The freebsd-update(8) Screensaver | ππππππππ
Today β which is 2026/06/19 β is another anniversary of FreeBSD Day.
Because of that kinda special βholidayβ I also prepared something special β¦ FreeBSD project slowly but successfully is moving forward into the future with PKGBASE way of things β¦ and freebsd-update(8) days are limited as it this tool will be deprecated and gone when FreeBSD 16.0-RELEASE will see the light of day.
I was never a big fan of freebsd-update(8) tool β not that it was very bad at what it was designed to do β¦ it was just always interactive and time consuming. Fetching binary delta patches took hours between major releases and FreeBSD developers also cried while preparing these patches between every possibility.
So β¦ as a kinda Easter Egg I prepared something special for 33rd FreeBSD Anniversary (Max Verstappen number for many years BTW) β¦ a terminal screensaver that mimics the freebsd-update(8) tool π
This image below is a real life example on how freebsd-update(8) upgrade looks like.
β¦ and this is what I was able to recreate π
Right now the most recent FreeBSD release is 15.1-RELEASE β¦ and from the earlier tree its 14.4-RELEASE. The FreeBSD project rule about upgrading is to first upgrade from 14.4-RELEASE to 15.0-RELEASE and then from 15.0-RELEASE to 15.1-RELEASE β that is why I picked up my screensaver settings in the same manner.
% grep -A 3 SETTINGS freebsd-update-screensaver.sh<br># SETTINGS<br>VEROLD="14.4-RELEASE"<br>VERNEW="15.0-RELEASE"
Its available for download on my scripts page β freebsd-update-screensaver.sh β here.
While we are at the upgrading topic β I am really glad that FreeBSD project provided a dedicated upgrade related page to cover all possible ways of freebsd-update(8) tool and also newer PKGBASE way with pkg(8) tool.
Its available here β https://freebsd.org/releases/15.1R/upgrading/ β for the record.
This is how this page looks like.
I use FreeBSD as my main βdailyβ system since 2005 β that is 21 years now in 2026. Some people would say that I am crazy or hopeless β¦ some people even shared their concerns like βMan β¦ why are You doing this to Yourself?β β and my take on that is β¦ even with all things that were sometimes harder then on Linux (or Windows/Mac OS X/Android/AMIGA/β¦) systems β I believe that FreeBSD was/is still least PITA OS to work on with.
It was predictable β using FreeBSD as your daily driver embraces POLA principle β for most of the times β even with major upgrades β you just have backward compatibility and everything works β its very RARE to have something broken when the development process continues its march β¦ and even if β¦ You still have almighty ZFS Boot Environments to cover Your ass anytime anything gets less then optimal.
Happy FreeBSD Day!
EOF
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