# Ways to improve FreeBSD



## martin2091 (Dec 24, 2008)

I installed FreeBSD yesterday and I was happy about the nice features of this OS. However, I removed it today and came back to Debian. The principal factor which moved me to do that was that I don't want to compile everything from scratch. I know I can use packages but there aren't packages for every port and they are out of date. If the FBSD project focused more in packages that would be great.

I think there are no big reasons to use ports instead of packages. Today's computers are fast enough to handle with precompiled programs. Ports are ok if you have a great computer but not everybody does.

Another problem with packages: When you install several ones pkg_add waits until a package is completely installed in order to start downloading the others. What about downloading all .tbz files first and install them later?

Using something like apt won0t be a bad idea.

Flash is another problem but that is not a FreeBSD fault at all.

Good Luck with this amazing OS.


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## vermaden (Dec 24, 2008)

martin2091 said:
			
		

> Using something like apt won0t be a bad idea.


APT is not so great, especially in Debian with all those packages split forever: -full -empty -common -dev -docs -help -output -asd -wtf ...[/QUOTE]



			
				martin2091 said:
			
		

> Flash is another problem but that is not a FreeBSD fault at all.


Tell that to some smartass @ Adobe


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## cliedo (Dec 24, 2008)

thanx I know I am using a great operating system as are the other users of this forum


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## cajunman4life (Dec 24, 2008)

Personally, I use FreeBSD *because* of the ports system. To each his own I guess.


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## graudeejs (Dec 26, 2008)

@ martin2091 << so what, you can install packages and only compile ports if package ain't available, you don't need to build everything from source.
Mix all you want. I don't see problem there.


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## danger@ (Dec 26, 2008)

I thought we are building packages for every port in the ports tree in its current version (except the ones that do not build?)...

You're probably using the -RELEASE version and thus downloading packages build in the time the given FreeBSD version was released. I would recommend you to read the handbook.

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/packages-using.html



			
				&quot said:
			
		

> Note: pkg_add(1) will download the latest version of your application if you are using FreeBSD-CURRENT or FreeBSD-STABLE. If you run a -RELEASE version, it will grab the version of the package that was built with your release. It is possible to change this behavior by overriding PACKAGESITE. For example, if you run a FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE system, by default pkg_add(1) will try to fetch packages from ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-5.4-release/Latest/. If you want to force pkg_add(1) to download FreeBSD 5-STABLE packages, set PACKAGESITE to ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-5-stable/Latest/.



And as of the ability to download all packages before the installation itself, that is possible as well, you just use ftp(1) (or any other ftp client) to connect to the desired ftp mirror and you can download your packages in advance, say to /usr/packages and then cd /usr/packages && pkg_add *.


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## Oko (Dec 26, 2008)

martin2091 said:
			
		

> I think there are no big reasons to use ports instead of packages. Today's computers are fast enough to handle with precompiled programs. Ports are ok if you have a great computer but not everybody does.
> 
> Another problem with packages: When you install several ones pkg_add waits until a package is completely installed in order to start downloading the others. What about downloading all .tbz files first and install them later?
> 
> ...


What you are suggesting are not improvements to FreeBSD but to make it look more like a Debian which is OS of your choice.
That already exists. You can Google for Debina GNU/ FreeBSD
which is dead due to the licensing issues. 

What does Flash has to do with FreeBSD? Debian would also not have a Flash if Adobe didn't decide to support it due to its popularity. By the way the guy in Adobe who is deciding for which platforms should Flash be compiled is Linux guy. Since it also compiles for Solaris I see no reason that it could not work on FreeBSD as well. Speaking of Flash what happened with free software only concept? Gone with the GPLv3


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## kamikaze (Dec 28, 2008)

danger@ said:
			
		

> And as of the ability to download all packages before the installation itself, that is possible as well, you just use ftp(1) (or any other ftp client) to connect to the desired ftp mirror and you can download your packages in advance, say to /usr/packages and then cd /usr/packages && pkg_add *.


There's no automatic dependency tracking this way. The only comfortable way for using packages I know about is `# portupgrade -P`.


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## cajunman4life (Dec 28, 2008)

Oko said:
			
		

> Since it also compiles for Solaris I see no reason that it could not work on FreeBSD as well.



Solaris != BSD

Solaris, since SunOS 4 (which was re-branded as Solaris 1), has been SVR4 based (system V, release 4), which makes it closer to Linux than BSD... But, either way. Flash works on MacOS X, which borrowed a bit from BSD... There's no doubt it can be done technically, it's a matter of "politics".


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## Oko (Dec 28, 2008)

cajunman4life said:
			
		

> Solaris != BSD
> 
> Solaris, since SunOS 4 (which was re-branded as Solaris 1), has been SVR4 based (system V, release 4), which makes it closer to Linux than BSD... But, either way. Flash works on MacOS X, which borrowed a bit from BSD... There's no doubt it can be done technically, it's a matter of "politics".



