Hi!
The upgrade “script” upgrades everything. It upgrades both the OS and every part of the FreePBX application, both visible (GUI) and invisible and is meant only for the FreePBX distro…
It upgrades the FreePBX distro to meet all the requirements (for example PHP as Tom said) for running FreePBX 14 now and in the future… In essence, it changes the old FreePBX distro we had to a Sangoma 7 based one with new packages, new repos, etc…
New packages are (currently) relatively rarely published (except for Asterisk packages updates) but I think we can expect that, eventually, no more packages will be published for the old FreePBX distro except maybe for security fixes…
Once this is done it also takes care of updating the FreePBX application side of things…
The upgrader module on the other hand only take care of the FreePBX application aspect of things. You are expected to take care of meeting all the requirements for running FreePBX 14 since you are not running it on the FreePBX distro…
The upgrader module is, AFAIK, no longer beta. This is why people are being offered to use it.
The upgrader module is most likely slightly more complex than the upgrade from one module version to the next but nothing compared to upgrading the OS…
Now when the upgrader module sees that you have a FreePBX distro it tells you that it should be not be updated using the upgrader module but instead using the update script and refers you to the upgrade script wiki page (which has a BIG warning telling you it is still beta).
Unless you wish to be a beta tester, resist the temptation. There are still issues left that need to be addressed.
It’s a loooooot more complex to update the whole distro without losing any (or at least any important) bit of configuration than it is to update the application side of FreePBX…
I ran the earliest script made available to outside testers and I did lose some important bits but nothing that could not be fixed without needing a reinstall.
(Actually I did not lose them but they were no longer part of the active configuration. I did however lose some minor tweaks to my FreePBX distro system Postfix configuration…)
There might also be compatibility issues related to upgrading. It is possible that some pieces of hardware might no longer be supported or need additional tweaks.
I found a big clue related to my slow boot problem yesterday which I hope will only requires some of those additional tweaks… My slow boot is related to a specific bit of hardware I am using on my FreePBX distro system.
(I will add the details in my FreePBX distro upgrade ticket later today…)
Have a nice day!
Nick