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> FreeBSD does update quickly and if you aren't frequently updating your server you can be left behind; it's not noticeable until you try to update and a bunch of packages break, or your jails are no longer running the same major version as their host and that causes subtle bugs. In modern times, point releases tend to be about once a year, which doesn't seem too frequent to me? But if you use pkg, and the new point release added a syscall, you will have problems installing new packages (or upgrading) once the package builders update; I don't quite remember the timeline, but it's usually a few months after the point release. (Although, I think there was a time where pkg would default to a faster updating repository, and you might see problems sooner) My upgrade process is a bit laborious (freebsd-update -r ... upgrade; freebsd-update install; shutdown -r now; freebsd-upgrade install; pkg update; pkg upgrade; reboot). Might be another pkg command I forgot, but it will likely prompt you. If you're not interested in upgrading everything together at once, ports is probably a better choice. Sometimes after an OS upgrade, you'll need to install a compat port to continue to run old software; it's possible to do that with pkg, but IMHO, it's difficult to get the compat package installed without upgrading other packages, and then you may as well upgrade everything. Personally, I don't find docker-compose simple. Probably from lack of experience, but I find it hides so much that makes it much more difficult to debug. Most of the time, I'd rather run everything in a single host, but I'm encouraged to use docker-compose by my workplace, so... |
The previous release in the branch gets dropped after ~3 months, probably aligned to the end of the month that its EOL lands in; then pkg builders switch to the newer release in the branch.