The ports are really funcional?

[Joe Gain]

I agree, the ports are *amazing*. Even when installing a major component
like kde4. If you have your base system set up correctly this very complex
task will generally complete flawlessly. For a first-time install you can
accept most of the default options when configuring, but it's probably not
a good idea to just blindly accept every default.

Experiment with the different port management software until you find
something which you like. Read the documentation about dealing with common
issues, making backups, saving compiler/ installation errors, etc.

If you are having many problems with ports which require few dependencies,
you may have a non-ports related issue of some kind.

My entire system is ports based and I belong more to the user than the
hacker class.

Good luck!

On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 4:05 AM, Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de> wrote:

> On Sun, 30 Oct 2011 22:36:44 -0400, Alejandro Imass wrote:
> > For very large packages such as the graphics system, open or libre
> > office etc. it's much better to use binary versions via pkg_add. It's
> > a waste of time to compile these very large suites and most of the
> > time you will get the config options wrong, and they take forever to
> > compile.
>
> Exceptions:
>
> 1) You need language-specific settings.
>   Example: OpenOffice in German.
>
> 2) You need others than the default options, e. g. if you
>   want to include or exclude some stuff.
>   Example: OpenOffice without KDE.
>
> 3) You need options to be set at compile time that do differ
>   from the default options from which the binary packages
>   are made, or because of "artificially shit in your pants"
>   legal requirements and restrictions.
>   Example: mplayer with mencoder and all (!) codecs
>
> 4) You need to speed up things to make them run on older
>   hardware, and you fight for every optimization.
>   Example: mplayer's RUNTIME_CPU_DETECTION.
>
> But this is, I think, a case for 1% of users only. You
> hardly need to do that. In most cases, the default options
> are fine, and the binary packages just work.
>
>
>
> > For things you want to tailor and optimize to your needs then use the
> > ports system. FBSD is so cool that it doesn't matter if you install
> > one way or the other and you can use almost all methods
> > interchangeably.
>
> A managament tool (such as portmaster or portupgrade) helps
> to keep an eye on dependencies when using the many possible
> ways.
>
>
> --
> Polytropon
> Magdeburg, Germany
> Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
> Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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-- 
joe gain

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