[FreeBSD-Announce] FreeBSD 12.0 end-of-life

[Yuri Pankov]

On 19 Feb 2020, at 11:52, Ottavio Caruso via freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions at freebsd.org> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 19 Feb 2020 at 00:49, Yuri Pankov <yuripv at yuripv.me> wrote:
>> 
>> On 18 Feb 2020, at 20:39, Tomasz CEDRO <tomek at cedro.info> wrote:
>>> 
>>> On Tue, Feb 18, 2020 at 3:51 PM Ed Maste <emaste at freebsd.org> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> On Tue, 18 Feb 2020 at 05:37, Tomasz CEDRO <tomek at cedro.info> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Maybe its a time to give OpenBSD a try..
>>>> 
>>>> I really don't understand this comment, either. Certainly give OpenBSD
>>>> a try and if it fits your needs better that's great.
>>>> 
>>>> As far as I'm aware OpenBSD issues a release every six months and
>>>> supports the most recent two releases, so it seems odd to me to
>>>> complain about FreeBSD's ~1 year minor release support lifetime and 5
>>>> year stable branch support lifetime in that context.
>>> 
>>> Its more like "lets try if what I need works better over there". Not
>>> really the release timeline.
>>> 
>>> The release timeline problem is more related with pushing untested
>>> features (and possible avalanche of solutions that introduce yet
>>> another complications that we observe right now).
>>> 
>>> "The BSD Way", for me, was always about "it works solid or its not
>>> there". Like macOS / iOS.
>>> 
>>> Unlike "The Linux Way" where things changes upside down from release
>>> to release and each one of them has its own universe of variants. Like
>>> Android.
>>> 
>>> I am not sure if it is that important if there is a release in 6 month
>>> or 2 years. Not a problem at all. If in two years I get a 5 new
>>> features that work rock solid then it seems a better choice than
>>> getting new features every six months and have more problems on a
>>> production because of that.
>>> 
>>> If I need to experiment there is a CURRENT branch. For well tested
>>> features I have STABLE. For rock solid "I bet my money on that" I have
>>> a RELEASE. Right?
>>> 
>>> I did miss the 12.0 EoL kind of fix for DRM, sorry, it seems
>>> reasonable. I am just worried that 12.2-RELEASE will have the same
>>> problems, if not more new problems.
>> 
>> It is something you can help with, run 12.2-STABLE on some spare equipment and report problems that affect *your* environment.
> 
> To a beginner and uninitiated like me, the way FreeBSD labels
> "stable", "release", "releng" and "current" is, at the very least,
> confusing.

Thankfully, it is documented: https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/current-stable.html <https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/current-stable.html>.