Migrating to FreeBSD from Debian

[John Aten]

On Dec 8, 2015, at 12:38 AM, Brandon J. Wandersee wrote:

> 
> John Aten writes:
> 
>> I am coming from Debian also, and I was initially intimidated by
>> ports. I still am, but I the more I think about it, the more I favor
>> the idea of ports over packages. One source of confusion is the all
>> the options one is faced with when installing from ports; I don't know
>> exactly where to look for documentation on what would be better/worse
>> to select and why. Is this a matter of checking with the documentation
>> of the program to be installed? Or is there FreeBSD specific
>> information on this somewhere?
> 
> It might be worthwhile check the application documentation, but the port
> options are presented as an interactive checklist for each port, with
> each option briefly described. If it seems overwhelming at first, just
> know that while quite a few ports have some esoteric options, many
> build-time options are for features or functionality you would use
> directly, like choosing which codecs a music player should support or
> whether an application should include a GUI. Generally, the first time I
> build a port I exclude what I know I don't need, include what I do, and
> leave anything I don't understand alone.

That's pretty much what I have been doing; sounds intuitive.