From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Aug 13 10:54:03 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id KAA07990 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 10:54:03 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from peloton.physics.montana.edu (peloton.physics.montana.edu [153.90.192.177]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id KAA07921 for ; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 10:54:01 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from brett@peloton.physics.montana.edu) Received: from localhost (brett@localhost) by peloton.physics.montana.edu (8.8.8/8.8.7) with SMTP id LAA21142; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 11:53:02 -0600 (MDT) (envelope-from brett@peloton.physics.montana.edu) Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 11:53:02 -0600 (MDT) From: Brett Taylor To: GR Gaudreau cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD or Linux? In-Reply-To: <199808131455.KAA04329@hme0.mailrouter01.sprint.ca> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Hi, > I do believe I'm going to drop RH 5.1 Linux and install FreeBSD. Great! > speaking of which: what do you mean by "ports"? There are 2 kinds of ports (you mentioned serial, parallel etc). What we mean by ports in the context that's been used here is taking a piece of software and making it so that FreeBSD can compile and run it cleanly. Once a particular port has been committed, a user simply goes to /usr/ports/some_directory/some_program_I_want and types "make install" and your machine will automatically fetch the source, patch it for FreeBSD, compile, and install it. You can then remove it (say a new version comes out) by doing a make deinstall (or pkg_delete) and then reinstall the latest version of the port. Packages are a similar deal and are much like the rpm's found in RH - a pre-compiled version of a piece of software that can be added. The handbook contains lots of info about using ports and packages and you can find a list of the over 1600 ports available for FreeBSD at: http://www.freebsd.org/ports/index.html Brett ****************************************************************** Brett Taylor brett@peloton.physics.montana.edu http://peloton.physics.montana.edu/brett/ "There is something uncanny in the noiseless rush of the cyclist, as he comes into view, passes by, and disappears." - Popular Science, 1891 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message