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Date:      Mon, 23 Apr 2001 14:35:47 -0500
From:      Andrew Hesford <ajh3@chmod.ath.cx>
To:        "Thomas (Matt) Barton" <matt@fear.net>
Cc:        Andrew Hesford <ajh3@chmod.ath.cx>, "SPEAKEASY <bvagnoni>" <bvagnoni@speakeasy.net>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: How Is The FeeBSD OS Like and Different Than Say Redhat or Suse LINUX
Message-ID:  <20010423143547.A3982@cec.wustl.edu>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0104231056350.2840-100000@fear.net>; from matt@fear.net on Mon, Apr 23, 2001 at 11:10:52AM -0400
References:  <20010423100129.A1552@cec.wustl.edu> <Pine.LNX.4.33.0104231056350.2840-100000@fear.net>

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On Mon, Apr 23, 2001 at 11:10:52AM -0400, Thomas (Matt) Barton wrote:
> One of these days I'm going to try Slackware, only because I've been told
> that it is supposed to take after BSD, but with the Linux kernel.

Don't waste your time. Let's put it this way: it's more like BSD than
any other linux distribution, but it's more like a linux distribution
than BSD. You still have certain linux oddities that I don't like, for
instance, a dynamically linked /bin and /sbin. I think the only things
really close to BSD are the boot scripts.

> Debian is just okay, for me.  I used it for a brief period of time, but I
> didn't like it.  It just felt sloppy.  It also uses the dreaded SysV init
> and I hate that like nothing else.

Yes, I will give you that: it feels sloppy. However, if you want binary
package management in the linux world, Debian is the way to go. APT is
by far the most intelligent binary package manager that I have ever seen
for linux.

> To be honest, I can't say that I've encountered any problems when
> upgrading any of my ports, but then nothing I use has had any major
> revisions since I installed FreeBSD three months ago.

How would you upgrade something like GTK? It seems to me that if you
don't want to break dependencies, you must deinstall everything that
depends on GTK, upgrade GTK, and reinstall everything else.

I think when school gets out for summer in a few weeks, I'm going to
start a compile-fest to upgrade all my software.

> Another great thing about the ports collection is that everything gets
> installed in /usr/local.  I don't have to worry about /etc getting
> cluttered, as well as /bin, /usr/sbin, etc.  There are a few exceptions,
> of course, such as qmail which goes to /var/qmail, but that is about it.

I agree with this... /usr/local is for "site-specific" software, but
most linux distributions with binary packages seem to thing that
"site-specific" is the same as "locally-compiled". If you ask me, /usr
and / are for stuff that gives you a basic system, 99% likely to be
identical on any machine you go to. /usr/local is for everything else
(e.g., GNOME and KDE, other non-necessary apps). Debian and RedHat dump
all package contents in /usr... this violates even the Linux hierarchy
standard!

-- 
Andrew Hesford
ajh3@chmod.ath.cx

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