Releases

postmarketOS releases are created roughly every six months, following the release cycle of Alpine Linux. With every postmarketOS release, pmaports master is branched into a new release branch. The release branches receives security upgrades as necessary (from both Alpine and postmarketOS). In postmarketOS, we also provide service packs for the latest release to ship fixes and feature updates.

What's the difference between releases?
The "edge" channel is a rolling release where all packages are kept at their newest version. This offers faster access to software at the expense of less user testing. In practice, issues on edge are relatively uncommon, and are documented here when found.

The versioned releases are initially a snapshot of edge, from which stable changes are backported. Updates to packages in a versioned release will usually only contain bug fixes. This means that newer features take longer to appear (if at all). Only devices in the "community" or "main" categories are supported by these releases.

In essence, a stable release will give you more a more tried and tested, solid experience, while edge gives you the latest features.

Which should I choose?
If you're interested in hacking on your device and don't care so much about stability, edge is right for you. On the other hand if you'd prefer to have a more stable experience, with backported security patches and avoiding major feature changes, use a versioned release.