How "safe" is 5.2 to use?

[Kevin D. Kinsey, DaleCo, S.P.]

-----Original Message-----

> From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org] On Behalf Of David Meier
> Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2004 1:19 PM
> To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> Subject: How "safe" is 5.2 to use?
>
> Hello list,
>
> I am relatively new to the world of FreeBSD. But first, congrats to the
> new release! I am somewhat insecure on how trustfully I can use the new
> release for my intended use (and I hope my questions haven't been 
> posted a
> zillion times before). Therefore I hope the FreeBSD nuts can advise me
> whether to go for 4.9 or 5.2.



Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC wrote:

>
> On Jan 13, 2004, at 4:45 AM, Vahric MUHTARYAN wrote:
>
>> Hi ,
>>
>> You have to use FreeBSD 4.9, because you can see in freebsd web page
>> prodcution version is 4.9. and please test it maybe you will see you 
>> can not
>> install 5.2 on your hardware because when I try to install 5.1 on my 
>> intel
>> platform I faced a problem then now I'm using 4.9 . Everybody will 
>> say that
>> wait until more tested version and now its 4.9
>>
>
> Which begs the question.  Will FBSD 5 ever be deemed worthy for 
> production use?  Over the last year it was said in this list:  5.1 is 
> still a testing version not recommended for production, but 5.2 will 
> be better suited for production.
>
> I intend to transition a less used production server from 4.7 to 5.2 
> sometime in the next month, and we'll see how it goes.    There are 
> certain things I would like from 5...
>
> Chad


The "roadmap" now says that 5.X will branch to
-STABLE around the time of 5.3, instead of the
earlier prediction of 5.2.  It seems likely that
folks will take that with a grain of salt, but
perhaps we can be appreciative of the fact that
the RELENG team wants a little extra time to
make sure things are, well, stable before they
name it as such.

It's not unlike a lot of other projects; I've created
a website in two weeks, and I've another that's
crawled on for well over a year.  Some things are
that way, and let's remember the adage "beggars
can't be choosers."  I think it would be difficult to
find a large project that hasn't suffered from things
like "feature creep...."  For a "free" (in the best
sense of the word) OS, we've got a Good Thing going here.

FWIW, I'm running 5.1 pretty well in a server environment
at the present, and just built 5.2 yesterday; everything
seems normal and is working well (pending successful completion
of portupgrade, sometime tomorrow, probably ;-) )....

Kevin Kinsey