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[Brian Candler]

On Tue, May 03, 2005 at 06:34:23AM -1000, Randy Bush wrote:
> > One of the reasons I ditched Linux several years ago was the way Linux
> > shifts constantly. A good example is the firewalling code: once upon a
> > time there was ipfw. Then that was replaced by ipfwadm. Then that was
> > discarded, and replaced by ipchains. Which in turn was discarded and
> > replaced by iptables. (Or was that the other way round? I don't follow it
> > closely these days)
> 
> yep.  another way: this sounds as if you see freebsd as a workhorse
> production system as opposed to a hobby where the more of your time
> it absorbs the better it is.

Yes, that's a fair summary. However, historically there was a big up-front
investment in FreeBSD until you get to that point.

I think this is much less so nowadays. In particular, the handbook is
excellent, and a lot of essential utilities which you had to install as
add-ons are now included as standard (e.g. gzip, tar with -z flag)

Now the only essential package to install is a POSIX shell with interactive
command history - i.e. "bash" - and it looks like /bin/sh has now gained
that capability too, although sadly not tab-completion.

It's still fair to say that the tools for [install, upgrade, configure] have
a number of problems, especially for those new to FreeBSD.

Regards,

Brian.