Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 13:22:15 -0700 From: David Syphers <dsyphers@u.washington.edu> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Cc: Younes Al-Hroub <y5wars@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: Which Release to Download? Message-ID: <200409091322.15452.dsyphers@u.washington.edu> In-Reply-To: <200409091513.i89FDuS01592@clunix.cl.msu.edu> References: <200409091513.i89FDuS01592@clunix.cl.msu.edu>
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On Thursday 09 September 2004 08:13 am, Jerry McAllister wrote: > > At this point, unless you have some critical application that needs the > > proven stability of 4.x, I don't see a good reason for a new user to > > start there. Given that you want it for learning, I would say the > > choice is between 5.2.1 and waiting for 5.3 (which will be a full > > production release) in a few weeks. > > This is really the opposite of the best official advice that is given. > Unless you have a strong reason for needing 5.xxx, then installing 4.10 > is a good idea. It is the officially stable production system. True > that 5.2.1 is basically quite reliable now, but there is no reason not > to use the official production release > which is 4.10. I disagree. I think a completely new user should start with 5.x - there's no reason to learn the details of how 4.x works, just to have significant portions of that knowledge become obsolete in a month. I wouldn't use 5.2.1 on a production machine, but it's perfectly fine for a desktop or learning machine. > > If you plan to use FreeBSD as your main desktop OS you might want to > > wait for 5.3, otherwise the upgrade from 5.2.1 to 5.3 shouldn't be too > > hard, and it's part of the learning process. > > It would also be part of the learning process to move from 4.10 > to 5.3 which would be a little more radical move when it comes. I don't think a new user should try his first make world as a move from 5.2.1 to 5.3. There are quite a lot of pitfalls along the way, including the installation of a new gcc version (there are around 40 entries in /usr/src/UPDATING relevant to the upgrade). And I wouldn't wish a 4.10-to-5.3 source upgrade on anyone (though it is possible). Personally, I would wait the approximately 3 days until 5.3-BETA4 is available, and use that. Then the original poster can play around with FreeBSD for a while, and by the time 5.3-RELEASE comes out, might be ready for a straightforward source upgrade. -David -- +++ Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot. +++
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