Question: the stable edition of Freebsd

[Jerry McAllister]

On Mon, Nov 03, 2008 at 12:53:52PM -0600, Steven Susbauer wrote:

> Jerry McAllister wrote:
> >On Mon, Nov 03, 2008 at 10:01:21PM +0800, Alex Zhang wrote:
> >
> >>Dear Support:
> >> I'm a newcomer and want to install FreeBSD for study. Could you pls let 
> >>me
> >>know which the stable edition of FreeBSD now?
> >>
> >>And let me know how to subscribe the Q&A list that I prefer.
> >>
> >>Thanks in advance.
> >>
> >
> >All of this is well documented on the FreeBSD website (www.freebsd.org)
> >
> >For informatino on the mailing lists, go to:
> >  http://www.freebsd.org/community/mailinglists.html
> >or
> >  http://lists.FreeBSD.org/mailman/listinfo and look around.
> >
> >The version setup in FreeBSD can be a little confusing for newcomers
> >because the terms stable and current are used in very specific ways - 
> >formally defined rather than in the more loose general conversation
> >way we often use them.
> >
> >Current is the bleeding edge of development work - nothing is guaranteed
> >and stable is the development branch that is actually intended to 
> >eventually
> >become the next new version -- rather than current being the official 
> >present version out or stable being the most reliable version as one might 
> >guess from just the words before studying the documentation..
> >Check this part of the handbook:
> > 
> >http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/current-stable.html
> >
> >If you are a FreeBSD beginning, what you want is a RELEASE version.
> >The latest at the moment are 6.3 and 7.0    In the present form of
> >the web page, the latest RELEASEs plus the next two are listed right
> >there on the first page.
> >
> >Other information on upcoming releases can be found on the Release
> >Engineering page:
> >                   http://www.freebsd.org/releng/index.html
> >
> >By the way, "releng" stands for Release Engineering here and when
> >you track a version for security updates you track a RELENG version.
> >
> >So, if you installed FreeBSD 7.1, then in your csupfile you would put:
> >
> >  *default tag=RELENG_7_1
> >
> >That would get you the security updates for FreeBSD 7.1
> >
> >If you wanted to jump up to stable you would put:
> >
> >  *default tag=RELENG_7
> >
> >and that would be the stable version of the FreeBSD 7 branch.
> >But, the funny thing about it is that the STABLE line is not mean
> >that it is actually stable.   They try to assure that it compiles
> >and builds.   And, usually it is pretty good.   But it hasn't gone
> >through all the official builds and been run against all the known
> >problem sets as has a RELEASE when it is 'released'.
> >
> >So, for now, just install a RELEASE - probably 7.1 if you can wait
> >or 7.0 right now and track the security fixes by csup-ing to RELENG_7_1
> >or RELENG_7_0
> >
> >Have fun,
> >
> >////jerry
> If using a release, can he not use freebsd-update to keep current on
> fixes rather than rebuilding everything? On a slow system, the more
> binary the better.

As far as I know.

But, somehow I feel cleaner doing the whole thing.
I haven't found the builds to take all that long.   This system
is not blindingly fast but, I suppose there are others that are
much slower.

////jerry

> 
>  -Steve
> 
>