I like Ubuntu

[doug at safeport.com]

On Sat, 14 Apr 2007, Chad Perrin wrote:

> On Sat, Apr 14, 2007 at 12:17:20PM +0200, Dag-Erling Sm?rgrav wrote:
>> doug at safeport.com writes:
>>> First my experience with [Free]BSD as a server completely mirrors
>>> Dag-Erling's observation, it [mostly] just works. I started with BSDI
>>> switching to FreeBSD around 3.5. I think it is also true that
>>> depending on your hardware a FreeBSD workstation or laptop can be a
>>> bit of a challenge.
>>
>> My issues with FreeBSD as a desktop mostly come from the difficulty of
>> installing software and keeping it up-to-date: 'pkg_add -r' and
>> 'portupgrade -aP' simply can't hold a candle to 'apt-get install' and
>> 'apt-get dist-upgrade'.
>
> What do you find lacking in the FreeBSD approach?  I'm a relatively
> recent transplant from Debian, and my experience is that FreeBSD
> provides better, more predictable, and more customizable results,
> without increasing the difficulty or reducing the convenience at all.

As far as this goes nothing. I use FreeBSD exclusively on production servers, 
and workstations. My laptop I dual boot with windows which I only use to 
duplicate costomer problems and keep up with the latest (and greatest?) changes 
to the Outlooks.

> Granted, I haven't really tried the package-based software management
> options for FreeBSD in any depth -- I'm mostly installing from source at
> this point -- but thus far I haven't any reason to expect package-based
> installation to be any less easily managed than source-based installs.
>
Here (I think) there are some things that could be better. The installation can 
be tricky depending on one's background, but I did not follow the maxum, if you 
don't like it, make it better. Portupgrade does not work for me because all my
desktops are too small, too slow. In a (my) perfect world portmanager would 
allow the use of packages.

For some the fact that flash, java, and openoffice can be difficult to install 
are issues. I am an advocate for the FreeBSD desktop.