Date: June 10, 2025
The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE. This is the fourth release of the stable/14 branch.
Some of the highlights:
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802.11ac is now supported by the iwlwifi driver for modern chipsets found in many laptops.
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OCI container images are now published in Docker and GitHub repositories.
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LLVM and associated tools have been upgraded to version 19.1.7.
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OpenSSH has been upgraded to version 9.9p2.
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xz has been upgraded to version 5.8.1.
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expat has been upgraded to 2.7.1.
For a complete list of new features, supported hardware, and known problems, please see the online release notes, hardware compatibility notes, and errata list, available at:
For more information about FreeBSD release engineering activities, please see:
Availability
FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE is now available for the amd64, i386, aarch64, armv7, powerpc, powerpc64, and riscv64 architectures.
FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE can be installed from bootable ISO images or over the network. Some architectures also support installing from a USB memory stick. The required files can be downloaded as described below.
SHA512 and SHA256 hashes for the release ISO, memory stick, and SD card images are included at the bottom of this message.
PGP-signed checksums for the release images are also available at:
A PGP-signed version of this announcement is available at:
The purpose of the images provided as part of the release are as follows:
This contains everything necessary to install the base FreeBSD operating system, the documentation, debugging distribution sets, and a small set of pre-built packages aimed at getting a graphical workstation up and running. It also supports booting into a "livefs" based rescue mode. This should be all you need if you can burn and use DVD-sized media.
Additionally, this can be written to a USB memory stick (flash drive) for the amd64 architecture and used to do an install on machines capable of booting off USB drives. It also supports booting into a "livefs" based rescue mode.
As one example of how to use the dvd1 image, assuming the USB drive appears as /dev/da0 on your machine something like this should work:
Be careful to make sure you get the target (of=) correct.
disc1This contains the base FreeBSD operating system. It also supports booting into a "livefs" based rescue mode. There are no pre-built packages.
Additionally, this can be written to a USB memory stick (flash drive) for the amd64 architecture and used to do an install on machines capable of booting off USB drives. It also supports booting into a "livefs" based rescue mode. There are no pre-built packages.
As one example of how to use the disc1 image, assuming the USB drive appears as /dev/da0 on your machine something like this should work:
Be careful to make sure you get the target (of=) correct.
bootonlyThis supports booting a machine using the CDROM drive but does not contain the installation distribution sets for installing FreeBSD from the CD itself. You would need to perform a network based install (e.g., from an HTTP or FTP server) after booting from the CD.
Additionally, this can be written to a USB memory stick (flash drive) for the amd64 architecture and used to do an install on machines capable of booting off USB drives. It also supports booting into a "livefs" based rescue mode. There are no pre-built packages.
As one example of how to use the bootonly image, assuming the USB drive appears as /dev/da0 on your machine something like this should work:
Be careful to make sure you get the target (of=) correct.
memstickThis can be written to a USB memory stick (flash drive) and used to do an install on machines capable of booting off USB drives. It also supports booting into a "livefs" based rescue mode. There are no pre-built packages.
As one example of how to use the memstick image, assuming the USB drive appears as /dev/da0 on your machine something like this should work:
Be careful to make sure you get the target (of=) correct.
mini-memstickThis can be written to a USB memory stick (flash drive) and used to boot a machine, but does not contain the installation distribution sets on the medium itself, similar to the bootonly image. It also supports booting into a "livefs" based rescue mode. There are no pre-built packages.
As one example of how to use the mini-memstick image, assuming the USB drive appears as /dev/da0 on your machine something like this should work:
Be careful to make sure you get the target (of=) correct.
FreeBSD/arm SD card imagesThese can be written to an SD card and used to boot the supported arm system. The SD card image contains the full FreeBSD installation, and can be installed onto SD cards as small as 5 GB.
For convenience for those without console access to the system, a freebsd user with a password of freebsd is available by default for ssh(1) access. Additionally, the root user password is set to root; it is strongly recommended to change the password for both users after gaining access to the system.
To write the FreeBSD/arm image to an SD card, use the dd(1) utility, replacing KERNEL with the appropriate kernel configuration name for the system.
Be careful to make sure you get the target (of=) correct.
FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE can also be purchased on DVD from several vendors. One of the vendors that will be offering FreeBSD 14.3-based products is:
Pre-installed virtual machine images are also available for the amd64 (x86_64), i386 (x86_32), AArch64 (arm64), and RISCV (riscv64) architectures in QCOW2, VHD, and VMDK disk image formats, as well as raw (unformatted) images.
FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE is also available on these cloud hosting platforms:
FreeBSD/amd64 EC2 AMI IDs can be retrieved from the Systems Manager Parameter Store in each region using the keys:
AMIs are also available in the AWS Marketplace at:
FreeBSD/aarch64 EC2 AMI IDs can be retrieved from the Systems Manager Parameter Store in each region using the keys:
AMIs are also available in the AWS Marketplace at:
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Google® Compute Engine™:
Instances can be deployed using the gcloud utility:
Download
FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE may be downloaded via https from the following site:
FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE virtual machine images may be downloaded from:
FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE BASIC-CI images may be downloaded from:
FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE OCI container images may be downloaded from:
and are also available in the Docker and GitHub container repositories.
For instructions on installing FreeBSD or updating an existing machine to 14.3-RELEASE please see:
Support
This point release, FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE, will be supported until 30 June, 2026. The previous point release, FreeBSD 14.2-RELEASE, will reach its End of Life at 30 September, 2025. The FreeBSD 14 release series will be supported until 30 November, 2028. Additional support information can be found at:
Acknowledgments
Many companies donated equipment, network access, or human time to support the release engineering activities for FreeBSD 14.3 including:
The release engineering team for 14.3-RELEASE includes:
Trademark
FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
ISO Image Checksums
amd64 (x86_64):
i386 (x86):
aarch64 GENERIC:
aarch64 RPI (3/4):
aarch64 PINE64:
aarch64 PINE64-LTS:
aarch64 PINEBOOK:
aarch64 ROCK64:
aarch64 ROCKPRO64:
armv7 GENERICSD:
powerpc64:
powerpc64le:
powerpc:
powerpcspe:
riscv64 GENERIC
riscv64 GENERICSD:
Virtual Machine Disk Image Checksums
amd64 (x86_64):
i386 (x86):
aarch64 (arm64):
riscv64:
amd64 (x86_64) BASIC-CI:
aarch64 (arm64) BASIC-CI:
OCI Container Checksums
amd64 (x86_64):
i386 (x86):
aarch64 (arm64):
riscv64:
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