> Why not FreeBSD 14.2 as its already available? Because pkg(8) packages are built against ‘oldest’ FreeBSD version in the current tree – which means FreeBSD 14.1 – and that often breaks kernel related packages such as really important drm-kmod or virtualbox-ose-kmod packages.
FreeBSD still lacks basic LTS functionality and keeping distribution coherent.
May be one day some vendor will create LTS distribution based on FreeBSD with at least 5 years support cycle?
unluckily, FreeBSD project uses misleading info here - your apps are OUT of equation here, they do split "base" system (if traffic router is your appliance of choice, you may be fine with that), but all useful stuff is in "ports"/"packages" and is rolling updates.
Just read the next sentence:
> I will upgrade from 14.1 to 14.2 shortly after 14.1 runs out of support – which would guarantee having working pkg(8) packages on FreeBSD 14.2.
The way I'm reading this, you can just move between minors when they expire rather than when the new minor is available:
- stable/14 was released Nov 2023
- 14.0 support ended Sep 2024, move to 14.1
- 14.1 support ends Mar 2025, move to 14.2
Rinse and repeat. stable/13 was released Apr 2021 and the last minor (13.4) is still supported until Jun 2025, it's four years just like the previous major releases. I don't see how any of this shows an operating system that "lacks basic LTS functionality" or "keeping the distribution coherent" -- especially the latter point is strange considering FreeBSD by design is a lot more "coherent" than Linux (whether that's a good thing or not is completely a matter of taste).
Basically each FreeBSD MAJOR version - like 13.x or 14.x had 5 years lifetime/support (like LTS) - it was shortened to 4 years only recently.
Details:
- https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-announce/2024-Jul...