FreeRDP 3.25 landed on April 23, 2026. Developers pushed out binaries to pub.freerdp.com/releases. The Apache-licensed RDP stack now handles experimental AV1 encoding and decoding. But only with FreeRDP servers for now.
A single pull request sparked the AV1 action. PR #12527, authored by akallabeth and merged March 27, hooks into the AOMedia library. No hardware acceleration yet. Build with WITH_GFX_AV1 to test it. RDP graphics channel flags got extended. Clients decode AV1 streams. Servers shadow-encode in the codec. Profiles let admins tweak quality.
Picture this. Remote sessions streaming high-res video over bandwidth-starved links. AV1 crushes H.264 on compression. FreeRDP edges closer to matching proprietary clients. Enterprise IT teams eyeing Linux desktops will notice.
FIDO2 redirection arrived too. MS-RDPEWA channel support means WebAuthn tokens pass through RDP. GitHub release notes call it out. No more jumping between apps for YubiKeys or Touch ID during logins. Security pros get passwordless auth in remote workflows.
And the proxy? Overhauled. NSCodec and RFX modes now work. Smartcard emulation via config files. SAM file integration for local auth. RDP gateways just got flexible for hybrid setups.
SDL3 client shines brighter. Drawing performance spiked. Console output on Windows. Cursor hotspots clamped. HiDPI Wayland sizing fixed. Android UI got a facelift. Small wins, but they stack up for daily drivers.
Smartcard KSP handles NLA auth better. ECC keys logon without hiccups. Minidriver container names sort themselves.
Bugs squashed everywhere. Memory leaks in gdi_create_bitmap and vgids_read_do_fkt plugged. Microphone input regression fixed. Korean keyboard mappings corrected. Ctrl/Alt/Super combos play nice in X11 and SDL. Bitmap cache bounds tightened. Off-by-one errors gone.
Security patch seals CVE-2026-40254. Credentials zeroed before free in NLA/NTLM. Kerberos logging sharpened. No details on the CVE yet, but it’s patched.
FreeRDP.com announcement lists new faces: Kotivskyi, Skinner927, bluca, sitiom, mtixt, MrVampy, ZackaryShen, parasol-aser, svncibrahim. Dozens of PRs merged, from #12497’s WLog prefix to #12585’s smartcard ECC fix.
Phoronix broke the news first. Their April 23 post spotlighted AV1 and FIDO2. X chatter followed. Phoronix tweeted it to 2,500+ views. French dev @_Nidouille_ highlighted AV1 love. Bulgarian site Kaminata echoed in local tongue.
Packages rolling out fast. Arch, Gentoo, FreeBSD bumped to 3.25.0. Alpine edges toward it. Distros like Ubuntu patch prior CVEs, but this release folds in fixes.
FreeRDP traces to 2010. Forked from rdesktop. Powers tools like Remmina, GNOME Connections. Servers run in shadows or proxies. Clients span X11, Wayland, SDL, Win32, Android.
Why care? RDP rules enterprise remote access. Microsoft locks down clients. FreeRDP cracks it open. AV1 hints at video-heavy futures—VDI, cloud gaming over RDP. FIDO2 fits zero-trust mandates. Proxy tweaks suit gateway deployments.
But limits persist. AV1 experimental. Server-only for now. Hardware accel absent. Test in labs first.
Downloads weigh in at 7-13MB: tar.bz2, .gz, .xz, zip. SHA sums and .asc sigs verify integrity.
So grab 3.25. Build AV1-enabled. Fire up a FreeRDP server. Stream some 4K. Authenticate with FIDO. Proxy through NSCodec. It’s ready for prime time tinkering.
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