Upgrading FreeBSD 8.3 amd64

[Ralf Mardorf]

Thank you Erich :)

ok, so "FreeBSD release" is the version of the kernel and not a
labelling for the collection of all the software.

For Linux major distros there usually is a labelling for the collection
of the software, independent of the kernel version.

On Linux I usually install binaries for the base system and desktop
environment, but for important software, in my case it's audio,
compiling from source is very important.

The author of the snd_hdspe driver for FreeBSD seems to need testers. It
seems to be that nobody ever tested if ADAT is working and I'll test it.
OTOH I suspect bug fixes for the driver have to be added by recompiling
the kernel or at least the driver for the kernel, so I still could use
binaries for the applications.

Since audio on FreeBSD seems to be a niche, I wonder if it's more
promising, to go the source or to go the binary rout.

I suspect if it's impossible or at least less good to mix binaries and
from source build software for FreeBSD, I should chose to build from
source.

Regards,
Ralf