From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Oct 16 21:41:33 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 63AE516A47B for ; Mon, 16 Oct 2006 21:41:33 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from stapleton.41@gmail.com) Received: from ug-out-1314.google.com (ug-out-1314.google.com [66.249.92.174]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B2BA843D97 for ; Mon, 16 Oct 2006 21:41:31 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from stapleton.41@gmail.com) Received: by ug-out-1314.google.com with SMTP id m2so815172uge for ; Mon, 16 Oct 2006 14:41:31 -0700 (PDT) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=OlaIT5noH2QuFRDAjoUH9t3OGag/J+ok+qlX9UuAHW6Q2YUJLJ/Ymwy9EFxnh3VgpcT8XA3Ihz3GQa0S1m0hPGIB2oSsvzr9J4cKSe7/tub6FeilPmJbYXvsy4Kp24XbrNaFp9V/ZGC4U9XJG71xgIq260yE/c9n479vsKq2udw= Received: by 10.67.21.11 with SMTP id y11mr8833556ugi; Mon, 16 Oct 2006 14:41:31 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.67.86.18 with HTTP; Mon, 16 Oct 2006 14:41:31 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <80f4f2b20610161441h304ccfc4haa6a20f72a08e018@mail.gmail.com> Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2006 17:41:31 -0400 From: "Jim Stapleton" To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <4533C553.3040609@schrodinger.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <80f4f2b20610151556l18c5adcci4196ab107b6b9907@mail.gmail.com> <4533C553.3040609@schrodinger.com> Subject: Re: What's so compelling about FreeBSD? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2006 21:41:33 -0000 > I have a few FreeBSD machine from 4.x to 5.x. I have asked people how to > upgrade them to latest version 6.x cleanly. All I was told is that I > need to wipe them out and reinstall. However, this is not the case with > Gentoo Linux. With Gentoo, version release does not matter that much, > you can always keep your system up to date if you like. Of cause, you > can also choose staying at a certain version. I'm gonna join the "whoever said this was on crack" club. Going between major versions can be a challange due to mergebastard and the various config file change, but Gentoo's setup is really no different in that respect. However, when you want to compile the Kernel, the FreeBSD system is much mroe useful than that of Gentoo. I failed my first kernel build on FreeBSD (custom kernel config) before it booted properly, and have since done several more without issue. With Gentoo, after about half a dozen attempts at optimizing my kernel for my notebook, I gave up and used Genkernel, which was not as efficient, but at least worked. > Linux supports more devices than FreeBSD, especially new devices. Spend an extra 5 minutes researching your hardware before buying, more often than not, this'll save you the issues.