FreeBSD 15.1 Ships With Wi-Fi Drivers Rebased on Linux 7.0, Boot-Time Scheduler Selection, and Unicode 17
FreeBSD 15.1-RELEASE arrived June 16, 2026 with LinuxKPI wireless drivers tracking Linux 7.0, a tunable to pick the kernel scheduler at boot, and Unicode 17 support.
Editor's Note ·
- Correction:
- The article describes Colin Percival as "the project's Release Engineering Lead." The cited FreeBSD announcement and the freebsd-announce mailing-list roster identify him as the Release Engineering Deputy Lead; Ed Maste is the Release Engineering Lead.
Overview
The FreeBSD Project released FreeBSD 15.1-RELEASE on June 16, 2026, the second release of the stable/15 branch, according to the FreeBSD Project. The release was announced by Colin Percival, the project’s Release Engineering Lead, on the freebsd-announce mailing list. It headlines updated wireless networking drivers tracking the Linux kernel, a new mechanism for choosing the kernel scheduler at boot, and refreshed Unicode support.
What We Know
The most prominent change targets wireless networking. “The iwlwifi(4) and other LinuxKPI based wireless networking drivers are now based on Linux v7.0,” the FreeBSD Project states in its announcement. FreeBSD uses LinuxKPI, a compatibility layer that lets the project reuse Linux driver code, to keep pace with Wi-Fi hardware support. The release notes add that initial support for LinuxKPI-based wireless drivers, notably iwlwifi(4), was enabled on RISC-V systems, per the FreeBSD release notes. OpenSourceFeed similarly reports that the iwlwifi(4) driver and other LinuxKPI-based wireless networking drivers have been rebased to Linux v7.0.
The release also introduces boot-time scheduler selection. “A new kern.sched.name tunable allows the kernel scheduler to be selected at boot time,” according to the FreeBSD Project. The release notes explain that the GENERIC kernel configuration on amd64 now includes both the SCHED_ULE and SCHED_4BSD schedulers, allowing users to choose between them at boot, as detailed in the FreeBSD release notes.
Localization support was refreshed. “Unicode support has been updated to Unicode 17.0.0 and CLDR 48, adding 4,803 characters,” the FreeBSD Project notes. The release notes specify that the update also adds 4 new scripts, according to the FreeBSD release notes.
On the toolchain side, the project reports continued work on the latest C standard. “Significant progress has been made towards complete support for the C23 version of the C programming language,” per the FreeBSD Project.
Several bundled components were updated. OpenSSL has been updated to version 3.5.6 and OpenZFS has been updated to version 2.4.2, according to the FreeBSD release notes.
The release continues FreeBSD’s shift toward a package-managed base system for cloud deployments. “FreeBSD cloud images using packaged base systems now include pkg(8), and support automatic base system package updates on first boot,” the FreeBSD Project states.
FreeBSD 15.1-RELEASE is available for amd64, aarch64, armv7, powerpc64, powerpc64le, and riscv64 architectures, per the freebsd-announce mailing list. The same announcement lists support for 15.1-RELEASE running until March 31, 2027.
What We Don’t Know
The release materials describe the C23 work as ongoing rather than complete, and do not specify which remaining standard features are outstanding. The announcement frames the LinuxKPI rebase to Linux v7.0 without enumerating the specific new wireless chipsets gaining support as a result. The project also has not published in these materials a date for the next point release in the series, beyond noting that the broader FreeBSD 15 release series is supported through the end of the decade.