at small sizes or in monochrome, FreeBSD held a competition for a new logo. The current FreeBSD logo, designed by Anton K. Gural, was released on 8 October 2005; Robert Watson announced at the time that the project was "seeking a new logo, but not a new mascot", and that Beastie would continue as the project mascot.[92][93][94] The slogan "The Power to Serve" is a trademark of the FreeBSD Foundation.[95]

Derivatives

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Several distributions and products are based on FreeBSD, generally with minor modifications and pre-installed software for specific use cases, in the manner of Linux distributions built around a shared kernel and toolchain.

FreeBSD-based distributions

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Active FreeBSD-based distributions
NameFocusNotes
GhostBSDPersonal computersMATE-based desktop; offers other desktop environments
MidnightBSDPersonal computersDesktop-oriented fork that originated as an effort to adapt FreeBSD to end-user desktops
OPNsenseNetwork appliancesFirewall and routing distribution
pfSenseNetwork appliancesFirewall and router distribution from Netgate; pfSense documentation states that each release tracks a specific FreeBSD version[96]
TrueNASStorageNetwork-attached storage and storage-area-network platform, formerly FreeNAS
XigmaNASStorageNetwork-attached storage distribution
HardenedBSDSecuritySecurity-hardened fork emphasising exploit mitigations
Notable abandoned or inactive distributions
NameFocusNotes
DesktopBSDPersonal computersDesktop-oriented release based on KDE
FreeSBIEPersonal computersLive CD distribution
helloSystemPersonal computersAimed at users migrating from macOS
m0n0wallNetwork appliancesFirewall distribution; the ancestor of pfSense and OPNsense
NomadBSDPersonal computersLive USB distribution
PicoBSDEmbeddedSingle-floppy embedded distribution
TrueOSPersonal computersDesktop-oriented project, formerly PC-BSD

Other FreeBSD-derived products include Juniper's JUNOS router operating system, Isilon's OneFS storage operating system, NetApp's Data ONTAP 8, and Netflix's Open Connect appliances.[4][97] The PlayStation 4 system software ("Orbis OS") is derived from FreeBSD 9,[8][98][99] and the PlayStation 5 system software is also based on FreeBSD.[9]

Independent operating systems

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DragonFly BSD is an independent operating system forked from FreeBSD 4.8 by Matthew Dillon, aiming for a different multiprocessor synchronisation strategy and some microkernel-influenced features; it does not aim to remain compatible with FreeBSD.[100] Darwin, the core of Apple's macOS, includes a virtual file system and network stack derived from FreeBSD's, along with FreeBSD-derived userspace components.[6] Chimera Linux is a Linux distribution that pairs the Linux kernel with FreeBSD userland.

Version history

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Major FreeBSD releases
VersionInitial releaseEnd of supportSelected changes
1.xNovember 1993First official release; introduced the Ports Collection
2.x22 November 1994Code base moved to 4.4BSD-Lite; new installer; loadable kernel modules; Linuxulator (ELF)
3.x16 October 1998Initial SMP; CAM SCSI; initial USB; PAM; Netgraph
4.x14 March 200031 January 2007IPv6 and IPsec (KAME); OpenSSH in base; jails introduced; kqueue
5.x14 January 200331 May 2008GEOM; experimental amd64; MAC framework from TrustedBSD; pf imported from OpenBSD; experimental ULE scheduler
6.x1 November 200530 November 2010New Wi-Fi stack; Geli; OpenBSM audit; freebsd-update
7.x27 February 200828 February 2013ZFS; DTrace; GPT; SCTP reference implementation; ULE became default scheduler
8.x26 November 20091 August 2015SATA NCQ; Xen guest; native NFSv4 ACLs; USB 3.0
9.x12 January 201231 December 2016Capsicum capability-based security; UFS journaled soft updates; bsdinstall; pkgng
10.x20 January 201431 October 2018bhyve hypervisor; Clang as default compiler; new iSCSI stack; UEFI boot for amd64; root-on-ZFS; 64-bit Linux binaries[101]
11.x10 October 201630 September 202164-bit ARM support; updated netmap; parallel ZFS mounts; trim(8) utility[102][103]
12.x11 December 201831 December 2023ext4 read/write; updated graphics drivers in ports; UFS check hashes[104][105]
13.x13 April 202130 April 2026LLVM toolchain throughout base; in-kernel TLS; arm64 promoted to Tier 1
14.x20 November 202330 November 2028sh default login shell; OpenZFS 2.2; CUBIC default congestion control; bhyve TPM and GPU passthrough; up to 1,024 cores on amd64 and arm64
15.x2 December 202531 December 2029pkg-managed base system (preview); rootless release images; native inotify; OpenZFS 2.4.0-rc4; OpenSSL 3.5.4; dropped all 32-bit ISAs except armv7

