rcs

[Freddie Cash]

On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 6:41 AM, Julian Elischer <julian at freebsd.org> wrote:

> On 10/9/13 2:35 AM, Freddie Cash wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 9:09 AM, Alfred Perlstein <bright at mu.org> wrote:
>>
>>  You're right on the money, to be honest this is one of the reasons why
>>> I've switched to using OSX as my desktop OS.
>>>
>>> zsh, vim, screen by default.  and upgrades work.  At the end of the day
>>> I'm spending time doing work, not mucking about my workspace to make it
>>> usable for development.
>>>
>>> I think this was brought up at BSDCan in the discussion about making
>>> FreeBSD a more featured development platform.
>>>
>>> Speaking of... has anyone tried PCBSD?
>>>
>>
>> PC-BSD isn't much different from FreeBSD.  The installer is GUI and
>> support
>> ZFS, there are some GUI setup tools on first boot for X, there are some
>> GUI
>> tools to select binary drivers for X, and there ​​are working pkgng repos
>> available.
>>
>> I had a lot of issues with PC-BSD 9.0 and 9.1 as I was trying to do things
>> "the FreeBSD way" which broke a lot of things that were done "the PC-BSD
>> way" (aka don't manually edit config files used for booting).
>>
>> ​Switching to the "rolling-release" (aka PC-BSD 9-STABLE) and moving all
>> my
>> config file edits into <filename>.conf.local fixed my issues.  Things have
>> been running smooth, and I finally understand the beauty and simplicity of
>> freebsd-update + pkg.  OS gets updated once per month, packages get
>> updated
>> twice per month, no more compiling things from source.  It's like using
>> Ubuntu/Debian but with the power and features of FreeBSD.  :)
>> ​
>>
>
> When they went to a ZFS-only system, using GRUB, with no alternative, then
> I'm afraid they lost me.
> I want a root filesystem on UFS for reliabailty and simpleness.  I can
> debug it's media if needed.
> Before then I really liked it (though ther eis not enough information on
> how it works interneally if you want to use it.
> hopefully that will come.. and I LIKE PBIs  FreeBSD should adopt PBIs for
> sure.
> With PBIs you could make even quite base items separately installable.
> versioning problems go away.
>

There's no GRUB in a default install of PC-BSD 9.0, 9.1, or 9.2.  Even on a
ZFS-only setup (which is what I run).  It's using the FreeBSD loader, with
custom artwork and menus.

There's also nothing stopping you from installing / onto UFS.  At least, I
didn't see anything that would prevent it when I installed it originally.
 Granted, that was with 9.1, so the installer may be different in 9.2.

I tried to use PBIs, but really messed up the system doing so.  /usr was
just a directory on /, on a USB stick, and ran out of room.  Tried various
things to get it off / and b0rked the system.  Even after moving to
ZFS-on-root and getting away from filesystem limits, I still couldn't get
PBIs to upgrade properly.

Since moving away from PBIs, away from ports, away from pkg_* tools, and
sticking strictly with pkg, everything has been running smoothly.  The
experience with pkg on PC-BSD gives me hope for FreeBSD again (too many
issues in the past with ports and pkg_* tools, even when using only
portmaster).

For desktops, a binary-only system using freebsd-update and pkg is so much
nicer.  For servers, implementing your own freebsd-update server and pkg
repo (via poudriere) is so much nicer.  If I never have to compile a port
on a remote system again, I will be a happy man.  :)  To each their own, of
course.  :)

-- 
Freddie Cash
fjwcash at gmail.com