FreeCORE 15.1-RC5

The modernized web interface, jail controls on every Bastille row, a Guest Agent that switches itself on, and the unblocked move from 15.0, in the fifth 15.1 release candidate.

FreeCORE 15.1-RC5 is the fifth release candidate on the 15.1 line. It moves the web interface onto the modernized shell, completes the Bastille and Applications controls, and unblocks the train switch from 15.0. It includes the fixes in 15.0-U1.8 and everything in 15.1-RC4.

Release date: 29 September 2026

RC5 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 catalog application or migrated workload works correctly.

Web Interface

• The interface moves onto the modernized shell: one surface ladder and icon set, buttons in three tiers, uniform tables, dialogs, menus and forms, and a compact login. Pages keep their places and their behavior — the same interface on one visual system, not a reorganization.
• The Dashboard shows compact cards of uniform width and height: the pools in one Pools card, plain counts for the facts, and a Guests card that keeps its frame and aggregates a family that does not fit.
• Try it without installing: the interactive demo runs this interface on recorded appliance responses.

Applications

• The catalog is a picker row with a tile strip, in the shape 13.3 gave Plugins, and Install opens its form in place under the strip instead of at the bottom of the page.
• Installed applications are a table in the Jails shape: the same row actions in the row expander, lower-case state words, and declared runtime health beside the state.
• The store can be unconfigured from the interface. Keep-data is the default; without it, orphaned application data is removed with the store.

Bastille

• Start, Stop and Restart on each Bastille jail row — the same controls the iocage rows beside them have.

Virtual Machines

• On a QEMU/KVM guest, the Guest Agent switches itself on when the host offers a guest-agent channel, so a fresh FreeCORE guest reports to its host without a manual service change.
• The VM web console's extra-keys panel shows its Ctrl, Alt, Windows, Tab, Esc and Ctrl-Alt-Del buttons again instead of six empty rings.

Reporting

• The laundry memory graph and the ARC metadata-miss counters have their collectors back, and the charts keep their proportions, complete axis labels and place on the normal page scroller.

Jails

• A FreeBSD release that download.freebsd.org has withdrawn is fetched from archive.freebsd.org instead, so a 13.x jail can be created again.

Update

• Selecting the 15.1 train from 15.0 works again: the obsolete GRUB admission gates are removed from the update validator and the ISO check, so the switch is no longer refused before it starts.
• The Remove Captured Return job dialog closes itself when the removal succeeds, instead of staying open with no Close button.

Base System

• The unused Netgraph userland (ngctl, nghook, flowctl and libnetgraph) is removed from the image; it shipped without a kernel side to talk to.

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.

Install or Update

RC1 through RC4 systems receive this candidate on the FreeCORE-15.1-STABLE train. Applications and Bastille jails installed on RC4 keep running unchanged.

From 15.0, the notes for RC1 still apply: update to 15.0-U1.3 or later first, and the move to FreeCORE-15.1-STABLE is one-way. Staying on FreeCORE-15.0-STABLE keeps a system on the maintained 15.0 line. Back up the system configuration and workload data before choosing 15.1.

The exact installer is FreeCORE-15.1-RC5.iso, with a detached signature and SHA-256 file. Use the installation guide's verification procedure with this exact filename and digest:

a10afb0a777a9086a7cdf286a6c9a3c5d43910e4ee9d5cabd304d47af7bf8116

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