From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG  Tue Sep 28 14:02:34 2010
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Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 08:02:30 -0600 (MDT)
From: Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com>
To: Ryan Coleman <ryan.coleman@cwis.biz>
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Cc: jmc-freebsd2@milibyte.co.uk, perryh@pluto.rain.com,
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Subject: Re: Free BSD 8.1
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On Tue, 28 Sep 2010, Ryan Coleman wrote:
>
> As I understand it: The OS itself is stable, but the ports are constantly in flux and may be issues.

During a FreeBSD release, the ports tree is "frozen" and port updates 
are delayed.  So a FreeBSD release really does come with with a somewhat 
stale and stable set of ports... which is immediately followed by a 
flurry of port updates as the ports tree is unfrozen.  Often these 
updates include major applications like xorg, with time-consuming 
upgrade procedures.

The snapshot of ports on a -release grows increasingly stale.  After a 
while, it's easier to update the ports tree before installing anything.