FreeBSD 15.0-ALPHA5 Now Available

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Oct 06, 2025

The fifth alpha build of the 15.0-RELEASE release cycle is now available.


Installation images are available for:


o 15.0-ALPHA5 amd64 GENERIC
o 15.0-ALPHA5 powerpc64 GENERIC64
o 15.0-ALPHA5 powerpc64le GENERIC64LE
o 15.0-ALPHA5 armv7 GENERICSD
o 15.0-ALPHA5 aarch64 GENERIC
o 15.0-ALPHA5 aarch64 RPI
o 15.0-ALPHA5 aarch64 PINE64
o 15.0-ALPHA5 aarch64 PINE64-LTS
o 15.0-ALPHA5 aarch64 PINEBOOK
o 15.0-ALPHA5 aarch64 ROCK64
o 15.0-ALPHA5 aarch64 ROCKPRO64
o 15.0-ALPHA5 riscv64 GENERIC
o 15.0-ALPHA5 riscv64 GENERICSD


Note regarding arm SD card images: For convenience for those without
console access to the system, a freebsd user with a password of
freebsd is available by default for ssh(1) access.  Additionally,
the root user password is set to root.  It is strongly recommended
to change the password for both users after gaining access to the
system.


Installer images and memory stick images are available here:


    https://download.freebsd.org/releases/ISO-IMAGES/15.0/


The image checksums follow at the end of this e-mail.


If you notice problems you can report them through the Bugzilla PR
system or on the -stable mailing list.


If you would like to use Git to do a source based update of an existing
system, use the "stable/15" branch.


A summary of changes since ALPHA5 includes:


o Release images are now built in "no-root" mode.


o A "pkgbase-repo.tar" file is now published for each architecture containing
  the full pkgbase repository corresponding to the release.


o Many bug fixes related to pkgbase and the release build process.


o The cxgbe(4) driver has been updated to support newer hardware.


o Several issues in tzcode have been corrected.


o A change in power management which caused USB ports to be nonfunctional
  after resuming from S3 sleep has been reverted.


o expat has been updated to 2.7.3.


A list of changes since 14.0 is available in the stable/15
release notes:


    https://www.freebsd.org/releases/15.0R/relnotes/


Please note, the release notes page is not yet complete, and will be
updated on an ongoing basis as the 15.0-RELEASE cycle progresses.

Read on