Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 17:36:56 -0700 From: Tim Gerchmez <fewtch@serv.net> To: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au>, Chris Coleman <chrisc@vmunix.com> Cc: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Upgrading and Use of this list (gentle reminder) Message-ID: <3.0.5.32.19980722173656.0082aa30@mx.serv.net> In-Reply-To: <19980723090047.45011@welearn.com.au> References: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980722175457.9231A-100000@vnode> <3.0.5.32.19980722130055.0081c410@mx.serv.net> <Pine.BSF.3.96.980722175457.9231A-100000@vnode>
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At 09:00 AM 7/23/98 +1000, Sue Blake wrote: >A few FreeBSD users have not bothered to install the sources. Perhaps >they have no room, or never imagined using them. This happens to apply >to a lot of newbies because a lot of home user/learners are newbies. To me, the only sources that are important are the ones that allow me to build a custom kernel (ssys and the header files). Other than that, I'm not a C programmer, don't follow -current or -stable, and have no reason to install more. Uncompressed source code eats a LOT of disk space I'd rather save for future packages and ports I want. If I suddenly decided I wanted to become a C programmer, you can get C sources all over the Net, just about anywhere, for just about anything not only in the FreeBSD distribution. Besides, I'd be more likely to want to write my own stuff, not alter system binaries and recompile them. >If you happen to have hundreds of megabytes sitting idle on your >FreeBSD partition, and Internet use doesn't cost you an arm and three >legs, then there's probably no reason not to install the sources and >have a stab at cvsup if you want to, especially if it's only a home use >machine. But I have no idea what would happen if you ran out of disk >space half way through, for example. I doubt it would be much fun. I've had it happen. FreeBSD handles it surprisingly well. You get repeated scrolling "Filesystem is full" messages, but the installer doesn't terminate. It will finish the install anyway, and most likely let you log in (at which point you can delete some stuff). This was when I was experimenting with the 200 meg partition I mentioned. I was amazed how gracefully FreeBSD handled it. One of the Windows OS's would probably simply die and never come back again... BTW, Sue (and this is simply an observation/opinion, please don't take it as an insult)... you tend to be very wordy in your posts... this is neither good nor bad... some say it better short and sweet, some get their point across better in long paragraphs (short story writers vs. novelists? ;-). I tend to be like you in that department. Sometimes I'll get to rambling so long that I notice it and manage to trim my posts down from 500 words to 50 while still saying precisely the same thing! :-) -- My web site starts at http://www.serv.net/~fewtch/index.html - lots of goodies for everyone, have a look if you have the time. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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