FreeBSD Versions – Differences Between CURRENT, STABLE, and RELEASE

freebsd

What is the difference between the three FreeBSD versions (Current, Release and Stable)?

Best Answer

Current is the latest "beta" software.

This is what the developers are working on mainly. It has minimal testing, basically if it compiles they'll push it into the repository. If you're interested in developing or testing development version this is what you're looking for.
Release is the software as it first appeared under a certain release version.

This is the software exactly as it was "released". If you're running 9.3-RELEASE then it is that version as originally released, without base or kernel updates. If you update a RELEASE version it will append a revision tag. This is typically what people run when they used precompiled versions of FreeBSD.
Stable is the latest "supported" software within a version branch.

This is tested versions of the software published between releases. It has more rigerous testing than the Current branch, but will change as new fixes and sometimes features are added. It doesn't have the same feature stability a release.

`.xz`

First, the last extension .xz is a lossless data compression program and file format which incorporates the LZMA/LZMA2 compression algorithms, say Wikipedia. Developed by The Tukaani Project.

For use on Mac OS X, Apple’s Archive Utility.app cannot handle this format (as of Yosemite). The XZ project page suggests using the XZ Utils library and command-line tool. You can obtain unarchiving apps on the Apple App Store. The Unarchiver app worked for me for the FreeBSD .xz installer files.

`.raw`, `.vhd`, `.vmdk`

Second to the last extension is one of three types of virtual hard drive file formats.

.raw
I do not know.
.vhd
Virtual Hard Disk format. Developed by Connectix (now Microsoft). As of 2005, this format’s spec is available to other parties. Can be used with Parallels Desktop 10.
.vmdk
Virtual Machine Disk format. Developed by VMware. Can be used with Parallels Desktop, and Oracle VirtualBox.

No Go on Parallels 10

While Parallels 10.2 on Mac OS X Yosemite 10.10.2 can open and convert both .vhd and .vmdk formats to its own format, when I tried each FreeBSD installer I got an error saying:

Failed to convert this virtual hard disk.

The guest OS installed on the disk cannot be identified. You can still convert this disk using the prl_convert utility with the --allow-no-os option."

Freebsd – the difference between vim and vim-lite

/usr/ports/editors/vim-lite/Makefile sets a variable (LITE=yes) and then includes /usr/ports/editors/vim/Makefile which does the following if LITE is set:

OPTIONS_EXCLUDE=ATHENA CSCOPE EXUBERANT_CTAGS GNOME GTK2 LUA MOTIF NLS PERL PYTHON RUBY TCL X11 XTERM_SAVE OPTIONS_SLAVE=  CONSOLE MAKE_ARGS+=     CONF_OPT_GUI="--enable-gui=no --without-x" \
                CONF_OPT_LUA=--disable-luainterp \
                CONF_OPT_PERL=--disable-perlinterp \
                CONF_OPT_PYTHON="--disable-pythoninterp --disable-python3interp" \
                CONF_OPT_RUBY=--disable-rubyinterp \
                CONF_OPT_TCL=--disable-tclinterp

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Freebsd – Which virtual machine image for installing FreeBSD

.xz

.raw, .vhd, .vmdk

No Go on Parallels 10

Freebsd – the difference between vim and vim-lite

Related Question

`.xz`

`.raw`, `.vhd`, `.vmdk`