On Sun, Jan 30, 2000 at 02:16:16PM -0500, Dan Papasian wrote: > You seem to imply that Debian would be bringing stability to FreeBSD. > Isn't stability already there? Please elaborate.
Let's not have an argument about stability -- I have never seen any proof that one is more stable than the other. I've heard the stories about how BSD networking is far superior too and I've never been convinced of that either. I think there are particular advantages of each kernel. Unless the FreeBSD kernel has support for amateur packet radio (AX.25, various hardware drivers etc) it's no good to me on a few of my systems. But I've heard there's some pretty cool stuff going on in FreeBSD 4 and later in the IDE drivers, like re-ordering them to account for disk geometry etc. So what are the reasons for doing a Debian/FreeBSD mix? I still don't think a real conclusion has been reached on this one. I think that Debian's user-space is better organised (the /usr versus /usr/local thing is one example) and that our package management is superior. I think Debian packages make a lot more effort to configure themselves than BSD ones do. And Debian doesn't have the base versus the-rest separation which BSD does, which is good IMHO. But I don't know FreeBSD well enough to be sure about any of this. So if I think the Debian user space is better, and there's nothing in the Linux versus BSD kernel argument, what I am doing here? I can't remember, to be honest :-) A friend of mine who is a BSD fan suggested it might be more useful to enhance the linux compatibility on BSD than to implement some of the other ideas. Perhaps /compat/linux could be managed with dpkg and use Debian packages to do it. > Except MySQL is a 3rd party package, so it shouldn't touch much below > /usr/local. It should go into /usr/local/var (or /var, depending) > and /usr/local/etc. Those are weird directories. /usr is by definition (in the FHS anyway) fairly static -- so /usr/local/var is a contradiction to me. > But it is still easier to just fix FreeBSD then make another OS out of > the thing :) I used Debian exclusively from when hamm was just getting > onto CDs until a month or so slink went glibc2.1. (Err, slink has glibc2.0 -- potato has 2.1. Perhaps you're a version out?) > I've been using FreeBSD for 8 months now, and contributing for 1 month. > I've had _less_ hassle with ports/pkg_add then I ever had with dpkg. > While the feature is lacking on paper, Real Life Usage(TM) shows ports/pkg_add > to be superior. (Of course, YMMV) How so? > I don't see how Debian handles dependencies better. DEPENDS with > ports/packages works fine. Conflicts are, in our experience, a necessary part of the dependency system. Debian wouldn't be nearly as good without it. And the virtual package system, for that matter. Hamish -- Hamish Moffatt VK3SB. CCs of replies on mailing lists are welcome.
