FreeBSD 15.0-RC1 Brings Build Fixes For Google Cloud & Azure, Base Repository Changes

Written by Michael Larabel in BSD on 17 November 2025 at 05:34 PM EST. 4 Comments

FreeBSD 15.0-RC1 is available today for testing as this leading BSD operating system works toward the stable release in early December.

FreeBSD 15.0 continues shaping up to be a significant release for this BSD operating system with reproducible build capabilities, much better hardware support, continued enhancements around the FreeBSD laptop experience, and a wide assortment of other enhancements for FreeBSD 15 compared to the current FreeBSD 14 series.

FreeBSD 15.0-RC1 builds off the week old FreeBSD 15.0 Beta 5 with build fixes for Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure cloud images, base repository changes, and other last minute fixes.

Today's 15.0-RC1 announcement notes the following highlights:

- The FreeBSD-base repository is now defined in /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf.

- The FreeBSD-base repository now resides on pkgbase.FreeBSD.org and is signed
using different keys from the FreeBSD-ports repository.

- Dynamic gang headers are now supported by the boot loader.

- Many bug fixes, especially to networking and 32-bit compatibility.

- Build fixes to support creation of Google Cloud and Azure images.

Up next is FreeBSD 15.0-RC2 expected next week. Currently the RC3 and RC4 release milestones are cancelled with plans of then releasing FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE on 2 December.