FreeBSD 13.5: A Breath of Fresh Air in BSD Evolution

On March 11, 2025, the FreeBSD team released the new minor version 13.5. This is the sixth update in the stable FreeBSD 13.x series. The release is available for all major architectures including: 

• amd64
• i386
• powerpc variants
• armv6
• armv7
• aarch64
• riscv64 

Builds for virtual machines and cloud platforms such as Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine, and Hashicorp/Atlas Vagrant are also provided. FreeBSD 13.4 was released in September 2024. Meanwhile, work continues on FreeBSD 14, with version 14.3 planned for June 3, 2025. The first stable release of FreeBSD 15 is expected in December 2025.

​Key Improvements

FreeBSD 13.5 brings many practical changes. The update adds support for running sysctl and ip6addrctl within isolated jail environments. Users can now set or retrieve kernel state from the parent system. The bsdinstall tool now allows changes to the default ZFS pool creation options. The LLVM toolchain has been updated to version 19.1.7, improving compilation and performance. A fix in the UFS1 filesystem now permits dates up to 2106. Several drivers received enhancements. For instance, igc and e1000 now support Adaptive Interrupt Moderation to lower CPU load and improve UDP performance. 

Other updates include improved SFP module support and changes to automation scripts for cloud platforms. Additionally, many third-party packages and tools have been updated. 

Overall, FreeBSD 13.5 offers enhanced security, flexibility, and performance while preparing the ground for future releases.