You start to look ridiculus with your attempts to flame me.
I meant that it looked like Flash  was Posix complaint as it was compiling on Solarix, OS X, and Linux. Do I know that it is Poxis complaint? No, I do not as I have never seen its source code. I have used SUNs OS and Solaris for more than 10 years. 
For the record since I see that it bothers you Ultra 10 was advertising as low end graphical station so Solaris was running with the GUI on it. That how we used it at Ohio State.

Do I think that FreeBSD is snappier than Solaris? You bet I do at least because it doesn't have to be backward compatible. Just try to use 15 year old binaries for FreeBSD 2 something on FreeBSD 7.0 and you will know what I am talking about. Is Solaris good on Sparc? Yes I think it is quite decent. Is it good on i386? No it sucks. I also can not stand Java in any shape or form.

I used Blade 1000 to illustrate that FreeBSD sparc64 port doesn't
support even very old hardware. It doesn't support Blade 2000, Blade 1500, 2500, and nothing worth of mentioning on the server side.  
You can RTFM http://www.freebsd.org/platforms/sparc.html if you do not trust me.
On the another hand I bet you will be fired even if you suggest your boos to replace Solaris with anything else on SUN's hardware because it would void manufacturer warranty.

I do not like portupgrade but many people do. That is way there 
are usually 5 different ways to accomplish the same things on 
any Unix running machine. I used to run FreeBSD but I do not 
anymore because OpenBSD fits better my needs. If I need to 
used it again I will do it without hesitation. 

Finally, I am not IT professional but one of the reason I got into BSDs was that I was seek of IT professionals like you telling me how stupid I am. 

Cheers,
OKO


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## hedwards (Dec 29, 2008)

kamikaze said:
			
		

> There's no automatic dependency tracking this way. The only comfortable way for using packages I know about is `# portupgrade -P`.


You can also go `# portmaster -a`

I've grown attached to portmaster just because it's much faster to install and does all the stuff I'm usually wanting to do.


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## r-c-e (Dec 29, 2008)

martin2091 said:
			
		

> I think there are no big reasons to use ports instead of packages. Today's computers are fast enough to handle with precompiled programs. Ports are ok if you have a great computer but not everybody does.



Ports allow much greater control over how packages are built. Just look at the ports Makefile for any number of packages and you can see how you can tailor different things, and "make config" is great.


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## cajunman4life (Jan 2, 2009)

Oko said:
			
		

> You start to look ridiculus with your attempts to flame me.
> I meant that it looked like Flash  was Posix complaint as it was compiling on Solarix, OS X, and Linux. Do I know that it is Poxis complaint? No, I do not as I have never seen its source code. I have used SUNs OS and Solaris for more than 10 years.
> For the record since I see that it bothers you Ultra 10 was advertising as low end graphical station so Solaris was running with the GUI on it. That how we used it at Ohio State.
> 
> ...



Look, for the record, I'm not trying to flame or ridicule you. I don't have a personal agenda against you (or anyone else for that matter). But since my replies to your posts touch you on a personal level, from here on out I will no longer reply to your posts. I'm sorry you feel this way.

I wouldn't recommend to anyone to replace Solaris on SUN hardware in a work environment... what I do in my home does not carry over to my job. I use BSD at home because I choose to. I use whatever else at work because someone else higher than me chose to. 

I'm a firm believer in using the right tool for the job, which for me right now happens to be BSD (or specifically, FreeBSD). I have nothing against OpenBSD or any other OS for that matter, if it works for what you need then great. I still have a windows machine to use for AutoCAD because AutoCAD simply doesn't run on any other platform.

Again, my intent was not to ridicule you, or tell you "how stupid you are," so I apologise that you've taken my comments to mean that.


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## gongoputch (Jan 3, 2009)

FreeBSD is geared towards using tools in recombinent ways to 
create what functionality you need. This is why I like it so
much. Downloading packages only required a few lines of script 
and a working knowledge of how pkg_info works.


```
#!/bin/sh

fetch_deps ( )
{
PKG=$1

        pkg_info -r ${PKG}.tbz | grep "Dependency:" | awk '{print $2}' | while read DEP
        do
                echo "fething dep ${DEP}"
                fetch ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-6.3-release/All/${DEP}.tbz
                fetch_deps ${DEP}
        done
}

fetch [url]ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-6.3-release/Latest/kde.tbz[/url]
fetch_deps kde
```
Next time, don't give up so easy.


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## SeanC (Jan 3, 2009)

kamikaze said:
			
		

> There's no automatic dependency tracking this way. The only comfortable way for using packages I know about is `# portupgrade -P`.



Wouldn't using *portupgrade* with *-PFr* options download the required packages locally, then *portupgrade -a* to finish the upgrade offline?

Or is that asking for trouble?


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## gongoputch (Jan 4, 2009)

I put an improved version of this up on my wiki at :

http://bsdtips.utcorp.net/mediawiki/index.php/Downloading_all_dependant_packages


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