Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 20:39:41 -0800 From: Doug Barton <Doug@gorean.org> To: morrildl@nycap.rr.com, freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Information Message-ID: <38E42C0D.3B832DBC@gorean.org> References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.10003302159100.8570-100000@obsequious.net>
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Dan wrote me privately to say that his response was intended for the list. morrildl@nycap.rr.com wrote: > > On Thu, 30 Mar 2000, Doug Barton wrote: > > > Which is the entire point of this list. IMO it's important to know > > how ports get installed, where they get installed, and how to find > > seemingly missing bits. > > Not to get off on a tangent, but this raises a curious point; namely, > what's a "newbie"? Is the audience of this list a newbie to Unix, or just > a newbie to FreeBSD? > > (The answer, of course, is "yes", right? ;) Yes. > But since you mentioned ports, and since this is supposed to be a low-flame > list, I thought I'd ask a really dumb question. > > I am a FreeBSD newbie; I am not a Unix newbie. I've been doing the Linux > thing for, oh, four or five years now, and I think at this point I could > probably build and bootstrap my own distribution. (Fear not; I can also > hold my own on AIX and Solaris.) Unfortunately, as Linux becomes more and > more "mainstream", I find myself longing for a bit more of that good old > alternative OS high that is starting to dwindle in Linux. Plus, I hear all > the REAL Unix hackers live in BSD-land. ;) > > So, my really dumb question is this: how does one go about grokking the > FreeBSD? Go to http://www.freebsd.org/ and read the enitre Handbook and FAQ. That'll give you an excellent foundation. > I mean, I have a general sense of FreeBSD; it uses CVSup for > source distribution, the project manages the whole OS vs. just the kernel as > in the Linux world, there's a "ports" tree containing various ported > software, etc. > > But there's also a lot I don't know yet. For example, what's the best way > to learn how to customize your cvsup config file? There isn't much to configure. You just specify the collections you want, and where to get them from. Mine hasn't changed in like, 3 years. (Well, that's not entirely true, I am pulling down the new crypto sources now for the OPENSS[HL] stuff.) The one thing you might want to tweak is your refuse file. Mine looks like this: doc/es* doc/fr* doc/ja* doc/ru* doc/zh* ports/biology ports/cad ports/chinese ports/german ports/japanese ports/korean ports/palm ports/russian ports/vietnamese src/sys/alpha src/sys/pc98 www/es www/ja www/ru www/zh This prevents me from downloading anything in those collections, which frees up some disk for me, and reduces the load on the cvsup servers. > Is there decent Java support on FreeBSD? Depends on your definition of "decent." I don't do Java, but word is that it works pretty well as both an application and development platform. > How does one become Enlightened in the Zen of the > Versions (i.e. what's the difference between RELEASE and STABLE?) Handbook helps here, but the illustration I like to use is a string. The CVS repo is where the weaving is being done. At any given time when you check out the sources, you're getting the end of the string, which we call -Stable. Every once in a while they cut a -Release, which you can think of as a specific point on the string. > Are the FreeBSD user-land tools the same as on Linux? Some are, some are not. Enjoy your journey of discovery. :) Doug > (e.g. `ps`, the GNU binutils, `pidof`, and so forth.) > > Is there a web page or something that covers this kind of thing? I didn't > see anything on freebsd.org that screamed out, "Hey Newbie -- READ ME!" > (But then I have a penchant for over-skimming web pages.) > > Bear in mind that I don't have a FreeBSD installation yet. (And I won't > for a little while more -- gotta finish my MS this semester and be done with > the damn thing. Then, hello summer projects!! :) Is there anywhere a > lurker can look for this kind of info? > > Dan Morrill > Computer Scientist, Physicist -- "So, the cows were part of a dream that dreamed itself into existence? Is that possible?" asked the student incredulously. The master simply replied, "Mu." To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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