# Is FreeBSD 12.3 more stable than FreeBSD 13.1 ?



## Alain De Vos (Nov 2, 2022)

Why would one switch from 13.1 to 12.3 ?


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## msplsh (Nov 2, 2022)

Why would one... ask this question?


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## Alain De Vos (Nov 2, 2022)

Because why keep two branches alive. It must be there is a good reason ? Which is what i want to find out.


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## W.hâ/t (Nov 2, 2022)

I think this answers the question Announce Feb 2015


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## msplsh (Nov 2, 2022)

Give people time to update their software.


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## freebuser (Nov 3, 2022)

msplsh said:


> Give people time to update their software.



Yep, especially in Business/Corporate environments this is a huge advantage.


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## Erichans (Nov 3, 2022)

Alain De Vos said:
			
		

> Is FreeBSD 12.3 more stable than FreeBSD 13.1 ?


is a practically relevant question.



Alain De Vos said:


> Why would one switch from 13.1 to 12.3 ?


is not a practically relevant question.

It may not have been your intention but the latter concerns a downgrade: not supported. Also, you'll be confronted with significant problems. For example: if your FreeBSD is a ZFS based system, you'll be trying to switch (again: downgrade) from an OpenZFS (FreeBSD 13.1) to a non-OpenZFS (FreeBSD 12.3) based system. Apart from that important particular fact, if your ZFS pool allready has its ZFS properties upgraded to the new ZFS version you cannot go back.

Perhaps a more practically relevant question—as 12.4-RELEASE is coming soon—would be:
_Why would one switch from 12.3 to 13.1, instead of upgrading to the next minor version: 12.4 ?_


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## zirias@ (Nov 3, 2022)

Every release follows the same release engineering process, so every release is expected to reach a similar level of "stability". `.0` releases might be an exception sometimes because they inevitably contain code that was only tested on `-CURRENT` before entering release engineering and a few _BETA_ and _RC_ versions that are also only tested by a small subset of users.

So, why multiple "major" branches?


msplsh said:


> Give people time to update their software.


This.

A new major version introduces "breaking changes", this often means extra work for an admin upgrading installations. A new minor version, OTOH, introduces new features, but only in a non-breaking way. FreeBSD guarantees that each major branch is supported for (IIRC?) 5 years, simple as that.


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## _martin (Nov 3, 2022)

Erichans said:


> _Why would one switch from 12.3 to 13.1, instead of upgrading to the next minor version: 12.4 ?_


Or in my case why would I stay with 12.4 and don't go to 13.x yet. ZFS. I want openzfs to mature more on FreeBSD before upgrading.


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## Alain De Vos (Nov 3, 2022)

_martin, my /sbin/zfs is a softlink to /usr/local/sbin/zfs belonging to "openzfs-2022082900_1". I consider it mature enough.


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## _martin (Nov 3, 2022)

On desktop it's Ok, I'd take that risk. On servers? I want my peace at night. I'm not missing out any features on 12.x I can't live without. I'm looking forward to use native encrypted datasets  on 13.x (or possibly 14.x) but I'm happy to wait. I always loved FreeBSD stability. Since 10.x it got a bit worse (I hit few bugs in PF, ZFS that made my a lot day worse) and I'm one those you'd call: conservative. How much ?Well I still use WinAmp with the default skin.


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