Last week it was BSD week: OpenBSD 4.5, NetBSD 5.0, and DragonFlyBSD 2.2.1. FreeBSD 7.2 completes the picture, with every major BSD now having a new and fresh release waiting to be installed on your desktop, laptop, or server.
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Member since:2005-10-15
The main difference between third-party tools like portupgrade/portmaster and apt is that apt is part of the OS and as such tends to be a bit more stable. I have used FreeBSD for just over 5 years on the desktop and I cant tell you how many times I have gotten my system in a nasty state because of portupgrade (even with reading /usr/ports/UPDATING). I dont understand why FreeBSD does not have a tool for updating ports in the base system. With everything else the ports system does, this seems like a natural direction to take.
Member since:2006-05-12
Technically, the whole ports tree is "3rd party" and not part of the base system, so all tools that manage it, etc... are also 3rd party. Sure, you have the basic csup installed to download and portsnap, but anything else is 3rd party.
I would easily use FreeBSD exclusively as it's a superior OS to Linux in many ways. OSS vs. ALSA just being one of many. How come OSS can do hardware virtual devices and ALSA has to relay on a PoS program sound server sitting on top of it to do the same?
However, I digress. Flash is a pervasive part of the web and many sites I use require it to some extent or another, so I rather give them a Linux / Flash traffic hit vs. dual-booting into Windows and giving them those traffic stats.
I don't understand why Adobe can't just release a "beta", even only downloaded from their dev site, of Flash for FreeBSD. We're all more or less power users and would be happy to give feedback. If it was even 80% stable I would be happy with it.
Member since:
2006-09-01
There are many package management tools for FreeBSD that are the equivalent of yum and apt. Portupgrade and portmaster are two for the command line, and the DesktopBSD tools and barry for the GUI.
There are more tools here: http://www.freshports.org/ports-mgmt/
I've upgraded many a preinstalled package on my DesktopBSD computer, and I wouldn't characterize the experience as dependency hell. What exactly was the issue you were seeing?