From owner-freebsd-chat Thu Jul 11 3:47:46 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AD65637B400 for ; Thu, 11 Jul 2002 03:47:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from HAL9000.wox.org (12-233-156-170.client.attbi.com [12.233.156.170]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0395343E31 for ; Thu, 11 Jul 2002 03:47:40 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dschultz@uclink.Berkeley.EDU) Received: from HAL9000.wox.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by HAL9000.wox.org (8.12.3/8.12.3) with ESMTP id g6BAltUi002529; Thu, 11 Jul 2002 03:47:55 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dschultz@uclink.Berkeley.EDU) Received: (from das@localhost) by HAL9000.wox.org (8.12.3/8.12.3/Submit) id g6BAlsIm002528; Thu, 11 Jul 2002 03:47:54 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dschultz@uclink.Berkeley.EDU) Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2002 03:47:53 -0700 From: David Schultz To: Rahul Siddharthan Cc: Terry Lambert , Alexey Dokuchaev , Cy Schubert - CITS Open Systems Group , chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Package system wishlist Message-ID: <20020711104753.GA2428@HAL9000.wox.org> Mail-Followup-To: Rahul Siddharthan , Terry Lambert , Alexey Dokuchaev , Cy Schubert - CITS Open Systems Group , chat@FreeBSD.ORG References: <20020710210509.GA686@lpt.ens.fr> <3D2CA535.EC11BDA1@mindspring.com> <20020710213619.GA882@lpt.ens.fr> <3D2CBAC4.6AC3CAC9@mindspring.com> <20020710230709.GA1512@lpt.ens.fr> <3D2CC6A9.EB0F7995@mindspring.com> <20020711071255.GA264@lpt.ens.fr> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20020711071255.GA264@lpt.ens.fr> Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Thus spake Rahul Siddharthan : > In that case, I think gentoo linux's "portage" setup is just for you. > The entire system is a collection of "ports" (or, to use their > terminology, "ebuilds"), plus the kernel. I like it, but it's clear > to me that I wouldn't trust such a thing on a server. It's for people > who like the "bleeding edge" and such a terminology as "gentoo 1.2 + > bugfixes" has no meaning: each component is upgraded separately to the > point where it becomes gentoo 1.3, etc. This is one of the things that most annoys me about most Linux distributions. You often have to specify the distribution and version you're running, the kernel version, the kernel patches you happen to be using, the glibc version(s) you have, and the versions of the relevant chunks of userland. (What did I miss?) With FreeBSD, you get The Operating System, version $foo.$bar. It is an excellent development environment because the components are well-integrated and well-documented, and you don't have to hunt for third-party software that may not work as expected straight out of the box. For this reason, I value having most of the software I use included in the base system. If I had religious beliefs about qmail, for example, I would still support keeping sendmail in the base system for the sake of that principle. The downside to an integrated userland is elucidated in this thread. People are always bitching about the colors of various bike sheds and screaming `POLA!' every time something is changed. The fact of the matter is that it's possible to upgrade across several releases with few surprises, and that's pretty damn good. I imagine this list would be much quieter if the folks who expect every software change to be agreeable to them stopped upgrading or switched to Linux. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message