sudo apt update and then a sudo apt upgrade command, with occasional sudo apt autoremove. I keep it up-to-date reliably like this across multiple versions easily and without issue, but... I don't generally mix many compiled sources so haven't encountered many/any issues. apt update / apt upgrade and rarely encountered any problems - they seemed to have a really good and reliable package release process with Debian. So although you would not want to run a SID ('unstable' branch) system on a production machine, for a one-user home system I found running it great - all the latest packages and rarely any problems encountered.To start, I haven't done that,I stick to the
-RELEASE-tagged stuff.-CURRENT. That stuff is really bleeding-edge, and you're really on your own for support. Meaning, on the Forums here, people will be rather reluctant to help if you're on -CURRENT. If you use -CURRENT, you're basically expected to be able to solve problems yourself. Reporting that something works for you on -CURRENT - that usually is supposed to happen AFTER everybody says that the -RELEASE - tagged stuff doesn't support that one interesting feature.-CURRENT is basically aimed at experimenting with code and stabilizing it. For example, I have a ROG Zephyrus laptop (AMD Advantage) with a weird N-key keyboard. That keyboard did not work right under FreeBSD until very recently - and it took trying to install 15-CURRENT (July 2025 snapshot) to get that keyboard going. I actually tried to get some troubleshooting help here on the Forums - not much success under 13 and 14, but 15-CURRENT seemed to work. And now I'm waiting for the December release of FreeBSD 15.Thing is, if you do freebsd-update(8), it will be a major pain to figure out the correct git snapshot of corresponding kernel sources to download into /usr/src! What freebsd-update(8) does, it only downloads the pre-compiled, pre-patched kernel, and NOT the corresponding sources! It will be on you to correctly match the two by hand. I never did anything that complicated... I just download a bootable .iso file of the next release, and the download contains everything, even the correct
src set.
Oh, thanks, I had no idea about THAT! OP will probably be happy to know this, too.
To start, I haven't done that,I stick to the-RELEASE-tagged stuff.
In the FreeBSD camp, the unstable stuff is tagged-CURRENT. That stuff is really bleeding-edge, and you're really on your own for support. Meaning, on the Forums here, people will be rather reluctant to help if you're on-CURRENT. If you use-CURRENT, you're basically expected to be able to solve problems yourself. Reporting that something works for you on-CURRENT- that usually is supposed to happen AFTER everybody says that the-RELEASE- tagged stuff doesn't support that one interesting feature.
Having said that,-CURRENTis basically aimed at experimenting with code and stabilizing it. For example, I have a ROG Zephyrus laptop (AMD Advantage) with a weird N-key keyboard. That keyboard did not work right under FreeBSD until very recently - and it took trying to install 15-CURRENT (July 2025 snapshot) to get that keyboard going. I actually tried to get some troubleshooting help here on the Forums - not much success under 13 and 14, but 15-CURRENT seemed to work. And now I'm waiting for the December release of FreeBSD 15.
So basically - yeah, it's possible to run bleeding-edge FreeBSD, but you're kind of on your own - you'll need to know how to research bugs on FreeBSD's Bugzilla, for starters.
As for KDE - I am a big fan of it. Convenient UI, FreeBSD does have very up-to-date version in Ports, and there's Konsole that makes all the old-school UNIX quite available.
Thing is, if you do freebsd-update(8), it will be a major pain to figure out the correct git snapshot of corresponding kernel sources to download into /usr/src! What freebsd-update(8) does, it only downloads the pre-compiled, pre-patched kernel, and NOT the corresponding sources! It will be on you to correctly match the two by hand. I never did anything that complicated... I just download a bootable .iso file of the next release, and the download contains everything, even the correctsrcset.
For me, ZFS means I can completely forget the headaches of partitioning an SSD at all. But if I want to place some limits on a specific dataset, I can do it later at my convenience.
$ grep ^Components /etc/freebsd-update.conf
Components src world kernel# zpool attach tank existing-ssd new-ssd'World' is basically 'Everything outside of the kernel and its sources'. It includes directories like /etc, /usr/local/etc, /var, and the rest. And yeah, reading the Handbook is a good idea.
That would be my conclusion...