Iamdoubz custom freenginx config, tested with Ubuntu 22.04 and 24.04. I was tired of forgetting what I used to compile freenginx so I made my own repo.

Enhancements

Support for H3/QUIC
Brotli compression
Zstandard compression
GeoIP2
Headers-More
Post-quantum TLS key exchange (via OpenSSL)
KTLS (requires kernel 5.10+)
debug

Everything except H3 and post-quantum can be turned off with a --no-* flag.

Dependencies

You need sudo and these packages:

sudo apt install build-essential git curl unzip cmake pkg-config libzstd-dev

libzstd-dev isn't needed if you build with --no-zstd.

Additional Packages

The script downloads these itself:

PCRE2
zlib
openssl
libmaxminddb, installed system-wide unless the pinned version is already installed. It isn't needed if you build with --no-geoip2.

How to download

Please use the provided script freenginx.sh. Make sure to make it executable first sudo chmod +x freenginx.sh. Then run it with ./freenginx.sh.

By default only the build steps are printed and all output goes to a log file in the build root. Options:

-v stream all build output (still logged), -q print only errors and the final summary
-r DIR build root, -j N parallel jobs, -l FILE log file, -c run make clean first
--no-brotli, --no-zstd, --no-geoip2, --no-headers, --no-ktls, --no-debug
--asm build OpenSSL with its assembly optimizations (AES-NI etc.); the default is no-asm
--check-updates look up the newest version of each versioned package and show it in the build steps and final summary, e.g. openssl-3.6.5 (cached - update available v3.6.6, newest v4.1.0). The build still uses your pinned versions. Modules tracked by git (GeoIP2, Brotli, Zstd) are always pulled, so they aren't checked.
Versions can be set from the environment: V_NGINX=1.31.6 V_QSSL=3.6.5 ./freenginx.sh

If a step fails, the script stops and prints the end of the log.

Make a backup of your existing binary

Type which nginx and make a copy i.e. sudo cp /usr/sbin/nginx /usr/sbin/nginx_apt. NOTE: if you have not installed nginx, you do not have to do this step. NOTE: this script for freenginx is built as a drop in replacement for nginx.

Install newly compiled binary

cd /path/to/buildroot/nginx-release-<version>
sudo make install
Check nginx sudo nginx -t
Reload nginx sudo nginx -s reload
Verify new version sudo nginx -v should output nginx version: freenginx/<version> (w/GeoIP2,Brotli,Zstd,H3,Headers-More,Quantum,debug,KTLS)
Optionally free up disk space with ./freenginx.sh --purge (same -r and versions as the build). It refuses to run if the built binary doesn't match /usr/sbin/nginx.