Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 4th May 2009 09:42 UTC, submitted by Extend
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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RE[6]: The Question: BSD on Desktop
by adstro on Tue 5th May 2009 15:06
in reply to "RE[5]: The Question: BSD on Desktop"
Member since:2005-10-15
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.
This is not quite true. I would consider the entire ports system part of the base OS as well as pkg_add, pkg_delete, etc. Tools like portmaster/portupgrade have been created mainly because of the gap that exists in the way FreeBSD handles third party software (it is not easily upgraded). Considering the tools that install/removing third party software (pkg_add, pkg_delete, the ports system) along with the record keeping are all part of the base OS, a tool that upgrades should be there as well.
RE[7]: The Question: BSD on Desktop
by kernpanic on Tue 5th May 2009 15:53
in reply to "RE[6]: The Question: BSD on Desktop"
Member since:2008-03-15
The ports system most certainly isn't part of the base OS, its a framework to install (mostly 3rd party) software from source more easily; I don't think any FreeBSD developer would agree that ports are part of the base OS, they're not even tied with any particular release of the OS.
RE[7]: The Question: BSD on Desktop
by phoenix on Tue 5th May 2009 18:02
in reply to "RE[6]: The Question: BSD on Desktop"
Member since:2005-07-11
"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.
This is not quite true. I would consider the entire ports system part of the base OS as well as pkg_add, pkg_delete, etc. "
The ports tree framework is part of the base OS (the collection of Makefiles and /usr/ports/Mk/*). But none of the software that gets installed by the ports tree is part of FreeBSD. It's a fine line, but one worth pointing out.
Tools like portmaster/portupgrade have been created mainly because of the gap that exists in the way FreeBSD handles third party software (it is not easily upgraded). Considering the tools that install/removing third party software (pkg_add, pkg_delete, the ports system) along with the record keeping are all part of the base OS, a tool that upgrades should be there as well.
They're working on it. There's been a couple of SoC projects to improve the pkg_* tools, and this year's SoC includes an upgrade tool.
However, nothing that requires non-standard software (like Ruby for portupgrade) will ever get installed as part of the base OS. Something like portmaster, which is just pure /bin/sh scripting and uses the ports tree and /var/db/pkg for everything, could be included in the base OS. However, as the ports tree is always changing (there is only 1 ports tree), it makes sense to have ports tools installed separately from the base OS. The base only changes a couple of times a year, while portmaster gets upgraded a whole lot more often than that, to pick up new bits from the ports tree.
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.