Why Are You NOT Using FreeBSD ?

[Zane C. B-H.]

On Sat, 2 Jun 2012 16:07:23 +0300
Alexander Yerenkow <yerenkow at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'll try to be short.
> I'm using FreeBSD both at servers and as a desktop, but I see
> struggling of my friends with it in some things.
> 
> 1. Ports mess. You can very easily render system unusable, or broken
> if you trying to use latest ports. And then you had to became "a
> port master" to fix all. Of course you need a lot of free time,
> right? :)

This is not a FreeBSD specific issue. Regardless of the OS in
question, one needs to make sure to run it all in a test environment
first before pushing it out.

> 2. No decent packet manager (I hope pkgng will make life
> easier). You can't just upgrade this and that packet and see what's
> new, and rollback if you don't like somthing .

Actually rolling back is completely possible as the ports tree is in
a vcs. Just roll back to the last working version of a port you are
having issues with and make sure it is set to not be updated next
time up update the tree.

> 3. "FreeBSD is not a linux" - so FreeBSD avoid linuxisms, like KMS
> etc. And when it became crystal clear that progress is inevitable,
> we need wait few more years to get new graphics working. Some time
> ago, I read somewhere on wiki proud phrase "We are more linux than
> linux itself", it was about LSB test or something similar. FreeBSD
> can deny linux ways, but it's here, and it's widespread standard
> (at least in comparing with FreeBSD). FreeBSD do really need those
> fancy new techs, at least which related to X/hardware. XEN is one
> more thing, which could be attractive, but there's not much
> progress. I don't say let's rewrite all as in linux. I'm saying
> about having copatibility layer a bit fresher.

This is question of time of the people involved. I can't say I've
seen any one saying new features like KMS should not be added because
it is to Linux like.

> <snip>