Our package system: "Fundamentally Flawed" - A Linux User.

[Joshua Tinnin]

On Sunday 18 July 2004 11:22 pm, Travis Poppe <tlp at LiquidX.org> wrote:

The other posts have already addressed some of your concerns, but ...

> Many would also agree that building massive amounts of software from source
> is NOT efficient for a desktop user and binary packages are a more suitable
> alternative.

Well, FWIU, building from source is also the preferred method, as it creates a 
much better system overall, rather than just installing binaries which have 
been built on someone else's system. This allows every install to be 
specifically built for the system on which it's installed. Not only that, but 
the code in STABLE changes regularly, so it's better to build from the 
version of the kernel you have and with your own make options. Also, FreeBSD 
isn't really a desktop OS. I'm not sure if you're being precise with that 
word, but, although it works very well as a workstation, it's not designed 
for what many home users do with their desktop systems. You can use big 
window managers like KDE and Gnome, but it's not necessarily designed for 
entertainment. There isn't a lot of concentration on multimedia. There is 
much concentration on stability and making everything work together, 
including what's in the ports. The idea is that it's a complete package, not 
a kernel in various distributions which add whatever they want (although 
anyone is free to make their own version, as in Linux, but the licensing is 
less restrictive). As you probably know, it's mainly considered a server OS, 
but it's become popular as a workstation for many people as well, myself 
included. I have FreeBSD, Slackware and Win2k on this machine so I can use 
the same computer for different purposes, but when I finally get around to 
starting up my own mailserver and webserver, I'll put them on FreeBSD boxes, 
and I'll add a box with OpenBSD to be used as a dedicated firewall. However, 
I'd never consider using OpenBSD as a desktop OS, and it isn't suitable for 
my workstation purposes due to its lag in hardware support. Each tool has its 
purpose, and the right tool for the right purpose works better than trying to 
use the same tool for everything.

- jt