4 ms·

With 14 already out for a long time, do many stay on 13 still?

by 1over137 2y ago

OsrsNeedsf2P 2y ago
Updating to 14 requires a reboot.
- X-Istence 2y ago
  Updating to 13.4-RELEASE also requires a reboot.
  - Abrothies 2y ago
    You are correct, but you can install the new userland without a reboot, you will not get the benefit of an updated kernel though. With FreeBSD 14 you definitely have to reboot.
    - cperciva 2y ago
      Not recommended. We have backwards compatibility but not necessarily forwards compatibility within a stable branch; running a 13.4 userland on a 13.3 kernel could break horribly. (My guess is that it's probably fine, simply because not much has happened on stable/13 in the last 6 months. But it's not uncommon to have e.g. new syscalls MFCed.)
      - Abrothies 2y ago
        I never said that it's recommended, just that you could do it. Actually I completely agree with what you say. I've been forced to try at work a few times though, due to stupid reasons, it has worked out every time except once. Exactly due to what you mention. The one time it didn't work out things exploded beautifully, so the stupid policy that we can't reboot is now scrapped. :-)
- jsiepkes 2y ago
  There are also security errata which require a reboot. Maybe if your device is not connected to a network you can get away with not updating / rebooting. But in 99% of the cases having a 700+ days of uptime is not a good thing anymore.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
X-Istence 2y ago
There are some people that like the stability of staying in a single branch for a longer period of time. Same as for example people staying on RHEL 8 vs RHEL 9 or Ubuntu 22.04 vs 24.04
kev009 2y ago
For general purpose systems it doesn't make much sense to lag a release, the amount of breaking change is pretty minimal in FreeBSD these days and it is fairly common to run -CURRENT (main) in production so there aren't a lot of hidden dangers in a .0 Old school appliance vendors appreciate the old stable branches where they carry a lot of local changes.
cperciva 2y ago
Most people have or should have already moved to 14. Some people can't, for example if they have binary kernel modules; we provide stable kernel interfaces within a major version but not between versions. From my perspective though, the most useful thing about doing legacy branch releases is that it gives us a chance to practice the process. Mike Karels was supposed to be the release engineer for 13.4 -- his first release since BSD 2.x -- before he died on the way home from BSDCan, that is.
nine_k 2y ago
A number of people do not care enough for things getting better. The OS they are running is fine, it solves their problems and does not have gaping holes. But they do care a lot about things getting worse: something breaking during the upgrade, something degrading or becoming incompatible, and requiring more work just to get to the previous position. So an upgrade has basically no upside and a significant possible downside. I'd say that you either live in a rolling mode, when you spread small-scale fixing and adaptation efforts over a long time, or you stick to a particular release and only apply security updates, and never upgrade, but instead build your new iteration from scratch using new versions of everything.
wkat4242 2y ago
Not really no. I moved my desktop to 14 when 14.1 came out. But it's really nice that there's always two production releases so you have plenty of time to migrate.

With 14 already out for a long time, do many stay on 13 still?

OsrsNeedsf2P 2y ago

Updating to 14 requires a reboot.

X-Istence 2y ago
Updating to 13.4-RELEASE also requires a reboot.
- Abrothies 2y ago
  You are correct, but you can install the new userland without a reboot, you will not get the benefit of an updated kernel though. With FreeBSD 14 you definitely have to reboot.
  - cperciva 2y ago
    Not recommended. We have backwards compatibility but not necessarily forwards compatibility within a stable branch; running a 13.4 userland on a 13.3 kernel could break horribly. (My guess is that it's probably fine, simply because not much has happened on stable/13 in the last 6 months. But it's not uncommon to have e.g. new syscalls MFCed.)
    - Abrothies 2y ago
      I never said that it's recommended, just that you could do it. Actually I completely agree with what you say. I've been forced to try at work a few times though, due to stupid reasons, it has worked out every time except once. Exactly due to what you mention. The one time it didn't work out things exploded beautifully, so the stupid policy that we can't reboot is now scrapped. :-)
jsiepkes 2y ago
There are also security errata which require a reboot. Maybe if your device is not connected to a network you can get away with not updating / rebooting. But in 99% of the cases having a 700+ days of uptime is not a good thing anymore.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

X-Istence 2y ago

There are some people that like the stability of staying in a single branch for a longer period of time. Same as for example people staying on RHEL 8 vs RHEL 9 or Ubuntu 22.04 vs 24.04

kev009 2y ago

For general purpose systems it doesn't make much sense to lag a release, the amount of breaking change is pretty minimal in FreeBSD these days and it is fairly common to run -CURRENT (main) in production so there aren't a lot of hidden dangers in a .0 Old school appliance vendors appreciate the old stable branches where they carry a lot of local changes.

cperciva 2y ago

Most people have or should have already moved to 14. Some people can't, for example if they have binary kernel modules; we provide stable kernel interfaces within a major version but not between versions. From my perspective though, the most useful thing about doing legacy branch releases is that it gives us a chance to practice the process. Mike Karels was supposed to be the release engineer for 13.4 -- his first release since BSD 2.x -- before he died on the way home from BSDCan, that is.

nine_k 2y ago

A number of people do not care enough for things getting better. The OS they are running is fine, it solves their problems and does not have gaping holes. But they do care a lot about things getting worse: something breaking during the upgrade, something degrading or becoming incompatible, and requiring more work just to get to the previous position. So an upgrade has basically no upside and a significant possible downside. I'd say that you either live in a rolling mode, when you spread small-scale fixing and adaptation efforts over a long time, or you stick to a particular release and only apply security updates, and never upgrade, but instead build your new iteration from scratch using new versions of everything.

wkat4242 2y ago

Not really no. I moved my desktop to 14 when 14.1 came out. But it's really nice that there's always two production releases so you have plenty of time to migrate.