Re: [9fans] First-timer help

[David Leimbach <leimy2k@gmail.com>]

On 7/19/05, Devon H. O'Dell <dodell@offmyserver.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-07-19 at 09:10, Russ Cox wrote:
> > > I keep thinking about gentoo, since I really still like freebsd better and
> > > gentoo reminds me of the freebsd ports collection. There are days I miss
> > > from my old job which involved a lot of FreeBSD work ...
> >
> > Gentoo and FreeBSD ports are both getting to be a little ridiculous.
> > I mean, really, why should I have to compile Firefox in order to install
> > it on my laptop?  Let someone else waste the hours of cpu time to
> > compile it and the libraries it rides in on.  All I want is a binary.
> >
> > I watched a FreeBSD user install the latest gaim from ports.
> > It was funny.  It took at least an hour.  Compare with the equivalent
> > on a binary package system like Debian:
> 
> Not to be coy, but:
> 
> pkg_add -rv gaim?
> 
> I don't think the FreeBSD user in question was very experienced. Also, as long as the ABI hasn't changed, one can also usually download packages from the -CURRENT port snapshot, if the ones snapshotted at -RELEASE are outdated.

Not to mention FreeBSD now has binary updates for security patches.  I
think this is a huge step forward for sysadmins of FreeBSD systems
everywhere.

Not to mention the fact that I installed what was supposed to be a
"demo box" for a bugtracker at work over 2 years ago and I almost
forgot about it cuz the sucker never dies!

I've yet to have such an experience with ANY version of linux due to
weird kernel mishaps.  Many of my linux zealot buddies really think
"the last great linux kernel" was 2.0.36 :).  I have to admit though,
that when it comes to hardware driver support, linux is currently the
winner.

Dave

> 
> -Devon
> 
>