There are three pfSense platforms, multiple release versions, and development/testing snapshots available. The following describes the available platforms and versions.

Platforms

Three platforms are available.

Live CD with Installer

The Live CD platform allows you to run directly from the CD without installing to a hard drive or Compact Flash card. The configuration can be saved on a floppy disk or USB flash drive. Some features are not compatible with the live CD platform. In most circumstances, this should only be used as an evaluation of the software with your particular hardware.

Hard drive installation

The live CD includes an installer option to install pfSense to the hard drive on your system. This is the preferred means of running pfSense. The entire hard drive must be overwritten, dual booting with another OS is not supported.

Embedded

The embedded version is specifically tailored for use with any hardware using Compact Flash rather than a hard drive. CF cards can only handle a limited number of writes, so the embedded version runs read only from CF, with read/write file systems as RAM disks. 

Stable Version

1.2.3 release

This is a maintenance release in the 1.2 series. It includes several bug fixes and updates for a couple FreeBSD security advisories. Details in the release notes.

1.2.2 release

This is a maintenance release in the 1.2 series. It includes 4 bug fixes since 1.2.1, and updates for a couple FreeBSD security advisories. 

1.2.1 release

This is a maintenance release in the 1.2 series. It provides a number of bug fixes since the original 1.2 release, and changes the base FreeBSD version from 6.2 to 7.0. 

Snapshots

Our snapshot server builds a new image from the code currently in our source code repository every few hours. These are primarily for developers and users testing bug fixes at the request of a developer.

2.0 beta snapshots are available.  

Deprecated Versions

1.0.x release

This is the first release version, no longer recommended for use. It has numerous known bugs and a few security issues patched in newer releases.