Date: Mon, 05 May 2008 08:36:13 +0300 From: Manolis Kiagias <sonicy@otenet.gr> To: prad <prad@towardsfreedom.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: living with freebsd Message-ID: <481E9CCD.1030702@otenet.gr> In-Reply-To: <20080504221223.20b5827e@gom.home> References: <20080504221223.20b5827e@gom.home>
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prad wrote: > i'd like to know how people live with freebsd. > > do you use only ports or only packages or a mixture? > do you upgrade from version to version using freebsd tools or do it > manually? > do you have a different approach regarding the above depending on > whether it is for a server or a desktop? > > the handbook tells you what you can do, but i'd like to know what is > actually done and why. > > You will probably get too many different views - it is a flexible system after all. For example, I rarely mix ports and packages. On my small home server (which also doubles as a workstation for light use) everything is compiled from ports. This includes openoffice.org which took more than a day to download and compile. I doubt I'll ever upgrade it the same way... On this machine I am using the XFCE desktop, which I start manually from the command line when used as a desktop. But on a real dedicated desktop, I would use Gnome (or KDE). As for versions, I always run -RELEASE. I would go to STABLE if I desperately needed a feature not present in RELEASE, but this hasn't happened yet. I am using freebsd-update to get security updates / patches and then recompile my kernel when needed. I also used freebsd-update to get to 7.0-RELEASE from 7.0-RC1. Quite painless. For desktop machines, especially when I need to get them up and running quickly, I use packages. You can either use the stable packages from the site (by setting the PACKAGESITE env variable) or use another machine to compile your own (have a look at http://tinderbox.marcuscom.com/ ). I almost never use the CD packages (except maybe for demonstration purposes) since they get outdated really quickly.
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