FreeBSD 13.4 is now available

As a quick reminder, the previous version of FreeBSD was released on March 5, and now the fifth version of the FreeBSD 13.4 stable branch has been introduced in September 2024. The new release is available for virtual machines, cloud hosting, and major architectures such as powerpc64, amd64, armv6, aarch64, and others.

The latest release of the 13.x branch is scheduled for March next year, and support for this version will be provided until the end of April 2026. Moreover, version 14 is currently under development, and 14.2 is already scheduled to be announced in December this year. As for FreeBSD 15, the first release is scheduled for 2025.

The main changes in FreeBSD 13.4 will relate to:

• Libarchive 3.7.4, LLVM 18.1.5, and OpenSSH 9.7p1 updates;
• Changes have been made to libcapsicum to improve performance. Caching about time zones has been added to the library, which will significantly reduce the use of tzset;
• For wireless devices, some modifications have been made to the drivers. The u3g drivers will support the SIM7600G LTE modem. And there are also updates for ice and irdma;
• In the network stack there are changes regarding SCTP protocol and optimized loopback interface for SCTP packets;
• Added support for AMD Ryzen 7 Phoenix to the amdsmn drivers;
• On the dvd1 media, some package composition changes took place, specifically:

1. The emulators/linux_base-c7 port has been removed;
2. The x11-wm/sway and sysutils/seatd ports have been added for Wayland;
3. The devel/git@lite port will be used instead of devel/git;
4. Removed the x11-drivers/xf86-video-vmware driver, which was causing some problems with its use.