choose

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-09-30T19:02:13+00:00

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:

a long lifespan – the stable/13 branch
one supported release – 13.5-RELEASE on the releng/13.5 branch.

14 has:

a longer lifespan – the stable/14 branch
two supported releases – 14.2-RELEASE and 14.3-RELEASE on the releng/14.2 and releng/14.3 branches.

FreeBSD 14.3-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     |
   |  (EOL)    |
   |   |       |
   |   |    13.4 (EOL)
   |   |       |
   |  14.2-    |
   |  RELEASE  |
   |   |       |
   |   |  ‖ 13.5-RELEASE ‖
   |   |  ╚==============╝
   |   |
   |  14.3-
   |  RELEASE
   |   |
   |
15.0-CURRENT (main branch)

FreeBSD 12.⋯ releases are end-of-life (no longer supported)
FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE, 13.1-RELEASE, 13.2-RELEASE, 13.3-RELEASE, and 13.4-RELEASE are similarly EOL
FreeBSD 13.5-RELEASE is supported, there will be no 13.6
FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE and 14.1-RELEASE are EOL
FreeBSD 14.2-RELEASE is supported
FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE is supported
FreeBSD 15.0-CURRENT is latest.

15.0-CURRENT and other development versions of FreeBSD

freebsd-update(8):

simplifies updates and upgrades with prerelease (ALPHA, BETA, RC (release candidate)) and with RELEASE
can not be used with STABLE or CURRENT.

pkgbase:

simplifies updates and upgrades for everything excluding 13.

Errata notices and security advisories:

cover releases and associated stable branches
do not cover CURRENT.

FreshBSD views of branches

git

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2024-03-11T00:24:16+00:00

FreeBSD and Git

Well-known trees for The FreeBSD Project

Three main trees, each of which has a main branch:

doc — FreeBSD Documentation Project (FDP)
ports — the ports collection, where the main branch is also known as latest (an alternative to quarterly)
src — FreeBSD base (kernel and world, the operating system), the main branch is for FreeBSD-CURRENT.