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FreeBSD is a tremendous project. I've used it since the 4.x days, first for work (web/mail/database hosting, at the time) and then for personal projects. I hav

FreeBSD is a tremendous project. I've used it since the 4.x days, first for work (web/mail/database hosting, at the time) and then for personal projects. I have a 2000-era desktop PC as a personal server that I had left collect dust until very recently after switching to Macs for daily work long ago. It was running 6.1 and I hadn't booted it in a few months shy of ten years. I booted it right up, and in an afternoon proceeded to, in small stages, update it to the latest 12.1 release, which I am running with great stability now, including live repartitioning and better use of the available disk space after going into single-user admin mode. "Recent" improvements that I've been appreciating have been a smaller/more dense console font, easier wireless configuration (it has an Atheros-based PCI wifi card), and easier and more clear package and ports management. AND it still runs fast.

hpkuarg 6y ago
An in-place upgrade from 6.1 to 12.1 without major issues? That is indeed tremendously impressive.
- loeg 6y ago
  I've done the same thing with in-place Fedora upgrades over a similar time-frame. It is impressive, but not unrivaled in the Linux world. (I'm not playing favorites with Linux here: I'm a FreeBSD developer.)
  - agumonkey 6y ago
    There's also a famous video on youtube where some guy installs every versions of windows (maybe not 1 and 2) back to back and it kinda works (passing custom configuration most of the time too)
- rhizome 6y ago
  mergemaster is still a drag
  - crest 6y ago
    FreeBSD 10.0 and newer include etcupdate (and it has been available as port even longer) which improves a lot upon mergemaster through the use of 3way instead of 2way merges. Recent releases also added ways to keep most of your config in your own files (often included from /usr/local/etc) to avoid merge conflicts. Simple systems can often upgrade without any merge conflicts at all.
    - butterisgood 6y ago
      etcupdate is great! Wish it was the documented way to do that step in the manual.
      - 0mp 6y ago
        I'm also using etcupdate. It's also the default for beinstall(8), a very nice tool to install updates into a separate boot environment.

hpkuarg 6y ago

An in-place upgrade from 6.1 to 12.1 without major issues? That is indeed tremendously impressive.

loeg 6y ago
I've done the same thing with in-place Fedora upgrades over a similar time-frame. It is impressive, but not unrivaled in the Linux world. (I'm not playing favorites with Linux here: I'm a FreeBSD developer.)
- agumonkey 6y ago
  There's also a famous video on youtube where some guy installs every versions of windows (maybe not 1 and 2) back to back and it kinda works (passing custom configuration most of the time too)
rhizome 6y ago
mergemaster is still a drag
- crest 6y ago
  FreeBSD 10.0 and newer include etcupdate (and it has been available as port even longer) which improves a lot upon mergemaster through the use of 3way instead of 2way merges. Recent releases also added ways to keep most of your config in your own files (often included from /usr/local/etc) to avoid merge conflicts. Simple systems can often upgrade without any merge conflicts at all.
  - butterisgood 6y ago
    etcupdate is great! Wish it was the documented way to do that step in the manual.
    - 0mp 6y ago
      I'm also using etcupdate. It's also the default for beinstall(8), a very nice tool to install updates into a separate boot environment.