FreeCORE 15.1-RC1

Applications, Bastille, expanded ACME and compatibility changes in the first 15.1 release candidate.

FreeCORE 15.1-RC1 is the first release candidate on the 15.1 line. It adds Applications and Bastille, expands DNS certificate automation, and updates the web interface and middleware. It includes the changes in 15.0-U1.4.

Release date: 8 September 2026

RC1 is for evaluation, not production. Test it on a system you can restore or reinstall. The published CORE compatibility results do not establish that every new catalog application or deployment works correctly.

Applications and Jails

• Applications runs native FreeBSD OCI images from a signed catalog, using a daemonless Podman runtime. Each application has isolated networking and declared ports, storage and settings.
• Bastille is an opt-in jail engine alongside iocage, with its own release store, templates, mount points and lifecycle controls.
• iocage moves to 1.13 and adds jail storage migration between pools.
• The iocage plugin store is retired. Existing plugin jails remain available through Jails. See Plugins, Jails and Applications before moving an existing workload.

Certificates and Dashboard

• ACME DNS adds Cloudflare, DigitalOcean, OVHcloud and Shell authenticators alongside Amazon Route 53. See Requesting ACME Certificates for issuance and renewal.
• The Guests dashboard card shows VM, jail and application resource use. GPU cards appear when a recognized graphics driver is explicitly configured; available statistics depend on the hardware and driver.

Platform Changes

• The web interface moves to Angular 22, with updated Material and TypeScript 6.
• Middleware moves to Python 3.12.
• JSON-RPC 2.0 over WebSocket is available alongside the inherited protocol.
• QEMU Guest Agent is opt-in for FreeCORE running as a QEMU/KVM or Proxmox VE guest.
• tcphpts and tcp_rack are available as loadable modules.

VM Compatibility

15.1 supports UEFI VMs. Existing GRUB and UEFI-CSM definitions remain visible, but cannot run or be edited. Their disks are not converted. Prepare and test UEFI boot while still on 15.0; see VM Firmware in FreeCORE 15.1.

RC1 Application Checks

After installing an application, check its service or portal as well as the container's running state. Review the image's data-permission requirements. A catalog entry being signed does not prove that the application starts with every dataset layout.

An initial installation failure can occur before an installed entry and its Logs action are available. Preserve the failed job error and image identity when reporting it. The Applications guide also covers replacement, removal and persistent data.

Install or Update

15.1 uses the separate FreeCORE-15.1-STABLE train. Despite the train name, its current release is RC1. Staying on FreeCORE-15.0-STABLE keeps a system on the maintained 15.0 line. Review the compatibility notes and back up the system configuration and workload data before choosing 15.1.

The exact installer is FreeCORE-15.1-RC1.iso, with a detached signature and SHA-256 file. Use the installation guide's verification procedure with this exact filename and digest:

a95a77d6ac5509bed54b395e9cf7bcfdb041e91c4dc47fd75f16507d4ba4c8f5

See the published test evidence, website changelog and Getting Help when evaluating or reporting a problem.