After the flood of Fedora Core 6 and Ubuntu 6.10 reviews, here is a review of PC-BSD 1.3 Beta. "PC-BSD has improved quite a bit and the use of its open-source PBI packaging system is a great idea. Although it obviously means there might be a minor delay in newly released products being ported over to the PBI package system, novice users will rejoice because the wait is well worth it. PC-BSD is a well oiled machine with its quick response times, even if you don't have that much memory in your system. Its implementation of a clean interface is welcomed by me and not having a 3D enabled desktop is not something I really would worry about unless you are an eye-candy lover."
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Member since:2005-07-24
"""You say that because you're jealous. They were the first to put this into practice and implement the same installation procedure as Windows applications."""
No. I say it because it is true. I do happen to prefer Linux. But I feel that Linux and BSD are brothers and applaud the BSDs when they do cool things like reverse engineer wireless drivers. They are beating our butts on that count.
This PC-BSD packaging thing is just a mistake.
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-08-28
The packaging system is going to be the bane of PC-BSD.
They took the expedient way out of that problem
Well, the expedient way might be the only way if your resources are limited. Look at the Debian Policy manual (http://www.us.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/), and you'll realize that proper packaging requires a lot of effort.
Member since:2005-07-24
"""Well, the expedient way might be the only way if your resources are limited."""
Precisely. One day, the PC-BSD devs will come up with their own packaging system that takes advantage of shared objects, or adapt an existing one, and it will be heralded as a huge step forward.
I think that the best way to resolve this disagreement is to simply wait until the problems become so apparent that they cannot be denied anymore. The "No Shared Libraries" crowd will be much more willing to admit there was a problem after they have a solution in hand.
Member since:2005-09-10
There are centralized set of libraries in the system. It is very obvcious that you have no idea how the PBI system works.
I no longer have the time to build PBIs, but I did a few (scribus, tellico, some kde themes) a few months ago - and you could safely depend on the set of libraries that comes with the base system. In other words, you obviously don't have to package all the qt/kdelibs stuff when you do a scribus PBI, because you can depend on the presence of those on every PC-BSD system (the same with xorg and related packages).
So, the problem is moot... yeah, there will be some duplications, but how many exactly? Almost all important shared libraries are present in the base install, and PC-BSD is a noob oriented distro, so the average PC-BSD user won't "make deinstall" random components of the system. So you blow this issue out of proportions... what's your gripe with PC-BSD?
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Member since:
2005-07-24
The packaging system is going to be the bane of PC-BSD.
They took the expedient way out of that problem, and it will haunt them forever... until they admit that it was the wrong way to go.
It was a way to get something out, right now, that is perceived as "easy".
But mark my words, they will admit it was a mistake later.
The eventual announcement will likely be more like:
"PC-BSD now supports the use of a centralized set of libraries! This allows us to save huge amounts of memory and reduce the bandwidth needed for daily updates! (Aren't we cool?)"