FreeBSD 13.4-RELEASE Release Notes

This document contains the release notes for FreeBSD 13.4-RELEASE. It describes recently added, changed, or deleted features of FreeBSD. It also provides some notes on upgrading from previous versions of FreeBSD.

The "release" distribution to which these release notes apply represents the latest point along the 13-STABLE development branch since 13-STABLE was created. Information regarding pre-built, binary "release" distributions along this branch can be found at https://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/.

The "release" distribution to which these release notes apply represents a point along the 13-STABLE development branch between 13.3-RELEASE and the future 13.5-RELEASE. Information regarding pre-built, binary "release" distributions along this branch can be found at https://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/.

This distribution of FreeBSD 13.4-RELEASE is a "release" distribution. It can be found at https://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/ or any of its mirrors. More information on obtaining this (or other) "release" distributions of FreeBSD can be found in the Obtaining FreeBSD appendix to the FreeBSD Handbook.

All users are encouraged to consult the release errata before installing FreeBSD. The errata document is updated with "late-breaking" information discovered late in the release cycle or after the release. Typically, it contains information on known bugs, security advisories, and corrections to documentation. An up-to-date copy of the errata for FreeBSD 13.4-RELEASE can be found on the FreeBSD Web site.

This document describes the most user-visible new or changed features in FreeBSD since 13.3-RELEASE. In general, changes described here are unique to the 13-STABLE branch unless specifically marked as MERGED features.

Typical release note items document recent security advisories issued after 13.3-RELEASE, new drivers or hardware support, new commands or options, major bug fixes, or contributed software upgrades. They may also list changes to major ports/packages or release engineering practices. Clearly the release notes cannot list every single change made to FreeBSD between releases; this document focuses primarily on security advisories, user-visible changes, and major architectural improvements.

Binary upgrades between RELEASE versions (and snapshots of the various security branches) are supported using the freebsd-update(8) utility. See the release-specific upgrade procedure, FreeBSD 13.4-RELEASE upgrade information, with more details in the FreeBSD handbook binary upgrade procedure. This will update unmodified userland utilities, as well as unmodified GENERIC kernels distributed as a part of an official FreeBSD release. The freebsd-update(8) utility requires that the host being upgraded have Internet connectivity.

Source-based upgrades (those based on recompiling the FreeBSD base system from source code) from previous versions are supported, according to the instructions in /usr/src/UPDATING.

This section lists the various Security Advisories and Errata Notices since 13.3-RELEASE.

This section covers changes and additions to userland applications, contributed software, and system utilities.

This section covers changes and additions to devices and device drivers since 13.3-RELEASE.

This section describes changes that affect networking in FreeBSD.

Lots of improvements to the network stack, including performance improvements and bug fixes for the sctp(4) stack. Specifically, support for the SCTP checksum offload feature has been added to the loopback interface.

This section covers general hardware support for physical machines, hypervisors, and virtualization environments, as well as hardware changes and updates that do not otherwise fit in other sections of this document.

Please see the list of hardware supported by 13.4-RELEASE, as well as the platforms page for the complete list of supported CPU architectures.

This section covers changes to manual (man(1)) pages and other documentation shipped with the base system.

This section covers changes to the FreeBSD Ports Collection, package infrastructure, and package maintenance and installation tools.

FreeBSD 15.0 is not expected to include support for 32-bit platforms other than armv7. The armv6, i386, and powerpc platforms are deprecated and will be removed. 64-bit systems will still be able to run older 32-bit binaries.

The FreeBSD Project expects to support armv7 as a Tier 2 architecture in FreeBSD 15.0 and stable/15. However, the Project also anticipates that armv7 may be removed in FreeBSD 16.0. The Project will provide an update on the status of armv7 for both 15.x and 16.x at the time of 15.0 release.

Support for executing 32-bit binaries on 64-bit platforms via the COMPAT_FREEBSD32 option will continue for at least the stable/15 and stable/16 branches. Support for compiling individual 32-bit applications via cc -m32 will also continue for at least the stable/15 branch, which includes suitable headers in /usr/include and libraries in /usr/lib32.

Ports will not include support for deprecated 32-bit platforms for FreeBSD 15.0 and later releases. These future releases will not include binary packages or support for building packages from ports for deprecated 32-bit platforms.

The FreeBSD stable/14 and earlier branches will retain existing 32-bit kernel and world support. Ports will retain existing support for building ports and packages for 32-bit systems on stable/14 and earlier branches as long as those branches are supported by the ports system. However, all 32-bit platforms are Tier-2 or Tier-3, and support for individual ports should be expected to degrade as upstreams deprecate 32-bit platforms.

With the current support schedule, stable/14 will reach end of life (EOL) around 5 years after the release of FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE. The EOL of stable/14 will mark the end of support for deprecated 32-bit platforms, including source releases, pre-built packages, and support for building applications from ports. With the release of 14.0-RELEASE in November 2023, support for deprecated 32-bit platforms will end in November 2028.

The Project may choose to alter this approach when FreeBSD 15.0 is released by extending some level of support for one or more of the deprecated platforms in 15.0 or later. Any alterations will be driven by community feedback and committed efforts to support these platforms.