# Which support model is going to be adopted by FreeBSD?



## Minbari (Mar 15, 2019)

Did the development team reached to a conclusion about the future releases support? It's gone be more/less then 5 years for STABLE branch? I want to know because 12/stable it has only ~2 years support which is kinda low compared to some GNU/Linux distribution (CentOS - 10 years; Ubuntu LTS - 10 years).


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## chrcol (Mar 18, 2019)

I agree we need some kind of LTS.

On the old ports system it didnt matter, but now if you have a EOL release then ports tree gets disabled so its effectively enforced.  For server use when you managing many servers 2 years is a nightmare too low.  If the dev's say tough luck you can manage, then thats the type of attitude that shrinks their userbase, the competition supports LTS.

Bear in mind tho the STABLE branch itself lasts longer than 2 years, the page is misleading as it doesnt publish the actual end date but instead the end date of the latest RELEASE in the STABLE branch. 

I would like to see the return of the extended point releases, I dont know why they got removed other than maybe developers putting themselves ahead of their userbase.

This policy may well be what loses me as a very long time FreeBSD user, the main thing keeping me now is the ports flexibility and ZFS.  But ZFS is now pretty stable in linux so currently its a tradeoff between long term support and ports flexibility.


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## SirDice (Mar 18, 2019)

As far as I know it's still 5 years for a major branch. FreeBSD 11.0 was released in Oktober 2016 so expect 11 to be supported at least until 2021. But only the last minor version of a major branch is supported. The same is true for 12.0, released in December 2018 so supported until at least 2023. 



chrcol said:


> On the old ports system it didnt matter, but now if you have a EOL release then ports tree gets disabled so its effectively enforced.


Ports system is not included. The reason newer ports tree usually doesn't work any more on older versions is because the ports system itself gets a lot of changes too. Those changes do not keep backwards compatibility with EoL versions. FreeBSD simply doesn't have hundreds of developers in service backporting bugs/fixes on stuff that's EoL upstream. As soon as PHP 5.6 for example is EoL upstream it's EoL for FreeBSD too. 



chrcol said:


> I would like to see the return of the extended point releases, I dont know why they got removed other than maybe developers putting themselves ahead of their userbase.


Lack of resources. Imagine having to support 11.2, 11.3 and 11.4. While also pushing out new versions on 12. At a certain point you have to support 4 or 5 different versions. To cut down on the number of systems to support now only the last minor release is supported.


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## shkhln (Mar 18, 2019)

Minbari said:


> Ubuntu LTS - 10 years



That's 5 years and they only pretend to support most packages.


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## drhowarddrfine (Mar 18, 2019)

chrcol said:


> ZFS is now pretty stable in linux


It's the same ZFS FreeBSD uses.


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## seanc@ (Mar 29, 2019)

Minbari said:


> Did the development team reached to a conclusion about the future releases support?



Watch this space for details.  If you use amd64, it will continue to be 5 years.


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## kpa (Mar 29, 2019)

LTS is possible with the base system but it will then exclude the ports and packages completely which will negate the point of having an LTS release in the first place. It's the third party software that people use and want bug/security fixes on without breaking binary compatilibilty and that is not possible with the current development/support model of FreeBSD ports/packages where each individual port maintainer looks after only their ports and don't co-operate with the other port maintainers.


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