Solved The Legacy Releases?

Hi,

I am new to FreeBSD. I am using a rolling release Linux distribution as desktop OS, and hosting a personal blog on a point release Linux distribution. Now because of some advantages I heard, I would like to try FreeBSD.

General speaking, my question is: What does "Legacy Releases" mentioned on Release Information refer to? I can only see the links of "Production Releases".

Here are some background information:

I would like to have newest features on my desktop and keep stability on my blog server. After read some documentations and thread, these are what I have understood:

  1. There are three branches of FreeBSD: FreeBSD-CURRENT and FreeBSD-STABLE and FreeBSD-RELEASE, and only the last one is production ready.
  2. The base system is divided from ports and packages, which means no matter which branch of base system I chose, I can always stably use the newest third-party software with "Latest" repository or stable software with "Quarterly" repository.
So I would like to chose FreeBSD-RELEASE and follow "Latest" repository on my desktop and "Quarterly" repository on my blog server.

That looks good, but I suddenly noticed "Production Releases" and "Legacy Releases" on Release Information page. According to the introduction, the "Legacy Releases" seems to be more stable, so it may be more suitable for the server.

But I can't get any further information about the so-called "Legacy Releases", since both 11.4 and 12.1 are "Production Releases".

I am really confused about it, any clarification would be greatly appreciated.
 
General speaking, my question is: What does "Legacy Releases" mentioned on Release Information refer to? I can only see the links of "Production Releases".
A legacy release is the previous, still supported, major version. At the moment 12.x is the latest release, and 11.x is the legacy release. Unless you have a good reason not to you should always use the latest major version for new systems.

1) Always use a -RELEASE version for production systems. -STABLE and -CURRENT are development releases. -STABLE is a supported development release, -CURRENT is unsupported. Binary updates/upgrades (freebsd-update(8)) are only supported for -RELEASE versions. -STABLE and -CURRENT must be updated and built from source.

2) There is only one ports tree, it's valid for all versions and all architectures. As a result all versions of FreeBSD will have the same versions of third-party software available. There are only a handful of exceptions to this rule. This also refers to the latest packages, they're built from the latest ports tree. Updates to this ports tree happen all the time. Every three months a quarterly branch is made from the ports tree. This quarterly branch only receives stability or security updates. But this also means there's a truck load of changes happening once every three months when a new quarterly branch is made from the latest ports tree.

So I would like to chose FreeBSD-RELEASE and follow "Latest" repository on my desktop and "Quarterly" repository on my blog server.
That's an excellent plan.
 
A legacy release is the previous, still supported, major version. At the moment 12.x is the latest release, and 11.x is the legacy release. Unless you have a good reason not to you should always use the latest major version for new systems.

Thanks for your clarification:)But Release Information page is really confusing, since both 11.4 and 12.1 are marked as "Production Release", I wonder if it's a text error.
 
They're both used on production systems and are supported. When 13.0-RELEASE comes out (some time early next year), the 11.x major branch will marked End-of-Life and expire a few months later, 12.x will become the legacy release and 13.x the latest version.

 
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