FreeBSD 15.0 Released — A Fresh Chapter for the BSD Base System
FreeBSD 15.0 Released — A Fresh Chapter for the BSD Base System Table of contents:- What’s new in FreeBSD 15.0 Getting a Desktop: IceWM via pkg and Xfce/SDDM with desktop-installer Conclusion What’s new in FreeBSD 15.0 On 2 December 2025, the FreeBSD Project announced the release of FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE , the inaugural release of the stable/15 branch. This marks a significant milestone — a version that introduces fundamental changes to how the base system is distributed and managed, alongside a host of under-the-hood improvements. One of the biggest changes in 15.0 is the introduction of a “packaged base system” — sometimes referred to as “pkgbase”. Rather than installing the base system solely via traditional distribution sets, the installer (bsdinstall) now prompts users to choose between the classic method and a new approach that installs the base system as a set of packages from a dedicated repository, managed via the familiar pkg(8) package manager. While this is offered ...