The FreeBSD team has released FreeBSD 15.0, and with it come several major changes, one of which you will surely want to know more about if you’re a FreeBSD user. Since this change will eventually drastically change the way you use FreeBSD, we should get right into it.
Up until now, a full, system-wide update for FreeBSD – as in, updating both the base operating system as well as any packages you have installed on top of it – would use two separate tools: freebsd-update and the pkg package manager. You used the former to update the base operating system, which was installed as file sets, and the latter to update everything you had installed on top of it in the form of packages.
With FreeBSD 15.0, this is starting to change. Instead of using two separate tools, in 15.0 you can opt to deprecate freebsd-update and file sets, and rely entirely on pkg for updating both the base operating system as well as any packages you have installed, because with this new method, the base system moves from file sets to packages. When installing FreeBSD 15.0, the installer will ask you to choose between the old method, or the new pkg-only method.
Packages (pkgbase / New Method): The base system is installed as a set of packages from the “FreeBSD-base” repository. Systems installed this way are managed entirely using the pkg(8) tool. This method is used by default for all VM images and images published in public clouds. In FreeBSD 15.0, pkgbase is offered as a technology preview, but it is expected to become the standard method for managing base system installations and upgrades in future releases.
↫ FreeBSD 15.0 release announcement
As the release announcement notes, the net method is optional in FreeBSD 15 and will remain optional during the entire 15.x release cycle, but the plan is to deprecate freebsd-update and file sets entirely in FreeBSD 16.0. If you have an existing installation you wish to convert to using pkgbase, there’s a tool called pkgbasify to do just that. It’s sponsored by the FreeBSD Foundation, so it’s not some random script.
Of course, there’s way more in this release than just pkgbase. Of note is that the 32bit platforms i386, armv6, and 32-bit powerpc have been retired, but of course, 32bit code will continue to run on their 64bit counterparts. FreeBSD 15.0 also brings a native inotify implementation, a ton of improvements to the audio components, improved Intel Wi-Fi drivers, and so, so much more.
It might be nice they streamlined things, but BSD seems to keep BSD “being special” as opposed to convenient as Linux. I installed it on my desktop PC (amd64) and installed xfce as well as xorg after installation. Both installed fine, but things scrolled by with information out of the console (page up not on by default?) and console font and layout very old-style on a large monitor. “startxfce4” after that did not work, since I seem to need to configure xorg (that old thing, yes) by hand? I’d love to see BSD being relevant, but it seems their only priority is being on routers and what not. Not a desktop alternative at all to Linux distros if you ask me.
Xorg tuning shouldn’t be needed unless you have really old or really esoteric hardware, but one thing that is absolutely necessary these days is setting up DRM drivers. No, not Digital Rights Management, but the DRM kernel module that serves as the GPU driver. A while back I wrote a guide(1) for setting up FreeBSD with Xfce, take a look there and see if you missed anything. I haven’t yet tested a fresh installation of the 15.0 release, but I will say that I attempted upgrading from 14.3 to 15.0 and followed all the instructions in the release notes, but the upgrade failed. Probably something I screwed up or missed, but it definitely wasn’t as straightforward and successful as an OpenBSD sysupgrade.
(1) https://www.kaidenshi.com/posts/freebsd-as-a-daily-driver
Update to say I just installed 15.0 on a spare machine and the procedure is basically the same as 14.x. There is a new dialog asking if you want to use the new packaging method as stated above, and setting the root password is now in a dialog rather than at a prompt, though setting up users is still the old prompt style.
So far it’s smooth sailing after a fresh install, as expected from such a refined and traditional OS.