Re: Quimby Upgrade

[Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com>]

"Robin S. Socha" <rsocha@kens.com> writes:

> > PS: I am looking for actual facts here, not flame bait. I occasionally
> > need to recommend to people which of the free Unix clones to chose and,
> > because /I/ don't know what the differences are, I go Debian.
> 
> ... which AFAIK is a good choice if you go for Linux. The BSD system of
> ports, packages and CVS to keep the core system up to date is, well,
> very good.
> 

He wanted facts Robin... "very good" doesn't quite fill the bill.

The BSD system of ports is overplayed bird hockey.  It lacks any
serious method to uncover information about installed packages.  Only
the most rudimentary information can be had.  Where as with a few compact
commands you can unearth every fact known to man about your filesystem
and its residents on an rpm package based system.

Also there is lots of stuff unavailable.  (Giving Robin an opening
here:) Try finding a sendmail port or pkg.  It must be done from
FreeBSD source directory.  At least last time I checked.

As a package manager; ports, packages and CVSup sucks.

A full CVSup and build world is about the furthermost thing from `very
good' as can be imagined.  Its an esoteric art form riddled with
problems as can be seen on `FreeBSD-questions' constantly. With dozens
of subjects like:

`Build world broke/stopped/aborted/flailed/stymied/jitterbugged/
quit/careemed/disembowled/flopped/thrashed....please help'

The group is one of the hardest on record to get help from, since the
mailing lists are constantly swamped.  Clear evidence of something amiss.

The full ports installation is some 80-90MB, yet lacks any real data
keeping system other than the very meager offering under /var/db/pkg.
which is little more than a list of the files in a package.

Someone familiar with the usefullness of rpm will not be impressed at
all.

Here is the kind of delima you can get into with FreeBSD.  I run it on
my laptop (FreeBSD-4.0).  I've not updated to more recent versions
because I couldn't fathom out how to do CVSup and build world in less
than a week of intense study.  It is explained to some extent in the
book that comes with a full distro, but still not understandable by us
illiterates.  I don't want to risk breaking a very hard fought battle
of hand writing drivers etc for my pccard (pcmcia)

Fortunately, since I've retired from a lifetime of construction work,
I don't use the laptop much any more.

It was so difficult to get the networking to work (pccard stuff) that
I really don't want to use a reinstall to get current.  There seems no
other way.  So I leave it alone until the day comes I have time to
learn about CVSup and several practice installs.

It comes with a little jive editor called `ee'.  Doesn't even have vi
by default (as I remember) and I had lots of problems getting a
working emacs installation.  FreeBSD by default uses a jive TERM called
cons25. I still have not gotten META (left alt) recognized and must
use ESC for it in console mode.  FreeBSD people are not big emacs fans.

FreeBSD does provide a fairly handy routine for kernel rebuilds but
then every little thing requires a rebuild and full reboot.  In that
way its like a windows OS.

FreeBSD uses this silly concept of a `slice' as distinct from a
partition, making partitioning a disk a ridiculously complicated issue.
Try an `fdisk' on FreeBSD.  There is almost no usefull information
displayed in a handy format.  I'd insert some here but can't get to my
laptop right now.

And last but not least, the search engine on FreeBSD home page really
sucks.  Its WAIS based so should be very good, but has been neutered.
Norbert and Uli would probably both shoot themselves if they tried it.