Newbie Experience

[backyard]

--- Jeff Rollin <jeff.rollin at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 11/09/06, backyard <backyard1454-bsd at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > > When I first installed FreeBSD, circa 2003,
> version
> > > 4.9, the two reasons I chose it over Redhat and
> > > Debian were the simplicity of the installation
> and
> > > good manual. The install process on REdhat and
> > > Debian was awkward, at least for me, and I could
> not
> > > make them work on my old compaq armada laptop.
> In
> > > contrast just following the manual and choosing
> > > default install parameters I got Freebsd working
> > > fast.
> > >
> > > During the installation I actually learned a lot
> > > about unix and Freebsd, the sort of details
> which
> > > are important to know anyway.
> > >
> > > It is hard to find the right balance between
> > > simplicity and functionality. It seems the
> balance
> > > in the Freebsd install is about right.
> > >
> > > anton
> > >
> >
> > I've only been around since FreeBSD 5.4 myself,
> and
> > found during installs that sysinstall would get
> > confused if you changed your mind and went
> backwards
> > through the menus to reconfigure options. it seems
> > like the one in 6.1 is a lot better, but maybe I
> just
> > move back and forth less...
> >
> > That being said once it is installed it is a
> million
> > times easier to maintain and upgrade then any
> Linux
> > I've used. I had an old Digital 486 I had to
> install
> > Redhat 7.3 thinking I could easily update to the
> > latest kernel. I found I had to go through so many
> > dependancies to do so I finally said whatever
> kernel
> > was there was good enough. Talk about having to be
> a
> > GNU guru to get things installed correctly without
> > clobbering the old stuff and running into
> trouble...
> 
> 
> I'm unconvinced you could take FreeBSD 4 box and run
> the kernel from 6.1 on
> it without changing anything else.
> 

well cvsupping to Rel_5 and running a make buildworld
&& make buildkernel && make install kernel a reboot
some mergemaster magic an installworld some more
mergemaster magic and then cvsupping to Rel_6 and
repeating is still lighttyears easier then watching
the  Linux kernel build stop, downloading the sources,
configuring the dependancy properly, uninstalling the
old, and reintalling the new. Especially when you will
be tracing dependancies for weeks, unless your a
pretty good programmer, which I am not, and know the
dependancy chain of the core system. My point was the
relative ease of upgrading, not the technical points
of having missing object stubs. Of course you can't
put a cummins deisel in a pinto without working on the
frame first.



> Of late I was using Gentoo which I found to be
> FreeBSD
> > like with its portage system, until recently when
> it
> > seems they changed many system level interface
> stuff
> > sometime after April 2006 and now I cannot seem to
> > update it.
> 
> 
> The developers say you should not leave updating too
> long... True, if you
> are running FBSD 5.1 and need to update to 6.1, 5.3
> is still there on the
> servers, but you do have to go through the steps of
> installing that
> intermediate version.

well it was current as of april 8th when I made the
tape. I went on vacation in May and got back on or
about the 17th of May. Updating HAS NOT WORKED SINCE
THEN. so if waiting 6 weeks is too long then so be it.
I'm not going to constantly be emerging an update on a
daily basis to stay current, especially since
Openoffice seems to change its release tag everyother
day on Gentoo and it puts a machine out of commission
for 8-12 hours to build it. When:

emerge --update --deep --newuse --emptytree world

fails with PAM blocking, mozilla blocking, and now
Xorg blocking as well as some other odds and ends
thats when I say BSD is for me. to me it is
incomprehensible why I cannot rebuild the system tree
from scratch without software blocking the build. It
was fun while it lasted, and it was nice to be away
from winblows but in my experience linux is slower, a
pain to configure, impossible to update, and a project
started to emulate Unix. I'd much rather spend my time
learning Unix, then fighting with the emulator. 

> 
> Even a full system rebuild has blocking
> > packages that boggle my mind as they were compile
> from
> > source originally...
> 
> 
> Stuff usually blocks if something about the way it's
> installed has changed
> in an incompatible way - X.org moving from
> monolithic to modular builds, for
> example. This doesn't seem to have anything to do
> with (binary) packages.
> 

well if I just delete the blockers and let them be
fixed in the rebuild via them being dependancies it
still fails. and use flags are basically useless in
binary packages right? I don't like packages, I like
to see that the port(age) will build on my machine,
because I am a firm believer if you build it, it will
run... Not to mention you can set the options you
want. 

