FreeBSD 14.0-beta1 Release
FreeBSD has recently announced the availability of the first beta-release of FreeBSD 14.0, named FreeBSD 14.0-beta1. This release is now available for various architectures, including i386, AMD64, PowerPC, PowerPC64le, PowerPSSPE, ARMV7, AARCH64, and RISCV64. In addition, FreeBSD 14.0-beta1 has also prepared images for virtualization systems such as Qcow2, VHD, VMDK, RAW, and Amazon EC2 cloud circles. The official release of FreeBSD 14.0 is scheduled for October 23, 2023.
The FreeBSD 14 branch will be the last branch that provides support for 32-bit platforms. Starting from FreeBSD 15, only support for 64-bit systems will be available. However, the COMPAT_FREEBSD32 feature will allow users to run 32-bit executable files in a 64-bit environment and assemble 32-bit programs.
Here are some of the changes and updates introduced in FreeBSD 14:
| Change |
|---|
| Clang compiler is updated to branch 16. |
| The number of supported CPU nuclei (MAXCPU parameter) has been increased from 256 to 1024 for systems based on the AMD64 and ARM64 architectures. |
| The bootloader written in the LUA language now supports the execution of Lua files placed in the Loader_Conf_Files directory within a special Sandbox-control. |
| The NDA driver is now involved by default for NVME devices on all platforms. To revert to the old NVD driver, users can set “hw.nvme.use_nvd = 1” in the Loader.conf file. |
| A new utility called “Fwget” has been added, which identifies hardware that requires firmware and installs the appropriate firmware packages. Currently, only PCI devices and firmware for Intel and AMD |