New user confused by need to do huge upgrade

[Michael VInce]

Alistair wrote:

> Hello, All
>
> I am a user of Linux for many years (and an aged BSD sysadmin from 
> 1985-1989), but laterly mainly use Gentoo.  FreeBSD seemed to be a 
> good alternative, so I get the 6.0 release a few days after it was 
> released.
>
> Being a Gentoo person, I like the ports system, but with limited time 
> on my hands, I also like the compiled packages.  I can get a working 
> system from packages then compile my own ports as need or want be.  Or 
> so I thought.
>
> I installed from two CDs, and got a working KDE system.  Now, I want 
> to do Firefox from ports with my own make.conf for P4 optimisation.  
> Good!  So, I sync with the sources using cvsup (just like emerge 
> --sync) change to the Firefox ports directory, type "make" and enter 
> dependency hell like has never been known before.  Everything that 
> depends upon GTK2 must be updated before Firefox can be compiled!
>
> I thought that FreeBSD would be more stable than Gentoo and Linux 
> distros in general.  I now find that there is the most major release 
> step (5.4 to 6.0) and within a matter of a few days later, both Gnome 
> and KDE are subject to huge updates that require many hours (or maybe 
> days - it's not done yet) of CPU time.
>
> Maybe I am missing something.  However, I just cannot see why this is 
> right. What I thought that FreeBSD would give me that Gentoo did not 
> is a coherent system within which deveopment was co-ordinated. 
> Instead, I seem to find the opposite.  The core group can offer a 
> major release of the OS, while missing the fact that two hugely 
> important development groups are just days off their own major releases.
>
> Maybe there is a level of sanity I am missing as a newcomer to BSD, 
> but I would really like someone to tell me where to find it so that I 
> can stop having to use this bloody Windows laptop to post here ;-)
>
Check out the UPDATING notes for anything about KDE
cat /usr/ports/UPDATING | grep -A 13 -B 3 "kde" | grep -A 14 "20051105"

Update your ports tree, then portupgrade your KDE packages,
portupgrade -Rk /var/db/pkg/kde-3.4.2
Go to sleep and wake up with the latest KDE and feel good about the fact 
that you aren't stealing from SCO compared to using Gentoo Linux :)

Mike