E.S. wrote:
I've considered it, but isn't -STABLE a bit less stable than -RELEASE, since the source in it is newer?There are two views. Stable has new code but it also has bug fixes that never make it to one of the _x varieties. I go for the bug fixes.
I have 5 systems with nvidia video cards and I haven't tried them yet. Running a release and adding them seems like you already have a candidate for -current. I vote for -stable :). Murphy follows me around :). I will follow 5.0 on one of my machines when it is released. It will be on one that has file systems that are too small for the way I run things.
I just don't want to get stuck running my daily desktop OS (FreeBSD) only to have a kernel panic or have XF86 lockup on me when I'm busy doing a programming assignment or an essay or something (of course, these things happen on -RELEASE (actually, just the XF86 lockups (I don't think I've ever had a kernel panic), and I think it's due to Matthew Dodd's unofficial Nvidia driver (or X) somehow; hence, I want to upgrade to 4.7 so I can use the official (albeit beta) driver!), but theoretically, they're rarer)...
If I only had one machine, I suppose I would be a little bit more reluctant but I haven't had a hang for a long time. One system died a couple of weeks ago but it wouldn't run x-windows for many months. I had replaced everything but the motherboard using spares. I also had to mount /usr/src and /usr/obj from one of my other machines to recover from a cable switch during the motherboard upgrade. I fixed the cable but some of the links seemed to have disappeared. I have the src and obj on their own 1.5GB partitions so that they are mountable with the same paths. All I had to do was build a version of ruby's kernel and install both of them. It went from a sick Intel 866 coppermine on an smb motherboard to an AMD 2000+ XP. It is the machine I have my local cvs-mirror on. That is a really important machine in my environment.
I suppose I'll consider it; lots of people seem to run -STABLE without too much trouble. :) I'd just feel more comfortable running -STABLE on a less-critical system (actually, if I had a box to test on, I'd run -CURRENT)...
If you go with -stable, make sure you follow the buildworld, build[install]kernel, installworld sequence. That will keep you out of some of the trouble. If you boot to single user to installworld and your machine dies, you can always boot using kernel.old. Don't try adding patches for new features until you have a stable system.
Kent
Thanks for your help, in any case!-ES
-- Kent Stewart Richland, WA http://users.owt.com/kstewart/index.html To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
