Re: [9fans] First-timer help

[Russ Cox <russcox@gmail.com>]

> 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:

x40=; 9 time sudo apt-get install -y gaim
...
Need to get 4719kB of archives.
After unpacking 3277kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://debian.lcs.mit.edu testing/main gaim-data 1:1.3.1-2 [3075kB]
Get:2 http://debian.lcs.mit.edu testing/main libao2 0.8.6-1 [23.2kB]
Get:3 http://debian.lcs.mit.edu testing/main libaspell15
0.60.2+20050121-3 [669kB]
Get:4 http://debian.lcs.mit.edu testing/main libatk1.0-0 1.10.1-2 [68.5kB]
Get:5 http://debian.lcs.mit.edu testing/main gaim 1:1.3.1-2 [883kB]
Fetched 4719kB in 13s (344kB/s)
...
Setting up gaim-data (1.3.1-2) ...
Setting up libao2 (0.8.6-1) ...
Setting up libaspell15 (0.60.2+20050121-3) ...
Setting up libatk1.0-0 (1.10.1-2) ...
Setting up gaim (1.3.1-2) ...
1.39u 1.66s 67.95r 	 sudo apt-get install -y gaim ...
x40=; 

A minute vs. an hour is significant.

Russ