FreeBSD 14.2 Is Out

The FreeBSD development team has officially announced the release of version 14.2 in early December 2024, which is a significant update to the popular operating system. This release focuses on improving the system's performance, security, and functionality.

Main Changes and Improvements

1. Improved Kernel Performance

Updates to the system kernel have provided improved I/O performance and more efficient multithreading management. These changes are especially noticeable in highly loaded server environments.

2. Enhanced Security Features

FreeBSD 14.2 introduces several new security mechanisms, including improved protection against buffer overflow attacks and enhanced access control capabilities using Capsicum.

3. Driver Updates

The drivers for ena 2.8.0 (Amazon Elastic Network Adapter), ice_ddp 1.3.41.0, and ice 1.43.2-k (Intel Ethernet 800) have been updated.

The new rtw89 driver for IEEE 802.11ax wireless adapters has been added. Also, support for processors based on Intel Tiger Lake-H microarchitecture has been added to the hda driver, and support for Intel Meteor Lake has been added to the ig4 and ichsmb drivers.

4. Support for New Hardware Platforms

FreeBSD 14.2 adds support for modern amd64, i386, powerpc, powerpc64, powerpc64le, powerpcspe, armv7, aarch64 and riscv64 architectures, with built-in support for the nvme (NVM Express) driver and the nvmecontrol utility. This results in improved compatibility with ARM processors, which opens up new opportunities for using the system on IoT devices.

Integration with Modern Technologies

Updated Ports and Packages

The collection of FreeBSD ports has been updated to the latest stable versions of programs, including NGINX, PostgreSQL, Python, and many others. This makes the system even more convenient for developers and administrators.

Simplified ZFS Configuration

The new version simplifies the configuration of the ZFS file system and improves its performance when working with large amounts of data.

Improvements for Developers

FreeBSD 14.2 includes tools for simplified application development and testing. Support for modern programming languages has also been introduced, including updates to the Clang and GCC compilers.

Evolution of FreeBSD

The next release of FreeBSD version 14.3 is scheduled for June 2025. Support for the current version 14.2 will be extended until September next year. The entire FreeBSD 14 branch is expected to be supported until 2028.