On Sun, Jun 08, 2025 at 08:02:43AM +0000, longwi...@yahoo.com wrote: > how big is difference between rc1 and final release? > > where can I find such info? > > freebsd seem more transparent in this regard: > > www.freebsd.org/releases/14.3R/schedule/ >
Hi longwind2, This deserves a longer answer: The standard answer for when a Debian release happens is "When it's ready". There are a *lot* of pieces to fit together. Timescale for support --------------------- Stable releases in Debian are happening about once every two years at the moment. An older stable release is supported by the Debian security team for one year after the release date of the newer stable release. Example: The main security support for Debian 12 (Bookworm) will continue for one year more after the release of Debian 13 (Trixie) whenever that happens. So every stable release of Debian is supported for ~three years in total. the new stable: New major releases ------------------ Debian has stages for every package to pass through. A new version of a package begins in "unstable" and passes into "testing" after a period. Packages in testing are always intended to be released with the next major release of Debian stable - whenever that will be. So testing has a long development cycle - about two years - before it is released as a stable release. The release team. ---------------- The release team look after a given release for the whole of its lifecycle. When Bookworm released, we knew the next releases were going to be named Trixie and Forky. Immediately Trixie is released as Debian 13, there will be a new testing release which will become Debian 14 (Forky) after two years or so. The release team also sets the schedule for the release and a timescale for "freezing" the new Debian before final release as Debian stable. The freeze period ----------------- We are now in the hard freeze period, ideally fixing release-critical bugs before the release of Trixie. https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-faq/ftparchives#testing [the process] and https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2025/01/msg00004.html [Trixie freeze dates announced] and https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2025/05/msg00004.html [Trixie hard freeze] Because the process of fixing bugs is still going on, I can't give you a hard date when Trixie will be released - probably not in July because a large part of that will be Debconf25 in Brest. What does all that mean? ----------------------- Trixie RC1 was released as a test build of the installer for Trixie. There have been changes made since but there isn't yet an RC2 and there may not be. It would probably be safe to install Trixie from RC1 as the install process updates packages. Otherwise, maybe wait for the final release :) FreeBSD ------- Looks to have a similar release process: they are freezing minor updates to FreeBSD 14. Their freeze looks like about a month but they build more BETA builds as part of that. It looks as if they give dates for end of support for 14.2 and likely end of support for the 14 series as a whole. 14.3 looks as if it will be the last full release of the 14 series on its own as the release process for 15.0 has started concurrently. Very similar in outline: their 14.* releases are regular point releases, likely with small numbers of changes and supported for three months after the next point release. Users are discouraged from installing BETA releases. FreeBSD commit to a formal five year support for stable releases. https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-announce/2015-February/001624.html It sounds very much as if they've learned from the Debian model where we moved to a Release Team model significantly earlier :) All the very best, as ever, Andy Cater (amaca...@debian.org) All the very best, as ever
