Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 11:53:02 -0600 (MDT) From: Brett Taylor <brett@peloton.physics.montana.edu> To: GR Gaudreau <grgaud@sprint.ca> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD or Linux? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980813114749.20815F-100000@peloton.physics.montana.edu> In-Reply-To: <199808131455.KAA04329@hme0.mailrouter01.sprint.ca>
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Hi, > I do believe I'm going to drop RH 5.1 Linux and install FreeBSD. Great! > speaking of which: what do you mean by "ports"? There are 2 kinds of ports (you mentioned serial, parallel etc). What we mean by ports in the context that's been used here is taking a piece of software and making it so that FreeBSD can compile and run it cleanly. Once a particular port has been committed, a user simply goes to /usr/ports/some_directory/some_program_I_want and types "make install" and your machine will automatically fetch the source, patch it for FreeBSD, compile, and install it. You can then remove it (say a new version comes out) by doing a make deinstall (or pkg_delete) and then reinstall the latest version of the port. Packages are a similar deal and are much like the rpm's found in RH - a pre-compiled version of a piece of software that can be added. The handbook contains lots of info about using ports and packages and you can find a list of the over 1600 ports available for FreeBSD at: http://www.freebsd.org/ports/index.html Brett ****************************************************************** Brett Taylor brett@peloton.physics.montana.edu http://peloton.physics.montana.edu/brett/ "There is something uncanny in the noiseless rush of the cyclist, as he comes into view, passes by, and disappears." - Popular Science, 1891 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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