I like Ubuntu

[Garrett Cooper]

Chad Perrin wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 14, 2007 at 11:57:44AM -0700, Garrett Cooper wrote:
>   
>> Well, we have some problems sometimes with cyclic dependencies 
>> (portinstall / portupgrade and friends), and people aren't really happy 
>> when names of categories / packages get changed (like what's happened 
>> recently with the revision of some of the port names), because there's a 
>> bit more work involved 'fixing' everything back to the same state that 
>> there was before. People also complain that there aren't enough 
>> offerings in terms of packages, but that's a resources issue from what I 
>> understand.
>>     
> As for enough packages . . . if you mean software in general, in the
> ports tree, I'd find it pretty difficult to complain.  There's only one
> Linux distribution with more software in its archives than in the
> FreeBSD ports tree (Debian, of course), and it's only about a fifteen
> percent increase in available software last I checked.  Considering
> FreeBSD offers something more like a 500% increase over Fedora (again,
> last I checked), I don't have a lot of problems of software availability
> with FreeBSD.  Is there a significant difference in available software
> between ports and packages?  Is that the problem?
>   
True. That's the one reason why I had no problem completely leaving 
Redhat 2 years back :). As for the complaints about packages, it's 
probably just the compile times and the fact that many users like the 
fact that they could install and setup a complete system in the 
approximately same amount of time as a Redhat based system (15mins ~ 1.5 
hours, depending on the options and computing resources available -- 
assuming you have a decent internet connection :)..).
> In fact, despite the greater number of packages in Debian's archives, I
> find that in practice I find what I actually want/need more often in
> FreeBSD's ports tree.  That is, of course, highly subjective.
>   
Well, yes and that's subjective, like you've said.
>> Overall though, I do like FreeBSD's ports system better than I do 
>> debian's apt-get system :). Having to shuffle through all of those menus 
>> and pages package listings to install stuff was a pain.
>>     
>
> One thing I prefer about APT over FreeBSD's ports tree is the greater
> ease and flexibility of searching for what I need.  The apt-cache search
> command is great.  I'm also a little confused by the failure of whereis
> to return expected results when I'm looking for a specific port.  These
> are things I can work around, however -- unlike some of the things that
> have blown up in my face when using APT.
>   
Most likely because you're still using (t)csh and (t)csh needs to run 
"rehash" in order to see newly installed ports / applications.

There's always (a)sh in the base system, and bash available in ports 
(shells/bash). I personally prefer bash to tcsh, but that's my deal.

-Garrett