Latest pfSense release (25.11) uses FreeBSD 16 - official release is December 2027
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I was just wondering: Can anyone tell me why pfSense is based on FreeBSD releases that are not even released yet (FreeBSD 15 is released in december 2025), and in the case of FreeBSD 16 where the official release is 2 years away (december 2027)?
pfSense release engineering.
FreeBSD release engineering.I would imagine that it would be an advantage for pfSense to be based on a well-proven FreeBSD release, instead of a nightly unreleased build, but there must be something I'm missing in this equation.
Can anyone enlighten me? Thanks!
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@ameinild Netgate switch to FreeBSD-CURRENT about two years ago.
https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/releases/versions.html
They wrote a article about it in autumn of 2022:
https://www.netgate.com/blog/pfsense-software-is-moving-ahead
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@patient0 said in 99 nights in the forest Latest pfSense release (25.11) uses FreeBSD 16 - official release is December 2027:
@ameinild Netgate switch to FreeBSD-CURRENT about two years ago.
https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/releases/versions.html
They wrote a article about it in autumn of 2022:
https://www.netgate.com/blog/pfsense-software-is-moving-ahead
Thanks for your explanation. So in practice, does Netgate have many issues using FreeBSD-CURRENT for pfSense 25.11 (crash, NIC driver, ZFS…)? And do they have a roadmap to migrate to FreeBSD 16-RELEASE when it comes out?
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@Lartax73 said in Latest pfSense release (25.11) uses FreeBSD 16 - official release is December 2027:
Thanks for your explanation. So in practice, does Netgate have many issues using FreeBSD-CURRENT for pfSense 25.11 (crash, NIC driver, ZFS…)? And do they have a roadmap to migrate to FreeBSD 16-RELEASE when it comes out?
I don't think there were more issue then when they followed the RELEASE channel.
And no, they will stay on CURRENT (you may want to read the blog post), no going back to RELEASE.
