The fifth and final version 11.4 of the FreeBSD 11-STABLE branch, was released in June 2020, with the new FreeBSD 11.4 bringing several changes to userland applications, hardware, and device drivers. Now, the latest stable 12.x series of FreeBSD, a new production snapshot, FreeBSD 12.2, has been released.
And the third point update of the 12-STABLE branch brings lots of enhancements to the FreeBSD kernel, including support for ACPI Platform Error Interfaces (APEI) and enabled ixl driver by default for FreeBSD/powerpc64.
What's New in FreeBSD 12.2 Release?
The major update to FreeBSD 12.2 is support for the jail utility, which allows users to run Linux in a jailed environment. With the added support for APEI and enabled ixl driver by default for FreeBSD/powerpc64, which provides support for any PCI Express adapter or LAN On Motherboard (LOM) in the Intel Ethernet 700 Series.
Other important changes in FreeBSD 12.2 are as follows:
- Updated virtio_blk (VirtIO Block driver) to support TRIM.
- Update to the Wireless network driver stack for better 802.11n and 802.11ac Wi-Fi support.
- Added ICE driver support for Intel 100GB ethernet cards.
- Update to pkg utility to version 1.15.10.
Additionally, within the device drivers section, the ubsec, ufm, apm, ctau, and cx drivers in FreeBSD 12.2 has been marked as deprecated, and will finally be dropped in FreeBSD 13.0.
How to Upgrade to FreeBSD 12.2
If you're new to FreeBSD and want to give it a try right now, you can get the FreeBSD 12.2 images from the official download page. While existing users can easily upgrade their current FreeBSD system by following the provided official guide.
And note that the FreeBSD 12.2 images are available in a number of different formats including DVD, CD, virtual machine image, Network Install (bootonly) sized ISO Disc Images, and regular and mini USB memory stick images for several architectures.
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