Table of Contents

Choosing a version of FreeBSD – operating system branches, code quality, lifespans, and support

Each release of FreeBSD is the end result of periodic special attention – release engineering – to a releng branch of the code for the OS.

Support

With the five-year support model that was established in 2015, two or more major versions may be supported at any one time. 2024 changes to the model are noted below.

Major versions 13 and 14 are supported.

13 has:

14 has:

FreeBSD 14.2-RELEASE is recommended for new installations. All other supported versions of RELEASE are legacy.

Visualising CURRENT (the main branch) and RELEASE (releng branches)

Adapted from the timelines at https://codeberg.org/FreeBSD/freebsd-src/src/commit/96c567f972e05c47cd239b6c9226354e808f039b/share/misc/bsd-family-tree#L417-L462: 

   |   |
   |  12.2 (end-of-life)
   |   |
   |    `------.
   |           |
   *- 13.0     |
   |  (EOL)    |
   |   |       |
   |   |    12.3 (EOL)
   |   |       |
   |  13.1     |
   |  (EOL)    |
   |   |       |
   |   |  ‖ 12.4 (EOL)   ‖
   |   |  ╚==============╝
   |   |
   |  13.2 (EOL)
   |   |
   |    `------.
   |           |
   *- 14.0     |
   |  (EOL)    |
   |   |       |
   |   |    13.3 (EOL)
   |   |       |
   |  14.1-    |
   |  RELEASE  |
   |   |       |
   |   |    13.4-RELEASE
   |   |       |
   |  14.2-    |
   |  RELEASE  |
   |   |       |
   |   |  ‖ 13.5-RELEASE ‖
   |   |  ╚==============╝
   |   |
   |
15.0-CURRENT (main branch)

15.0-CURRENT and other development versions of FreeBSD

freebsd-update(8):

pkgbase:

Errata notices and security advisories:

FreshBSD views of branches

Further reading