Solved Cloning /usr/ports

[zirias@]

do not necessarily provide additional stability

Depends very much on your definition of stability. In this context, stability just means fewer changes because of (almost) stable package versions

That to say, latest vs. stable is imho a smaller win concerning stability than e.g. Debian stable vs. testing.

In general, they're the same. Debian stable does a few more things:

• a much longer cycle than quarters
• an extra stabilization phase to prepare a new "stable" set
• not even upgrading on fixes, instead backporting them patching the old version

Especially this last bullet point can be problematic, it's somewhat error-prone, and things "happened" in the past. But in general, it's a matter of personal taste, I pefer the FreeBSD way