The FreeBSD team has officially dropped version 14.3, and while it’s technically the fourth release in the 14.x series, it almost feels like a proper refresh. You see, from improved wireless support to easier container deployment, FreeBSD 14.3 is shaping up to be a worthwhile update for both longtime users and curious newcomers.
One of the best additions is support for 802.11ac wireless through the iwlwifi driver. If you’ve got a laptop with a modern Intel chipset, this should make connecting to Wi-Fi a whole lot easier. That’s good news for people who’ve been avoiding FreeBSD on portable machines due to network headaches.
There are some meaningful upgrades under the hood too. LLVM has been bumped to version 19.1.7, OpenSSH is now at 9.9p2, and other key components like xz and expat have been refreshed. The project has also stepped further into the world of containers, with official OCI images now available on Docker Hub and GitHub.
FreeBSD 14.3 runs on a wide range of hardware, including amd64, i386, aarch64, armv7, powerpc, and even riscv64. You can install it from DVDs, USB sticks, or over the network. For ARM boards like Raspberry Pi, there are SD card images ready to go. Console access isn’t even required in some cases, thanks to pre-configured SSH settings and default passwords. Just be sure to change them immediately.
If you’re in the cloud, FreeBSD has you covered there too. The release is live on Amazon EC2, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud, and Azure. You’ll find both UFS and ZFS options depending on your preference. The Amazon AMIs and Google images are available right now, with links to each in the usual places.
For virtualization fans, there are prebuilt VM images in all the popular formats: QCOW2, VMDK, VHD, and raw. You can get them up and running quickly with your favorite hypervisor.
This release also includes several bootable install image types depending on your needs. Whether you want the full DVD with prebuilt packages and a graphical installer or a lightweight memstick image for fast installs, it’s all available.
With FreeBSD 14.3, there’s never been a better time to revisit the operating system. Whether you’re building servers, running containers, deploying to the cloud, or just tinkering at home, this release checks a lot of boxes.
Full release notes, hardware compatibility details, and security signatures are all posted for those who want to dig deeper.Download the operating system now:
https://download.freebsd.org/releases/ISO-IMAGES/14.3
