FreeBSD 12.2 released

FreeBSD 12.2 has been released. Changes include updates for the wireless stack for better 802.11n and 802.11ac support, the latest versions of OpenSSL and OpenSSH, and much more. On top of the changes comes an announcement in the release notes of a change for the i386 versions of FreeBSD, starting with FreeBSD 13.0.

Starting with FreeBSD-13.0, the default CPUTYPE for the i386 architecture will change from 486 to 686.

This means that, by default, binaries produced will require a 686-class CPU, including but not limited to binaries provided by the FreeBSD Release Engineering team. FreeBSD 13.0 will continue to support older CPUs, however users needing this functionality will need to build their own releases for official support.

This won't affect most users, but people with very specific needs should take note.