TrueOS Evolving Its "Stable" Release Cycle

Written by Michael Larabel in Operating Systems on 27 May 2017 at 07:35 AM EDT. 7 Comments
OPERATING SYSTEMS
TrueOS, the FreeBSD-derived operating system originally known as PC-BSD, has changed its -STABLE cycle practices.

TrueOS announced Friday on its site:
As we’ve continued working on TrueOS, we’ve heard a significant portion of the community asking for a more stable “STABLE” release of TrueOS, maybe something akin to an old PC-BSD version release. In order to meet that need, we’re redefining the TrueOS STABLE branch a bit. STABLE releases are now expected to follow a six month schedule, with more testing and lots of polish between releases. This gives users the option to step back a little from the “cutting edge” of development, but still enjoy many of the benefits of the “rolling release” style and the useful elements of FreeBSD Current.

Critical updates like emergency patches and utility bug fixes are still expected to be pushed to STABLE on a case-by-case basis, but again with more testing and polish. This also applies to version updates of the Lumina and SysAdm projects. New, released work from those projects will be tested and added to STABLE outside the 6 month window as well.

The UNSTABLE branch continues to be our experimental “cutting edge” track, and users who want to follow along with our development and help us or FreeBSD test new features are still encouraged to follow the UNSTABLE track by checking that setting in their TrueOS Update Manager.

They also mention in that post that they intend to support both OpenRC and FreeBSD's RC init systems, in part with TrueOS trying to be a "test platform" for FreeBSD.
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