Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 09:16:12 +0200 From: Jonathan McKeown <j.mckeown@ru.ac.za> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Cc: Bob Johnson <fbsdlists@gmail.com> Subject: Re: new package system proposal Message-ID: <200904090916.12786.j.mckeown@ru.ac.za> In-Reply-To: <54db43990904081224l7c006143icac411c482401620@mail.gmail.com> References: <49D76B02.4060201@onetel.com> <200904080859.41807.j.mckeown@ru.ac.za> <54db43990904081224l7c006143icac411c482401620@mail.gmail.com>
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On Wednesday 08 April 2009 21:24:00 Bob Johnson wrote: > PC-BSD seems to already keep up-to-date binary packages of their > applications. Do they accomplish that by only offering a small subset > of the full ports collection? Yes - have a look at <http://www.pbidir.com/>. I installed PC-BSD on a spare machine to investigate it. The first three ports/metaports I tried to install after completing the base setup were emacs, TeTeX and the Psi Jabber/XMPP client. None of those was available, and after seeing how few prebuilt packages there were in all categories, I gave up. My personal view is that PC-BSD gives the end user an impressive and reasonably slick computer-as-appliance with some ability to customise and still stay ``on the path''. For people who need that, PC-BSD is what they need. My feeling, though, is that anyone who finds themselves wanting to install a bunch of stuff from outside the PBI system (in other words, from ports, which are still there under the hood of PC-BSD) will soon want to switch to mainstream FreeBSD. As such PC-BSD has the potential to be an effective ``gateway drug''(!) Jonathan
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