Reinstall FreeBSD now or postpone until the new RELEASE in December?

zoltan

zoltan

Hello,
I would like to replace the SSD in my computer, which is currently running FreeBSD 14.1-RELEASE for desktop use with Xfce. I'm using the default settings: packages are installed from quarterly (as per the default), no custom-compiled kernel, just the packages for the Intel video driver, webcamd, plus a list of software for desktop use: libreoffice, gimp, inkscape, emacs, vlc, and so on.

Currently, "uname -a" shows the following:

Code: 
FreeBSD zoltan.home.arpa 14.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 14.1-RELEASE releng/14.1-n267679-10e31f0946d8 GENERIC amd64

Would it be better to wait for the 14.2-RELEASE before replacing the SSD, or should I install 14.1-RELEASE now? From what I've noticed in the FreeBSD Handbook, the upgrade process isn't as simple as running pkg update and pkg upgrade, like it was in Debian with apt, since I'm coming from a Debian background. My question is: how does an upgrade compare to a fresh install? Is the result the same, or is a clean install still the best option?
 
As this will be minor upgrade the result is the same. You can install it now as 14.1-Release and after 14.2-RELEASE is published you should wait until all pkgs are rebuild on the repository so you can upgrade. Just don't upgrade the same day when 14.2 is released as all pkg mirrors need some time to catch up.
 
why do those 2 events (new SSD and new Release) need to be correlated?
Just replace the disk and upgrade when 14.2-RELEASE is available...

With ZFS you can simply add the ZFS partition/slice (needs to be identical or bigger in size than the current one though...) from the new drive as a mirror to the existing partition/slice and after resilvering remove the old one (or zpool split to keep it as a backup).
Setting up the UEFI/boot partitions is documented in gpart(8), but you can also simply clone the partitions from your old drive.

And regarding OS upgrades: no, pkg isn't used for OS upgrades, only for packages (as the name suggests...). freebsd-update(8) is used for updates/upgrades regarding the OS, because FreeBSD actually *is* an OS contrary to linux, which is only a bunch of packages cobbled together around a kernel... (hence a package manager can do the job - more or less...)
 
Actually, this doesn't matter. The upgrade process is robust and I never had a big trouble due to the upgrade. However, there is a subtile difference between fresh installation and the upgrade: this last doesn't update the bootcodes/loaders (I know a fantastic software for addressing that :)).

Both fresh installation and upgrade to a minor version (that just has been released) have the same problem with third-party kernel modules like drm-*-kmod. They may or may not work. You have two solutions: wait until the 14.1-RELEASE is EOL (the repository will be in sync with 14.2-RELEASE) before to upgrade / install 14.2-RELEASE or compile the kmod(s) you need on your machine via the ports system.
 
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