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⇱ FreeBSD 15.1 Beta Released For Early Testing - Phoronix


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FreeBSD 15.1 Beta Released For Early Testing

Written by Michael Larabel in BSD on 2 May 2026 at 06:53 AM EDT. 15 Comments
Following last year's release of FreeBSD 15.0, FreeBSD 15.1 is working its way toward release release in June. For kicking off the release dance, FreeBSD 15.1 Beta 1 is available today for testing.

FreeBSD 15.1 pulls in a number of driver updates, including for better hardware support and the various WiFi driver enhancements that have been pursued as of late along with working toward better power management. As of writing, the 15.1 release notes have yet to begin to be filled out for fully documenting the many changes being made for FreeBSD 15.1.

👁 FreeBSD 15.1 installer


One of the changes I was excited to see with FreeBSD 15.1 was the new KDE Plasma desktop install option from within their existing CLI installer. This has been part of the effort to enhance the laptop/desktop experience for FreeBSD. Surprisingly though when firing up the FreeBSD 15.1 Beta 1 AMD64 install media this morning, the KDE Plasma desktop option was not presented in any of the installer interfaces.

👁 FreeBSD 15.1 boot


So unfortunately that KDE Plasma desktop option seems to have not made it unless it's otherwise being restricted to certain detected hardware/software state or other limitations. In any event those wanting to try out the FreeBSD 15.1 Beta 1 release can find the download information via the mailing list announcement.

From here there are weekly betas expected until the end of May when the release candidate happens and then if all goes well FreeBSD 15.1-RELEASE will be out on 2 June.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.