On 04/20/2009 11:46 PM, J.R. Mauro wrote: >>> The update/installation process in Ubuntu sucks. If you try something >>> using BSD ports or Gentoo portage, you can fine tune things and have >>> explicit control over the update process. >> I don't think so, one can acquire a complete control over any common >> Linux distribution, can opt for tuning and, tweaking around any package >> build system, provided one has the knowledge and courage to do so. > > Yes and no. If you want to patch something, you have to build it on > your own, so you lose package management support. And building your > own deb package is not a great process. Plus, you have to rebuild it > whenever you update. I'm not saying you can't "completely control" > your distro, just that the package manager is inflexible and immature. > USE flags give you /real/ control over packages without forcing you to > step out of the package management infrastructure (i.e., you don't > have to install anything locally to get a patch incorporated, and you > don't sacrifice updates). You also have less namespace pollution, such > as having mutt and mutt-ng in the repository.
FYI, I'm am/was a contributor to a number FreeBSD ports. I'm retracting somewhat from using FreeBSD these days. Although, nothing is perfect not even the God in this world, but things could have been resolved which were backed by a lot users in a similar fashion -- on FreeBSD, just try building a meta/virtual-port qt4 library which depends on around 39+ sub-ports; see how same tarball is md5/sha256 verified, extracted, configured and compiled again and again 39 times *just* to sub-divide a single source package into sub-packages. More and more, the FreeBSD people are reluctant to use separate build directories and a 'make DESTDIR=/whatever install' approach. Is not that a wastage of CPU cycles? Now, people who know this and many other such flaws in FreeBSD ports build framework might be laughing at you ;) > Emerge and ports also don't have a database that can only have one > process using it at a time, and don't take forever to update said > database. I don't use Gentoo these days, so don't if they people have resolved similar issues or not. IHMO, Emerge is not a panacea at all. Moreover, though well documented building, updating and, or managing a Gentoo and, or FreeBSD server or desktop is not an everyone's mug of coffee :( >> OTOH, I hate wasting cpu cycles on compiling each and every package from >> source; IMHO, building, updating and managing a FreeBSD, Gentoo and, or >> other so called source or meta distribution is merely a wastage of the >> man and machine hours. >> > > I wouldn't install gentoo on an older machine, but on anything I use > day-to-day, the compilation time is a non-issue. There is no wastage > of man-hours in managing Gentoo. That is what emerge is for. There is > some wastage in CPU cycles. I never notice it (a decent machine can > emerge world, watch an HD movie, and compile a Linux kernel without > slowdown) -- Balwinder S "bdheeman" Dheeman Registered Linux User: #229709 Anu'z li...@home (Unix Shoppe) Machines: #168573, 170593, 259192 Chandigarh, UT, 160062, India Plan9, T2, Arch/Debian/FreeBSD/XP Home: http://cto.homelinux.net/~bsd/ Visit: http://counter.li.org/
