news
The FreeBSD Foundation Taking Stock of 2025
-
FreeBSD ☛ 2025: Software Development and Infrastructure Support.
As we look back on 2025, it is clear that this has been a year of meaningful progress for the FreeBSD Project and the FreeBSD Foundation. We advanced key development initiatives, strengthened core infrastructure, improved accessibility, and continued supporting enterprise-scale use.
This work was made possible through the generosity of our donors and the dedication of contributors, partners, and staff. With 62% of our annual budget invested directly in software development, the Foundation remained focused on delivering sustainable, high-impact improvements across the ecosystem. The sections below highlight the technical achievements that shaped 2025.
-
FreeBSD ☛ Infrastructure Modernization – commissioned by the Sovereign Tech Agency
In 2024 The Sovereign Tech Agency commissioned an ambitious body of work to strengthen and modernize the infrastructure that FreeBSD contributors depend on.
The program of work totaling €686,400 was managed by the FreeBSD Foundation and has run from August 2024 to December 2025.
The main goals of the program were to accelerate planned work to deliver zero trust builds, SBOM and security tooling, and improve developer experience.
As the project nears completion, some of the key work delivered is: [...]
-
[Repeat] FreeBSD ☛ FreeBSD Closes the Laptop Gap: Year One Project Update
If you’ve been waiting for the right moment to try FreeBSD on a laptop, take note – 2025 has brought transformative changes. The Foundation’s ambitious Laptop Support & Usability Project is systematically addressing the gaps that have held FreeBSD back on modern laptop hardware.
The project started in 2024 Q4 and covers areas including Wi-Fi, graphics, audio, installer, and sleep states. 2025 has been its first full year, and with a financial commitment of over $750k to date there has been substantial progress.
-
LWN ☛ FreeBSD laptop progress
The FreeBSD Foundation has a blog post about the progress it has made in 2025 on the Laptop Support & Usability Project for FreeBSD. The foundation committed $750,000 to the project in 2025 and has made progress on graphics drivers, Wi-Fi 4 and 5 support, audio improvements, sleep states,
The installer for FreeBSD has gained a couple of new features that benefit laptop users. In 15.0 the installer now supports downloading and installing firmware packages after the FreeBSD base system installation is complete. Coming in 15.1 it will be possible to install the KDE graphical desktop environment during the installation process. Grateful thanks to Bjoern Zeeb and Alfonso Siciliano respectively. [...]
The project continues into 2026 with a similar sized investment and scope. Key targets include completing work on sleep states (modern standby and hibernate), adding support for graphics drivers up to Linux 6.18, Wi-Fi 6 support, USB4 and Thunderbolt support, HDMI improvements, UVC webcam support, and Bluetooth improvements.
A substantial testing program will also start in January, aiming to test all the functionality together across a range of hardware. Community testers are very welcome to help out, the Foundation will release a blog post and send an invite to help to the Desktop mailing list some time in January 2026.