What problem does FreeBSD solve by doing releases the why they do? | Hacker News Reader

What problem does FreeBSD solve by doing releases the why they do?

4 pointstiffanyh4 comments

There’s 3 upcoming freebsd releases:

- v12.4

- v13.2

- v14.0

What problem does FreeBSD solve by doing releases the way they do vs. the Linux approach of an LTS release with incremental updates?

https://www.freebsd.org/

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Stable ABI and compatibility in each line ... and when you want new/more features - you upgrade to newer branch. Newer branch can also have some features removed like some old telnetd(8) or things like that - if for some reason you use/implemented them and still need them - you should stick to your currently used line (like 12.x) and with update from 12.3 to 12.4 these features will still be there for you.

There are also compat packages in pkg(8) repository - which you can use to have FreeBSD 12.x compatibility on FreeBSD 13.x for example. Thanks to the you do not need to recompile/reinstall your packages after upgrade from 12.x to 13.x for example:

    % pkg search compat | awk '/Con/ {print $1}'
    compat10x-amd64-10.4.1004000.20181014
    compat11x-amd64-11.2.1102000.20181014
    compat12x-amd64-12.2.1202000.20210406
    compat4x-i386-5.3_11
    compat5x-amd64-5.4.0.8.1_1
    compat6x-amd64-6.4.604000.200810_3
    compat7x-amd64-7.4.704000.201310.1
    compat8x-amd64-8.4.804000.20151116
    compat9x-amd64-9.3.903000.20170608

Is this model better then LTS model? Its quite similar I would say. You have LTS with incremental updates or you have for example FreeBSD 12.x with security patches and 'major' upgrades with 12.1, then 12.2 etc.

The better thing in the FreeBSD world is that pkg(8) packages are ALWAYS up to date (or upstream) while the FreeBSD base system (12.x or 13.x) remains at what it is. This way you can stay on your prefered supported FreeBSD version and still have latest software with pkg(8). This is simply not possible on Ubnutu LTS or RHEL systems where packages are outdated and old very quickly.

Hope that helps.

Just a quick comment from a developer. One thing I love about Ubuntu is ease of installation and support for non-free firmware. Yes, I'm a horrible person for using non-free firmware. But I dislike how ancient packages in Ubuntu-LTR tend to be. After playing with Debian/Unstable and Debian/Testing, I moved back to Ubuntu-LTR, but now do all my development in a VMs with a recent version of FreeBSD or stock Debian (but mostly FreeBSD.)

I do almost exclusively server development, so I don't know if this would work well if you were developing OpenGL or Vulkan desktop apps, so your mileage may vary. (Or maybe someone can tell me OpenGL or Vulkan support across a VM boundary isn't as dramatic as I am assuming it is.)

> What problem does FreeBSD solve by doing releases the way they do vs. the Linux approach of an LTS release with incremental updates

You're asking for what they do. 12.0, 13.0, and 14.0 are long term supported releases. X.Y where Y != 0 are incremental updates. A major version (X) is planned to be supported for 5 years, but specific minor versions (including the .0) have a shorter timeframe.

Most large changes are reserved for a .0 release, and .Y releases are smaller. Sometimes larger changes do get merged in though.

12.4 and 13.2 are "snapshot" releases: https://www.freebsd.org/snapshots/

TLDR;

Snapshots are interim test releases. Not intended for production systems.

14.0 won't have a release until next year, but they added it to the list of upcoming releases on the web page so you can click on the link and see what the release schedule really is: https://www.freebsd.org/releases/14.0R/schedule/

12.3 is the most recent release from the stable/12 branch. 13.1 is the most recent release from the stable/13 branch. Both are production releases. If you don't need features in 13.x, you may want to consider using 12.y. 12.y will have had more time for bugs to be reported and fixed, but will have fewer new features.

So... I believe the simple answer is there's always an older and a newer production release available. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBSD_version_history has a nice graphic of how long each release is supported. For the past decade, a new major version of FreeBSD has been released about every two years, which is about the cadence Canonical releases a new LTS.

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