FreeBSD 14.4-RELEASE is out, the fifth release on the stable/14 branch. It’s aimed at users who aren’t ready to move to FreeBSD 15 yet, and it brings a solid set of backported improvements rather than anything dramatic.
<h2>What’s new</h2>
OpenSSH is upgraded to 10.0p2, with the post-quantum key exchange algorithm <code>mlkem768x25519-sha256</code> enabled by default. That’s a meaningful security update for anyone running SSH servers.
OpenZFS moves to 2.2.9, and OpenSSL and XZ both get minor version bumps.
Bhyve picks up two notable changes: VMs can now share host filesystems via <code>p9fs(4)</code> (9P filesystem over VirtIO), and a bug causing hangs on AMD systems with recent Windows guests has been fixed.
New hardware support includes:
<ul>
<li>Fujitsu RAID Controller SAS D3116</li>
<li>NVMe on Google Compute C4 instances</li>
<li>Intel Ethernet E610 NICs</li>
<li>ACPI support for the Intel IWLWIFI driver</li>
</ul>
<code>nuageinit</code> also gets improved cloud-init compatibility, which matters if you’re running FreeBSD on cloud infrastructure.
<h2>Availability</h2>
14.4 supports amd64, i386, aarch64, armv7, powerpc, powerpc64, and riscv64. Images are available as ISO, USB, VM disk images, OCI containers, and through AWS EC2, Google Compute Engine, and Azure.
Support runs until December 31, 2026.
The release is dedicated to the memory of Ken Smith, who led FreeBSD Release Engineering for many years.

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FreeBSD 14.4-RELEASE is now available as the fifth release on the stable/14 branch, targeting users not yet ready to migrate to FreeBSD 15. Key updates include OpenSSH upgraded to 10.0p2 with post-quantum key exchange (mlkem768x25519-sha256) enabled by default, OpenZFS 2.2.9, and minor bumps to OpenSSL and XZ. Bhyve gains host filesystem sharing via p9fs over VirtIO and a fix for AMD hangs with recent Windows guests. New hardware support covers Fujitsu RAID controllers, NVMe on Google Compute C4, Intel E610 NICs, and ACPI for IWLWIFI. Cloud-init compatibility in nuageinit is also improved. The release supports multiple architectures and is available via ISO, USB, VM images, OCI containers, and major cloud providers through December 31, 2026.

FreeBSD 14.4 released with OpenSSH 10, post-quantum crypto, and new hardware support