See also

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References

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  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 "Chapter 1. Introduction". FreeBSD Handbook. The FreeBSD Project. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Chisnall, David (20 January 2006). "BSD: The Other Free UNIX Family". InformIT. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Chapter 4. Installing Applications: Packages and Ports". FreeBSD Handbook. The FreeBSD Project. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  4. 1 2 3 "Netflix Case Study: Maintaining the World's Fastest Content Delivery Network at Netflix on FreeBSD". FreeBSD Foundation. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  5. 1 2 "Official pfSense Hardware, Appliances, and Security Gateways". Electric Sheep Fencing. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  6. 1 2 3 "Kernel Programming Guide: BSD Overview". Apple Inc. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  7. 1 2 "Open Source Software used in PlayStation 3". Sony Interactive Entertainment. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  8. 1 2 3 Larabel, Michael (23 June 2013). "Sony's PlayStation 4 Is Running Modified FreeBSD 9". Phoronix. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  9. 1 2 "FreeBSD Kernel". Sony Interactive Entertainment. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  10. 1 2 "FreeBSD Project Administration and Management". The FreeBSD Project. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  11. ↑ "Release Information". The FreeBSD Project. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  12. 1 2 3 4 "FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE Announcement". The FreeBSD Project. 2 December 2025. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  13. 1 2 3 4 "FreeBSD Licensing Policy". The FreeBSD Project. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  14. 1 2 "The FreeBSD Copyright". The FreeBSD Project. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  15. ↑ Leonard, Andrew (16 May 2000). "BSD Unix: Power to the people, from the code". Salon.com. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  16. 1 2 3 4 5 McKusick, Marshall Kirk (29 March 1999). "Twenty Years of Berkeley Unix: From AT&T-Owned to Freely Redistributable". Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution. O'Reilly Media. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  17. ↑ Greenman, David. "FreeBSD coined". The FreeBSD Project. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  18. ↑ "A Brief History of FreeBSD". The FreeBSD Project. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  19. ↑ Bruce, Bob. "Company History". FreeBSD Mall. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  20. ↑ Johnson, Dwight. "Report from Comdex: Walnut Creek CDROM, FreeBSD and Slackware". Linux Today. Archived from the original on 13 August 2014. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  21. 1 2 "Release Information". The FreeBSD Project. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  22. 1 2 "Unsupported FreeBSD Releases". The FreeBSD Project. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  23. ↑ Finley, Klint (8 August 2013). "Apple's Operating System Guru Goes Back to His Roots". Wired. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  24. 1 2 "Chapter 17. Jails and Containers". FreeBSD Handbook. The FreeBSD Project. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  25. ↑ Pohlmann, Frank (19 July 2005). "Why FreeBSD". IBM developerWorks. Archived from the original on 11 September 2013. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  26. ↑ Long, Scott (5 June 2012). "Netflix's New Peering Appliance Uses FreeBSD". freebsd-stable (Mailing list). Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  27. ↑ "Chapter 6. The X Window System". FreeBSD Handbook. The FreeBSD Project. Retrieved 14 May 2026.
  28. ↑ McKusick, Marshall Kirk (2005). "Section 2.13". The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-70245-2.
  29. ↑ Farrokhi, Babak (16 October 2009). "Network Configuration: IPv6 with FreeBSD". Packt. Archived from the original on 26 December 2013. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  30. ↑ Leffler, Sam. "FreeBSD Wireless Networking Support" (PDF). BSDCan. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  31. ↑ "Overview of the KAME Project". KAME project. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  32. ↑ Smirnoff, Gleb (28 October 2013). "Axing AppleTalk and IPX/SPX". freebsd-stable (Mailing list). Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  33. ↑ "carp(4)". FreeBSD Manual Pages. The FreeBSD Project. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  34. ↑ McKusick, Marshall Kirk; Neville-Neil, George V. (2005). "8.6 Soft Updates". The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-70245-2.
  35. ↑ "geli(8)". The FreeBSD Project. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  36. ↑ Kamp, Poul-Henning. "GBDE: GEOM Based Disk Encryption" (PDF). USENIX. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  37. 1 2 Kerner, Sean Michael (25 February 2011). "FreeBSD 8.2 Expands ZFS Support: Without Oracle". Datamation. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  38. ↑ "FreeBSD Security Vulnerability Reporting Information". The FreeBSD Project. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  39. 1 2 3 "FreeBSD Security Information". The FreeBSD Project. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
  40. ↑ "Hackers obtained access to FreeBSD servers". The H. Archived from the original on 8 December 2013. Retrieved 13 May 2026.
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Further reading

edit
  • McKusick, Marshall Kirk; Neville-Neil, George V.; Watson, Robert N. M. (2014). The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System (2nd ed.). Addison-Wesley Professional. ISBN 9780321968975.
  • Lucas, Michael W. (2018). Absolute FreeBSD: The Complete Guide to FreeBSD (3rd ed.). No Starch Press. ISBN 9781593278922.
  • Lehey, Greg (2003). The Complete FreeBSD: Documentation from the Source (4th ed.). O'Reilly Media. ISBN 9780596005160.
  • McKusick, Marshall Kirk; Karels, Michael J.; Bostic, Keith; Quarterman, John S. (1996). The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 9780201549799.
edit
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