Productivity with FBSD, or: "portupgrade" vs. virus scans....

[Josh Paetzel]

On Tuesday 06 February 2007 12:39, Kevin Kinsey wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Length/content-warning:  Please excuse my excessive grumbling, if
> that's what it is.  Lots of this is background; material for
> discussion is at the bottom.  I've edited it a good deal, but it's
> still wordy.
>
> Psychological-bent-warning:  I need a vacation, and will take one
> soon. Also, for various reasons, business stats aren't looking good
> yet this year (or much of last).
> ---
>
> I'd like to hear opinions from those (and there are many, AFAICT)
> who use FreeBSD as a personal workstation, if you have time to
> respond.
>
> My computer is my workstation _and_ my little company (and family)
> server.  Lately I've been (perhaps unjustly?) *feeling* I'd be just
> as well off to put this box in a corner to serve and purchase
> another MS exec's daughter an iPod.
>
> I've been an (outspoken?) FBSD advocate and desktop user for 3
> years now, give or take.   FBSD makes a great gen-purpose machine -
> stable OS, the ports collection is wonderful and FBSD's
> full-featuredness puts WinXP to shame when it comes to networking,
> troubleshooting, and standards-compliant web development (which is
> mostly what I do besides typical communication and research
> functions).  I can do stuff in a heartbeat that coworkers who are
> MS-only users have to search for apps to do.  And the only way to
> beat the license cost would be if the Project paid me ;-)
>
> But I'm having trouble keeping up with desktop ports.  A couple of
> apps necessary for my "comfy GUI" (xfce4-panel is one, seamonkey
> has been another) are/have dump(ing/ed) core regularly.  At least
> twice in the past year some element(s) of my environment was broken
> to the point where I decided to simply "make deinstall" in
> /usr/ports rather than try and fix the issues.  Maybe I missed
> something in UPDATING <?>, but I've not noted anything ex post
> facto.  It could be that I simply get tired of sitting at the desk
> - maybe I need more management scripts (already have some that make
> "buildworld, etc." almost totally pain-free).
>
> Every once in a while (generally while upgrading ports/packages), I
> look over there and see our single Windows machine and think, "we
> never have to run `portupgrade` on that boxen... and I'm smart
> enough to avoid virii."
>
> My box does *everything* except provide workstation facilities to
> my family and co-workers.  Company intranet and site development
> server, gateway/fw/nat/proxy, POP/IMAP and MTA, SAMBA, DNS, rsync
> for backups, print services via apsfilter over lpr, and, my desktop
> with XFCE4.  I have set up scripts to handle rebuilding -STABLE,
> usually about monthly. I have the CD Burner we use; the only thing
> we need Win* for are the kid's games and school apps, as a "test
> box" for clients and web previewing in MSIE, and the fact that
> other family members (and one co-worker) all prefer "known
> territory".
>
> Needless to say, the FBSD box needs to be "up and running" almost
> all the time.  It seems lately that maintaining the many ports
> providing all these services is taking away valuable time that
> should be spent *really working*.
>
> Perhaps I need a more reliable Internet link; packet radio
> occasionally (at least with my current provider) seems to
> experience sharp drops in performance, which makes tarball-fetching
> take a long time during the day, whilst the fact that there are so
> many ports installed means "portupgrade -arR --fetch-only" takes
> more than an overnight, also.
>
> I've had a co-worker with an extremely stable FBSD desktop; stable
> in the sense that, everything GUI-wise worked as expected for month
> after month after month.  But the hardware was borken and wouldn't
> build world, so we never upgraded the OS or ports/packages, and
> apparently got a "good scale" on it the first time.
>
> If you're a desktop FBSD user:
>
> How do you keep up with ports?
>
>     *Do you have (or have you, at some time, had) much trouble?
>
>     *If you have trouble, do you accept it as a "cost" of using
> FreeBSD?
>
> How often do you upgrade your ports/packages?
>
> Any suggestions on what I might do differently?
>
>     *Should I quit updating FBSD except for major point releases?
>
>     *Should we upgrade the server-type ports and leave the desktop
> apps alone when we get a "stable" configuration there?
>
>     *How dangerous is it to be using outdated ports (particularly
> the servers)?
>
> To sum up, I doubt I'll jettison FBSD from my desktop, but I wish
> to be assured I'm not wasting time doing what amounts to "busy
> work" to keep my 3rd-party apps going when I could sit at the next
> desk and probably worry less about that....
>
> Thanks for your time, thoughts and strategies,
>
> Kevin Kinsey

I've been using FreeBSD as my desktop OS for over a decade now, and on 
servers a bit longer than that.  I guess I've grown used to some of 
the quirks in the ports tree.

I'm very very conservative about upgrading.  Unless there is a bug 
that effects me directly, a security issue that effects me, or some 
sort of new feature I just can't live without I don't upgrade mission 
critical boxes.  Which means all of my servers were running 4.11 
until very recently. :)

Sure, I don't mind playing around with the latest and greatest, I have 
a 6.2 box or two sitting here at home, but when it comes to things I 
need to get work done I don't generally mess with working 
configurations unless I have to.

As far as upgrading ports go, I'm not a proponent of automated tools.  
When I upgrade something I pkg_delete it and any needed dependancies 
by hand and then install the new versions from ports.

-- 
Thanks,

Josh Paetzel