On Wed, 3 Mar 2010, Scott McEachern wrote:
>Manuel Giraud wrote:
>> Maybe I'll stick to -current too. But I'd like to give try staying
>> -stable for a while and I could still play with the new toys every 6
>> month anyway. I wonder why does the FAQ recommend -stable over -current?
>>
> From the FAQ:
>
>"Put bluntly, the "best" version of OpenBSD is /-current/."
The FAQ does say that, but in context it's not a recommendation for
everyone to run current.
>Please read the FAQ. It is explained why there are situations where
>-stable is more _suitable_ for some people, -current for others.
That part of section 5.1 currently clearly recommends that most users
run stable or release:
In fact, as our hope is to continually improve OpenBSD, the goal is
that -current should be more reliable, more secure, and of course,
have greater features than -stable. Put bluntly, the "best" version of
OpenBSD is -current.
Most users should be running either -stable or -release. That being
said, many people do run -current on production systems, and it is
important that people do so to identify bugs and test new features.
However, if you don't know how to properly describe, diagnose and deal
with a problem, don't tell yourself (or anyone else) that you are
"helping the project" by running -current. "It didn't work!" is not a
useful bug report. "The recent changes to the pciide driver broke
compatibility with my Slugchip-based IDE interface, dmesg of working
and broken systems follow..." might be a useful report.
There are times when "normal" users may wish to live on the cutting
edge and run -current. The most common reason is that the user has a
device which is not supported by -release (and thus, not -stable), or
wishes to use a new feature of the -current. In this case, the choice
may be either -current or not using the device, and -current may be
the lesser evil. However, one should not expect hand-holding from the
developers.
Dave
--
Dave Anderson
<d...@daveanderson.com>
