Howard Miller

Migration is a separate issue from Upgrading. If you need to update elements of your server you *might* have to bin the whole thing and go for a newer version but you may also be able to update elements in place. This is a matter of personal circumstances and (probably) administrator experience. But, yes, just spinning up a new VM with all the newest software is quite often the quickest/safest solution.

I've never installed Moodle on a new VM to "see if it works". What I've always done is tested the entire upgrade process on a copy of the site and whatever my upgrade strategy is. Without wishing to sound like a complete prat, that sort of planning is what separates the men from the boys, so to speak.

So, as ever, it comes back to "it depends".

I've never been intrested in the LTS versions. But I have thousands of users baying for the latest versions and fixes.

There is never one true way.

Make sure that you understand what "supported" means. In Moodle's case, LTS means security fixes only. There will be no bug fixes (once the bug fix period has expired). You may not be bothered until you hit a show-stopping bug.

On the flip side, new versions frequently introduce show stopping bugs....

If anybody is interested, I run an Ubuntu server VM on the M1 Mac and then run Moodle in a set of Docker containers. I know it sounds like madness but this gives all the flexibility of Docker with the speed of Linux. While Docker does run on the Mac, it's rubbish. Far too slow.

VMs are courtesy "multipass" which I recommend (https://multipass.run/)

I still run Visual Studio Code in MacOS and connect to the files in the VM over SSH (although there are probably easier ways).

I don't use it (even though I do use a Mac for testing and development). It does seem that it's MySQL 5.7 which isn't going to work with Moodle 4.2. There's quite a lot of discussion on the web about upgrading MySQL.

It sounds like too much hassle to me. As opposed to other solutions (i.e. not using MAMP)