FreeBSD 13.5 vs 14.2

Yes. Both exist, both are good, and you can get either. Depends on what you want.

Now a sensible explanation. Start by reading https://www.freebsd.org/releases/, and follow the link in there to "Supported releases". FreeBSD is intended for production use, where minor upgrades are very quick and painless and reliable, and users can decide whether to do major upgrades or not for about 5 years after installing a major version. For this reason, several versions are kept maintained and updated at most times. Right now:
13.x (currently 13.4, not 13.5 as you wrote) is the current "legacy" version, the thing that has been in production for several years already, and is expected to be around for several more. And 14.2 is the current production version, which is expected to be available until about 2028 or so.

If you are installing a new system, and do not care about interoperability and being identical to current machines, go with 14.2, or in general the newest available.

In addition, you need to learn about the naming convention that FreeBSD uses. The real production versions, not intended for debug, are called xx.y-RELEASE, sometimes with a patch level behind it. For example, my home server runs 13.4-RELEASE-p3. There are also CURRENT and STABLE versions, which are intended for testing and debugging only. Normal end users should not run CURRENT or STABLE, unless they are helping with testing, or they are developers.
 
Back
Top