> sysinstall isn't all that bad. It could be flashier,
> > it could be graphical, it could be a lot of
> things. If
> > it really bothers you that much you can make
> yourself
> > a livecd system that brings up X and restores a
> basic
> > install, or cvsups whatever system you want on
> your
> > pc/sparc/whatever and builds it from source. that
> is
> > the beauty of Unix. True Unix not an emulator like
> > Linux.
> 
> 
> I let a lot of BSD comments about Linux go
> "unpunished", but this one has
> always got me. BSD had to be *almost totally
> rewritten* to  avoid AT&T
> licensing issues... added to the fact that I
> wouldn't be surprised if it's
> hard to find a single line of code IRIX, Solaris et
> al these days share
> between themselves and with V7. Not only that, but I
> understand that a lot
> of Unix sysadmins download the GNU tools as well,
> because (among other
> things) they do nifty things like being able to
> unzip, gunzip or bunzip a
> tarball before untarring it. And the amount of
> software available from
> people like KDE to install in FreeBSD is staggering.
> 
> That and the fact you get an OS with a set of
> > base software and a compiler out of the box. Linux
> is
> > only the kernel, you have to make hundreds of
> > independant software packages work together to get
> a
> > system running. Each one with their own
> independant
> > configuration files, and hundreds of man pages to
> > read. Even the rc.d system is a separate package.
> 
> 
> I doubt things magically work in FBSD, either. The
> maintainers probably have
> build scripts that automate fetching this or that,
> but it's all gotta be
> done.
> 
> now I'm sure things have progressed with Fedora Core
> > where updating is nice and simple, but the shear
> > amount of chaos that is Linux just drives me nutz.
> 
> 
> Linux is chaos?

ABSOLUTELY, but only because I am not a developer, and
know of C code... I find you have to be completely on
top of what it is and then some to get anything done.
None of the core utilities seem to work together with
a common configuration. But this is my biased opinion.
Each POSIX system follows a spec, how they follow it
is up to them. I find Linux takes a helical route
occastionally emergeing from event horizons. Plus can
any one really list what and why the kernel was
changed since its creation??? No even Linus can do
that, patches come in from everywhere, and weren't
docuemented until releatively recently. That is Chaos
my friend...
> 
> Sysinstall does take a few installs to get down pat,
> > but once you do it can be setup almost in your
> sleep.
> > You do need to get used to the differences of Unix
> vs
> > most PC OSs whereby you need to in laymens term
> > partition twice. A feature I love because it keeps
> > fstab making sense.
> >
> > Like anything you can't expect to try something
> > completely new without expecting to fall on your
> face
> > a few times. I wouldn't just through on scuba gear
> and
> > dive the Atlantic Ocean in search of the
> Titanic... I
> > would expect to have to read, maybe take some
> classes
> > (mess up FreeBSD bad and start over) and try in a
> pool
> > instead of the ocean a few times (use non-mission
> > critical machines to learn with)
> >
> > The unfortunate truth is Unix is not Microsoft
> > Windows, well some might consider it
> unfortunate...
> 
> 
> Yeah, I think you mean "fortunate truth"!
> 
> Windows tells you what to do, what software you must
> > use, what drivers you must use, where you must
> install
> > things, what daemons listen to what ports and
> their is
> > little you can do to change it. Unix is just a set
> of
> > simple commands strung together in scripts and
> pipes
> > that can do whatever you want it to do. X11 is not
> > Unix it is a software package designed to allow
> > netrocentric GUI applications to talk to a screen,
> > keyboard and mouse. Its a monster in and of
> itself...
> > Complete with its own documentation...
> >
> > Unfortunately it takes some time to learn how to
> work
> > with FreeBSD and Unix in general. Some people have
> > been doing it there whole professional lives and
> > probably still are amazed when they see a new
> little
> > trick come out of some new hackers "toolbox."
> There
> > are a few simple rules, and the rest is on you.
> It's
> > Unix's greatest strength and weakness rolled into
> one.
> > Please don't give up on FreeBSD because of one bad
> > experience. Take the time to mess around with it
> and
> > learn the basics and go from there. Or stick with
> > Linux its up to you. I will guarantee that when it
> > comes to upgrading the Linux box you will come
> back to
> > FreeBSD real quick...
> 
> 
>  Or Gentoo, Ubuntu or SuSE! ;-)

if you must but I'm done with that penguin and its a
messy break up. I've always liked what Linux was
doing, but I HATE the way it does it, and thats my
totally biased opinion.

-brian