FreeBSD 6 is coming too fast

[Chuck Swiger]

Patrick Dung wrote:
> I have read the recent status report.
> IMHO, FreeBSD 5-stable is still not as stable as 4.x series. FreeBSD-5
> will have a short livetime when FreeBSD-6 comes.

Software version numbering is an inexact science at best, just like logistics.

I agree that 4.x is more stable than 5.x is now.  However, I suspect people 
remember issues with 5.0 or 5.1 more clearly than they remember using 4.0 or 4.1.

> May someone who work in large companies tell us their experience that
> FreeBSD 4 or 5 is installed for servers now, please?

Most of my machines are at 4.10 or 4.11.  I've got two production systems 
running 5.3 which have been doing just fine, too, and I'll be building out new 
machines with 5.x, but I don't plan on replacing a 4.x system unless I need 
to.  (Some of the older boxes I have are getting up there, so I have been 
migrating services off of the older P2-grade machines onto the new 5.x boxes, 
especially the ones with IDE rather than SCSI disks.)

Anyway, it's useful to change the OS major version # whenever libc or other 
aspects of the system API change in such a critical fashion that it is 
advisable to recompile all software for the new OS version.  Sure, 
compatibility shims exist, but system VM takes twice the hit for the standard 
shared library overhead.

However, some people like having a new major release each year, or even prefer 
the Win98/Win2000/Win2003 naming convention of using yearname as the major 
version #.  I'm not that found of it myself, although I suppose it makes sense 
for certain inherently time-fragile software like accounting and tax-filing 
software, or for online encyclopedia's and such.

-- 
-Chuck

PS: This thread would be incomplete without a mention of:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/freebsd-versions.html