FreeBSD 13.0-RC4 Released With POWER Fixes, Other Bugs Addressed

Last week saw FreeBSD 13.0-RC3 released as an "extra" build due to the fallout from the last minute WireGuard situation. Due to other bugs, FreeBSD 13.0-RC4 was issued today rather than going for the final release.

FreeBSD 13.0-RC4 is now the second unplanned/as-needed release candidate ahead of the big FreeBSD 13.0 debut. FreeBSD 13.0-RC4 fixes an issue with scripted installations and also has several PowerPC fixes. FreeBSD 13.0-RC4 is also rounded out by a NETMAP memory leak fix, an issue with lock-unbound and some IPv6 deployments, updated to OpenSSL 1.1.1k over its recent security issues, and other various bug fixes.

The brief FreeBSD 13.0-RC4 announcement can be found on the FreeBSD mailing list.

This now puts the official FreeBSD 13.0 release around 6 April, unless of course a fifth release candidate is deemed necessary.

FreeBSD 13.0 brings improvements to its freebsd-update utility, a new Linux-compatible copy_file_range system call for efficient file copies, a much improved cryptographic framework within the kernel, AES-NI and armv8crypto are now included by default for the generic kernel builds to improve crypto performance, various new network drivers, efibootmgr EFI boot loader improvements, various ARM hardware support improvements, the default CPU support for the i386 architecture is now i686 rather than i486, and other hardware improvements. Intel users should also be able to find much better performance on recent hardware generations.