FreeBSD 14.3 Released

Michael Larabel of Phoronix highlights the key updates in today's stable release of FreeBSD 14.3: FreeBSD 14.3 has back-ported a number of improvements from FreeBSD 15 back to the FreeBSD 14 series. Plus a number of routine package updates and other fixes. Some of the FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE highlights include:

- Updating the ZFS support against OpenZFS 2.2.7.
- Merging of the Realtek RTW88 and RTW89 WiFi drivers based on the Linux 6.14 kernel code.
- The LinuxKPI code has been improved to support crypto offload as well as the 802.11n and 802.11ac standards.
- The Intel IX Ethernet driver has added support for the x550 1000BAS-BX SFP modules.
- Thor2 PCI IDs added to the Broadcom NetXtreme "BNXT" driver along with support for 400G speed modules.
- XZ 5.8.1, OpenSSH 9.9p2, OpenSSL 3.0.16, and many other package updates.
- Syscons as the legacy system console driver is now considered deprecated. Syscons is not compatible with UEFI, lacks UTF-8 support, and is Giant-locked. You can download and learn more about FreeBSD 14.3 via FreeBSD.org.

Wi-Fi

[darkain]

The note there about Wi-Fi doesn't convey just how large of an improvement that actually is.

From testing tonight, I went from ~10-15mbps on Wi-Fi on 14.2 to about 250mbps on 14.3.

This is a massive overhaul of the entire Wi-Fi subsystem within FreeBSD, and its continuing to be improved upon even further on FreeBSD 15 in development right now.

Yeah, this isn't breaking any benchmarks with its current performance, but it certainly went from "absolutely sluggish and rubbish" to "perfectly usable for daily tasks" in a single revision.

Re:

[nickwinlund77]

A few years ago I tried to use an older version of FreeBSD on a RPi 4 but the OS didn't have Wi-Fi support for Pi boards. Has the status for this changed with AArch64/ARM64?

In other words, would you know if they got it working and this page is now out of date, or is Wi-Fi still unsupported?

https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm/R... [freebsd.org]

Re: Wi-Fi

[DodgyGeezer]

Iâ(TM)m missing some context here because this just makes FreeBSD sound completely out dated.

Re:

[LondoMollari]

I don’t think most of us corporate guys would have noticed because FreeBSD is always running on some big server with at least 192 thread capacity, 3TB of RAM, and, at minimum, 100Gbps fiber uplinks. Most laptop users run Linux unless they are the more adventurous type. This means broad Wi-Fi support probably wasn’t a priority and had to wait for resources.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

IÃ(TM)m missing some context here because this just makes FreeBSD sound completely out dated.

Nope, you just proved you're not missing any important context there, because you got it.

Seriously??

[Viol8]

WiFi should have been a solved problem 10-15 years ago if not earlier. If FreeBSD is ever hoping to keep up linux it really needs to sort itself out. I ran FreeBSD 6 back in the day but eventually gave up on it because Linux just powered on ahead not just in usability and functionaluity but ease of install and setup and that matters not just for Gary Gamers laptop but also in the server room and on VMs.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

The problem with WiFI on BSD is LInux.

First, practically all WiFi drivers are for Linux (when have you heard of WiFi not working on Linux?).

Second, the GPL is a huge issue, since Linux wireless got a head start from BSD wireless. The problem is, the GPL locks up BSD code like commercially licensed software does - so many of those wireless improvements cannot go back upstream because the Linux wireless code is GPL.

So BSD wireless is basically limited to what the BSD development team (much smaller than people

Re:

[MeNeXT]

Really? Windows, Linux and MacOS are in such a hurry to upgrade that they don't care about breaking things that work. This is not to start a flame war but I have yet to see another OS with such a stable upgrade cycle. My oldest upgraded system is from 2003 now running FreeBSD 14.2. The system migrated from bare metal, to VM, to jail and back to bare metal. Several images were made to test major upgrades or paths to upgrades.

Windows chokes on itself with updates. You never know what will break. Just when you

Re:

[brickhouse98]

Quite frankly, FreeBSD isn't ever going to catch up to Linux on the desktop (IMO.) It's not a priority and there are few distros to use it anyhow (Midnight and Ghost IIRC, couple others.) It will still be used on servers but IF Linux ever gets a network stack equal to BSD (eBPF I think is what they are going to?) then I see Linux taking off even more on the server side than it already has. Even then, the run to containerization has only solidified Linux's edge as it basically has won out against jails.

Re:

[karmawarrior]

Wi-Fi isn't exactly a solved problem under Linux either. You basically have a tiny number of chipsets supported by Linux itself, those made by Intel and one or two others (so, thankfully, the ones likely to be built into your computer) - but it all goes south the moment you try to use something less likely to come with your motherboard. Very often if a driver is available at all, it needs to be compiled from source and doesn't work with more recent kernels.

I think the FOSS community might do themselves some

Re:

[aRTeeNLCH]

Ignore the naysayers, I'm happy for you, 250mb/s sounds great. And indeed the improvement is stellar. I'm not a BSD user but it's good to have one more option. Enjoy!

Re:

[darkain]

Totally! I'm not worried about the opinions of a few people that only read a release note and think they know the entire ecosystem. I fully understand that wifi has lagged behind in FreeBSD, but other areas such as storage management and security are a decade ahead of Linux (inb4 haters try to argue with me because they don't even know cool shit going on w/ FreeBSD like Capsicum as one of many examples)

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle]

Interesting. I wonder if we'll see some small BSD routers being sold rather than the common small linux routers.

The manufacturers aren't really keen on selling GPL software but it's been their best option.

Re:

[darkain]

Small BSD based routers already exist: look into devices that ship w/ pfSense or OPNsense. Devices that do routing and devices that do wifi access points don't have to be the same device, which is how my networks are setup (quite nice if you want a solid mesh wifi setup by the way!)

Sweet

[ArchieBunker]

Going to update my zpool array this weekend. The same machine also runs a pi hole VM using the bhyve hypervisor.

It's official; Netcraft now confirms: BSD is dying

[ihadafivedigituid]

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered BSD community when IDC confirmed that BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming close on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for BSD because BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for BSD. As many of us are already aware, BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that BSD has steadily declined in market share. BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a cockeyed miracle could save BSD from its fate at this point in time. For all practical purposes, BSD is dead.

Fact: BSD is dying

IYKYK