Is there a real need to upgrade from 13.5 to 14.3?

D

dnb

I really like that 13.5 is very stable and will be supported until April 2026. As far as I understand, 13.5 is the last release of the 13 versions. I would not like to upgrade to 14.3, which does not seem that stable to me. It so happened that I had already updated a couple of unimportant systems to version 14.3. But then I asked myself: but why? I see so little reason to update that I am even ready to return everything to how it was, even by recreating the pools (because I managed to do a zpool upgrade).

I would like to know what I am losing by not upgrading to 14.3 in the following areas:

1) CPU. What am I losing in terms of EPYC 7003 (Milan) CPU performance. Despite some general non-specific statements about improved support for such processors in 14 and 15, I still do not understand what exactly is improved. If the performance of the processors has improved so much that it is visible in tests, then this is a breakthrough in computer science and HPC. Maybe some other improvements, for example, lower CPU temperature? My top 64-core processors run at 33-35C. What else can I expect when upgrading to 14 specifically in the context of the processor I'm using?

2) Bhyve. Can I expect a noticeable improvement in NVME performance?

3) ZFS. Will ZFS become even more stable when upgrading to 14? Or vice versa?

Finally, please share what improvements you personally received when upgrading to 14. Thank you!
 
Regarding performances I don't have any clue, but IMO being on 14.x could avoid a problematic conversion to PkgBase (which should come first in December 2025).
The wiki says that the steps are more "complicated" if you run 13.x rather than 14.x (it doesn't say impossible or harder, just complicated).
Pkgbasify, the tool for "an easy conversion", won't be an option because it doesn't support 13.x
So you could either end up having to make a complete reinstall starting with 15.x, or doing manually a "complicated" upgrade from 13.x to 15.x
A simple solution would be to upgrade from 13.5 to 14.x one or two months before its EOL, and then switch to 15.x(or not).

That temp is impressive, good job.

PS: just a typo in your title (from 13.5 to 14.3)
 
SirDice said:
What did you base that belief on?
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Based solely on messages on this forum for the query 'FreeBSD 14.3 issue' (problem, bug). These messages can be classified as (1) problems directly related to the upgrade process, (2) problems with booting the upgraded system, (3) problems related to the GPU and some others.

There are other problems related, for example, to ZFS, but in my opinion, the matter is related specifically to incorrect user actions.

Indeed, I have not encountered any absolutely scary error messages, and therefore I have already upgraded some systems to 14.3. I even did a zpool upgrade (multiple facepalm 🤦‍♂️). But this is not a reason to be upset: I manually recreated the pool and rolled everything back 🤓

Finally, if the upgrade was really scary, I would not even ask this question here. On the other hand, why do anything if 13.5 works well.
 
dnb said:
Based solely on messages on this forum for the query 'FreeBSD 14.3 issue' (problem, bug).
Click to expand...
Selection bias/Survivorship bias, your search focused solely on issues, so issues was all you got to see. People that don't have issues or problems generally don't post about it on forums and also won't show up in your search.

dnb said:
These messages can be classified as (1) problems directly related to the upgrade process, (2) problems with booting the upgraded system, (3) problems related to the GPU and some others.
Click to expand...
That's the general idea of a support forum. If the upgrade was successful, system boots properly and the graphics works, why would they need to ask support questions?
 
dnb said:
I would like to know what I am losing by not upgrading to 14.3
Click to expand...
In general, consider running the latest release or else you will end up falling further and further behind and upgrading more than one minor or major release later would be harder + you may do it under stress which can be more error prone. If you wait too long, eventually the major release will be no longer supported so no more security bug fixes after that!

You don't have to update right away. You can wait for a few weeks to let any critical bugs get fixed. If the latest release has some show-stopper bugs for you, report &/or track those bug reports.
 
In my personal case, WiFi was not well supported on my HP laptop[*]. Nor was USB-C and/or USB ethernet dongles. WiFi was slooooow and the USB ethernet would cause a crash/reboot if I tried to transfer more than 4-5GB of data at a time.

Switching to 14.3-Release after the recent muchly appreciated WiFi efforts brought me WiFi speeds of a much more usable and acceptable 350Mb/s. I can't thanks the people involved in the WiFi driver (specifically iwlwifi) updates enough :-D

I suppose I really ought to test out the USB Ethernet dongles again too, but it's too nice not being tied by wire at the moment. :-)

I'm still hopeful that something better will come along in terms of GPU support, but apart from some Youtube or equivalent watching, I don't really have a need for high performance graphics. Maybe it's Intel Tiger Lake specifically that is a problem to support.

* a "cast off" from work that is better/faster/more RAM than my previous laptop, and best of all, free :)
 
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