In short:
- FreeBSD is a volunteer project, and we don’t want to volunteer to support FreeBSD 4.x beyond the scheduled EoL date of January 31st, 2007;
- Even if we did want to support FreeBSD 4.x beyond that date, I’m not certain that we would be able to do so, given that both FreeBSD and the rest of the world has moved on; and
- You’ve had lots of warning that this was going to happen, so it’s a bit late to start complaining now.
Looks like this needs to happen by year end or so. t’would be nice to have a second system to just move to, but that doesn’t seem likely, unless I find one by the side of the road. Not that I wouldn’t find something like that an improvement over my coal-fired circa 2000 Athlon.
There are ways to upgrade in place, as noted in my del.icio.us bookmarks, but if I look at the FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE Migration Guide, this makes a lot of sense:
Probably the most straightforward approach is that of “backup everything, reformat, reinstall, and restore user data.”
As long as it has been since I have stripped this system to the bare metal, it makes a lot of sense to take the time and do it that way now.