NetBSD Formal Releases

The latest formal release is NetBSD 9.3.

Formal releases of NetBSD are intended to provide a stable, supported platform on which people can base their work. They provide a balance between features and stability.

Why use a formal release?

Because they are well-tested and made relatively infrequently, formal releases are useful for people who don't want to be on the bleeding edge of development, or who just want to run applications. Since formal releases are effectively unchanging (there are typically very few official patches made to them), they are relatively easy to support, both by NetBSD's developers and the developers of applications. The biggest problem with running the latest formal release of NetBSD is that you don't have access to the latest features and bug fixes in the development tree.

If you're not the type of person who'd be willing to upgrade your operating system on a semi-daily basis, or if you want a system that is relatively easy to install and upgrade, a formal release of NetBSD is for you.

How to obtain updates for formal releases

For those who do not wish to wait for the next release, we have daily updated snapshots of the release branches available via FTP.

The directories /pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-release-8 and /pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-release-9 contain the extracted sources plus weekly updated tar files of the 8 and 9 release branches respectively. These files are created in a similar manner to those in the /pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-current directory.

You can also use binaries of the stable branches created regularily (depending on age of the branch and available build time from about daily to once a week). Follow the link to latest daily netbsd-8 build or latest daily netbsd-9 build for the respectives branches latest stable binaries. Or if you want to try -current, check the latest daily HEAD build.

Currently supported releases

The NetBSD-8 and NetBSD-9 branches are currently being maintained.

The NetBSD-7 and older branches have reached End-Of-Life and are no longer supported.

A NetBSD major release, including all minor releases of the major release, generally becomes unspported one month after the release date of the second succeeding major release. Should the time between major releases become significantly shorter than they currently are, we will revisit our support policy and modify it as needed.

The latest release is NetBSD 9.3.

History of NetBSD releases

Version Released End of support
NetBSD 9.3 August 4, 2022  
NetBSD 9.2 May 12, 2021  
NetBSD 9.1 October 18, 2020  
NetBSD 9.0 February 14, 2020  
NetBSD 8.2 March 30, 2020  
NetBSD 8.1 May 31, 2019  
NetBSD 8.0 July 17, 2018  
NetBSD 7.2 August 29, 2018 June 30, 2020
NetBSD 7.1.2 March 15, 2018  
NetBSD 7.1.1 December 22, 2017  
NetBSD 7.1 March 11, 2017  
NetBSD 7.0.2 October 21, 2016  
NetBSD 7.0.1 May 22, 2016  
NetBSD 7.0 September 25, 2015  
NetBSD 6.1.5 September 22, 2014 August 23, 2018
NetBSD 6.1.4 April 12, 2014  
NetBSD 6.1.3 January 18, 2014  
NetBSD 6.1.2 September 26, 2013  
NetBSD 6.1.1 August 15, 2013  
NetBSD 6.1 May 18, 2013  
NetBSD 6.0.6 September 22, 2014  
NetBSD 6.0.5 April 12, 2014  
NetBSD 6.0.4 January 27, 2014  
NetBSD 6.0.3 September 30, 2013  
NetBSD 6.0.2 May 18, 2013  
NetBSD 6.0.1 December 26, 2012  
NetBSD 6.0 October 17, 2012  
NetBSD 5.2.3 November 15, 2014 November 11, 2015
NetBSD 5.2.2 January 27, 2014  
NetBSD 5.2.1 September 28, 2012  
NetBSD 5.2 December 3, 2012  
NetBSD 5.1.5 November 15, 2014  
NetBSD 5.1.4 January 27, 2014  
NetBSD 5.1.3 September 28, 2012  
NetBSD 5.1.2 February 2, 2012  
NetBSD 5.1 November 19, 2010  
NetBSD 5.0.2 February 12, 2010  
NetBSD 5.0.1 August 2, 2009  
NetBSD 5.0 April 29, 2009  
NetBSD 4.0.1 October 14, 2008  
NetBSD 4.0 December 19, 2007  
NetBSD 3.1 November 4, 2006 May 30, 2009
NetBSD 3.0.2 November 4, 2006  
NetBSD 3.0.1 July 24, 2006  
NetBSD 3.0 December 23, 2005  
NetBSD 2.1 November 02, 2005 August 21, 2008
NetBSD 2.0.3 October 31, 2005  
NetBSD 2.0.2 April 14, 2005  
NetBSD 2.0.1 tagged, but no binaries released  
NetBSD 2.0 December 9, 2004  
NetBSD 1.6.2 March 1, 2004 May 17, 2006
NetBSD 1.6.1 April 21, 2003  
NetBSD 1.6 September 14, 2002  
NetBSD 1.5.3 July 22, 2002  
NetBSD 1.5.2 September 13, 2001  
NetBSD 1.5.1 July 11, 2001  
NetBSD 1.5 December 6, 2000  
NetBSD 1.4.3 November 25, 2000  
NetBSD 1.4.2 March 21, 2000  
NetBSD 1.4.1 August 26, 1999  
NetBSD 1.4 May 12, 1999  
NetBSD 1.3.3 December 23, 1998  
NetBSD 1.3.2 May 29, 1998  
NetBSD 1.3 January 4, 1998  
NetBSD 1.2.1 May 20, 1997  
NetBSD 1.2 October 4, 1996  
NetBSD 1.1 November 26, 1995  
NetBSD 1.0 October 26, 1994  
NetBSD 0.9 August 23, 1993  
NetBSD 0.8 April 20, 1993