Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2001 13:30:38 -0800 From: Gregory Sutter <gsutter@daemonnews.org> To: ports@freebsd.org Subject: [john@sixgirls.org: [dn-articles] FreeBSD problems: newsworthy?] Message-ID: <20010120133038.C7492@klapaucius.zer0.org>
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--8t9RHnE3ZwKMSgU+ Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline This person seems to be having some trouble with the state of his ports. I don't think that the Daemon News article submission address is the right place to ask, so I'll forward it here. Can anyone help him? Greg -- Gregory S. Sutter Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm mailto:gsutter@daemonnews.org for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll http://www.daemonnews.org/ be warm for the rest of his life. hkp://wwwkeys.pgp.net/0x845DFEDD --8t9RHnE3ZwKMSgU+ Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Disposition: inline Return-Path: <sentto-1197374-270-979977885-gsutter=zer0.org@returns.onelist.com> Delivered-To: gsutter@zer0.org Received: from b05.egroups.com (b05.egroups.com [208.50.144.96]) by klapaucius.zer0.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 9BF43239A43 for <gsutter@zer0.org>; Sat, 20 Jan 2001 00:04:46 -0800 (PST) X-eGroups-Return: sentto-1197374-270-979977885-gsutter=zer0.org@returns.onelist.com Received: from [10.1.4.52] by b05.egroups.com with NNFMP; 20 Jan 2001 08:04:45 -0000 X-Sender: jean@erika.sixgirls.org X-Apparently-To: daemon-news-articles@egroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_1_2); 20 Jan 2001 08:04:44 -0000 Received: (qmail 25395 invoked from network); 20 Jan 2001 08:04:44 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m8.onelist.org with QMQP; 20 Jan 2001 08:04:44 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ithildin.daemonnews.org) (204.152.186.46) by mta1 with SMTP; 20 Jan 2001 08:04:44 -0000 Received: by ithildin.daemonnews.org (Postfix) id E479B16C43B; Sat, 20 Jan 2001 00:04:43 -0800 (PST) Delivered-To: articles@daemonnews.org Received: from erika.sixgirls.org (erika.sixgirls.org [209.208.150.50]) by ithildin.daemonnews.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8DC0A16C439 for <article@daemonnews.org>; Sat, 20 Jan 2001 00:04:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (localhost [[UNIX: localhost]]) by erika.sixgirls.org (8.11.2/8.11.1) with ESMTP id f0K84ek29990; Sat, 20 Jan 2001 03:04:41 -0500 (EST) To: <article@daemonnews.org> Cc: <indira@indira.net> Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.30.0101200142390.29566-100000@erika.sixgirls.org> Sender: jean@erika.sixgirls.org From: John Klos <john@sixgirls.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Mailing-List: list daemon-news-articles@egroups.com; contact daemon-news-articles-owner@egroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list daemon-news-articles@egroups.com Precedence: bulk List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:daemon-news-articles-unsubscribe@egroups.com> Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2001 03:04:39 -0500 (EST) Reply-To: daemon-news-articles@egroups.com Subject: [dn-articles] FreeBSD problems: newsworthy? Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Fkey: articles Hello, (I don't know if this is newsworthy; it is more an expression of a growing concern of mine that FreeBSD is becoming more and more like, dare I say it, Red Hat...) As a NetBSD person, I know how well the community works when something is broken or someone needs help. Therefore, it disturbs and scares me to see the FreeBSD effort become so messy. FreeBSD is supposed to have an advantage in that the focus is on x86 and Alpha hardware only; less extra stuff to worry about should make the distribution cleaner and more focused, but my impression is that, in contrast, it is becoming more fragmented and less focused. I am not a big fan of x86, as the assembly is ugly, awkward, and very reminicent of Z-80 (not to mention inefficient), so I run NetBSD on m68k and on PowerPC. My girlfriend, however, got an IBM brand PC and decided to run FreeBSD after her Red Hat distribution got rooted. She almost never restarts her computer, and if it were not for moving the computer or a power outage, her uptime would be in the hundreds of days. One of the things she likes about FreeBSD, unlike Linux, is that even when the X Window System crashes, it never brings down the entire system. Needless to say, she doesn't care much about upgrading the OS, which is happily at 4.0. She uses her computer for graphics and web design, and she uses The GIMP often. She gets excited whenever a new version is available, and loves the ports/pkgsrc system where she can upgrade everything in less than an hour, as compared to days of RPM problems and dependency issues with Linux. Now that The GIMP 1.2.0 is in the ports collection, she anxiously cd'ed to the directory and did a "make install", only to get this message: ===> gimp-1.2.0 : Your system is too old to use this bsd.port.mk. You need a fresh make world or an upgrade kit. Please go to http://www.FreeBSD.org/ports/ or a mirror site and follow the instructions. No problem. Up comes the browser to www.freebsd.org/ports/, and there it is: a link to the 4.0 to 4-stable upgrade kit. (ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-4-stable/Latest/40upgrade.tgz) But wait - it's not on the ftp server. So, not being lazy or new, I start looking around the FreeBSD ftp tree. Where the 4.0 upgrade kit is supposed to be, I see: 41upgrade.tgz -> ../All/41upgrade-2000.11.01.tgz, but no 4.0 kit. Well, that's not what we want. So because I'm not on any FreeBSD email lists, nor do I want to be on any (I'm on enough NetBSD lists!), I pop off an email to webmaster@freebsd.org, thinking that the webmaster would know who would be responsible for fixing this (or at least could fix the page and remove the link). That was 1-January. It is now 20-January; I have not gotten a response, the link is not fixed, there is no upgrade kit for 4.0, and it's really difficult for me to believe that I am the only person in the world who has noticed this problem, and that nobody at FreeBSD has been contacted by anyone else. Now do the FreeBSD people really expect all 4.0 users to download the entire source tree via CVS (where are the tarballs?) and do a make world? Luckily, we have a cable modem, but what about people with modems? I really hope this turns out to be an innocent mistake, but it would be very sad if this is an indication of things to come. FreeBSD, and BSDs in general, should become gradually easier to use, not more difficult. Thanks, John Klos -- Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly. -- Henry Spencer Daemon News, bringing BSD together --8t9RHnE3ZwKMSgU+-- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-ports" in the body of the message
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