FreeBSD 13.5 launches with multiple tweaks, fixes, and updated packages

After being around for almost four years, FreeBSD 13.x now receives the sixth and final release. However, the development team will continue to support the stable/13 branch until the end of April, 2026. Officially released into the wild earlier today, FreeBSD 13.5 is available for a comprehensive set of architectures: amd64, i386, aarch64, armv6, armv7, powerpc, powerpc64, powerpc64le, powerpcspe, and riscv64.

Since the 13.4 update, FreeBSD 13.5 has addressed ten security issues, the oldest ones being dated September 19, 2024, and the most recent having been issued on February 21st, 2025. The list of updated contributed software includes libpcap and tcpdump, both sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation, expat, less, file, xz, and a few others.

In terms of hardware support, FreeBSD 13.5 now handles Purism coreboot keyboards and Brainboxes USB-to-Serial adapters. Additionally, Realtek 8156/8156B support was moved from dce to ure. Disk latency in gstat now features microsecond precision.

While the documentation received several minor updates, another important change is the removal of the KDE desktop environment from the installer images. The reason for this decision is that KDE faces compatibility issues with OpenSSL 1.1.1, as well as upcoming package breakages.

FreeBSD 13.5 downloadables can be found on this page. In this location, those interested in moving up can also find the FreeBSD 14.2-related files. In both cases, these files include installers, VMs, and SD card images.