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Re: BSD handbook - was Re: debiantutorials.org seeks input and new blood



On Sat, 2 May 2009, Neal Hogan wrote:


On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 9:30 AM, Douglas A. Tutty <dtutty@vianet.ca> wrote:
On Sat, May 02, 2009 at 06:27:44AM -0500, Neal Hogan wrote:

FYI - While many of the fBSD folks will tout there ports/package
system, I found it to be a pain (especially the upgrade), as did many
others. There has recently been some chatter on their general mailing
list to overhaul how they handle packages. Again, I found oBSD's
package handling system to be superior.

Last I looked (last week), OBSD doesn't have security updates (patches)
for their packages; they only provide patches for the base release.  If
you want to run -current, then the packages get security patches.  Since
I'm on dialup, that would mean a lot of bandwidth time; basically, every
time firefox or some third-party app required a security fix, I'd have
to download the source for _everything_ and recompile _everything_.

I don't want to labor this point here, but just one more thing. If you
are going to follow current, the recommended way to go about it is to
do binary upgrades of the kernel (i.e, snapshots). You don't have to
compile src every time. The same goes for packages, binary snapshots
of which are updated every few months or so (probably not that often).

http://www.openbsd.org/faq/current.html



Ah.

Maybe it's too complicated for me.

I was only ever a user on someone else's (educational instritution's) BSD system, and did not do, or learn, sysadmin on BSD.

As a Linux user since around Red Hat 4 or 5, I have never compiled anything in Linux, and have relied on package management, and have had problems with software that involved using.tar.gz files to install, to the extent that I gave up on any package that involved using .tar.gz files to install.

So, if BSD is more complicated than using package management like RPM in Red Hat and .deb in Debian/Ubuntu, then it is probably too complicated for me.

--
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
..............

"So once you do know what the question actually is,
 you'll know what the answer means."
- Deep Thought,
  Chapter 28 of Book 1 of
  "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
  A Trilogy In Four Parts",
  written by Douglas Adams,
  published by Pan Books, 1992

....................................................

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