Re: Linux distro with ports/package type system?
Nikolas Britton wrote: On 5/15/06, vayu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On May 15, 2006, at 2:15 AM, Nikolas Britton wrote: > I have an older 440MX based laptop that I'm fairly sure FreeBSD won't > like, I don't want to run windows on this box... so I'm looking for a > Linux distro that has a ports like system. > > I need KDE, X.org, and a 2.6 kernel installed by default... dammit... > I don't want to #$%! with Linux, maybe I'll give FreeBSD another try > first, anyways, thanks for the suggestions guys. > > I've heard that Gentoo's package management system "Portage" is inspired by FreeBSDs ports, but I believe it's a bit of work to install and compile a working system. I've been using Debian based Kubuntu on my laptop, and find the package management excellent. The installation and maintenance is easy. It's my choice when I want to install and go. Thanks, I didn't know Kubuntu / Ubuntu was Debian based. I like Debian but the distribution always seems to be stuck in last year, It's still using a 2.4 kernel, XFree86, and KDE 3.3! Anyways, Kubuntu 6.06 Beta2 appears to meet most of my requirements so I'll give it a whirl. Debian Sid (unstable) and Debian Etch (testing) are at least as up-to-date as (K)Ubuntu Dapper 6.06 today, and Dapper isn't even released yet. By the time the Dapper release is official (target date is 1st June), Debian Etch will have pulled farther ahead. Debian Sid is already well ahead in terms of the "newness" of its packages. An Ubuntu release (also, Kubuntu and Xubuntu) more-or-less starts with a snapshot of Debian Sid. The package selection and versions in Dapper are already frozen and have been for a month or more, so you won't be seeing newer versions in Dapper than what you see now, and you won't be seeing new packages introduced. By contrast, Debian Sid is continuously updated, as is Debian Etch (or whatever the current testing distribution happens to be). What you're looking at (2.4 kernel, XFree86, etc.) is Debian Sarge (stable). The stable Debian release is rock-solid and unchanging, except for security updates. As such, it's great for servers, but I wouldn't use it for as a general purpose desktop/laptop OS. Some people do, and they use backports to augment the package selection. For example, if you were running Sarge, which has Firefox 1.04, you could easily swap that out for a backport of Firefox 1.5.03. There are about 450 or so pre-built backports for Sarge, so many of the most popular and common apps are available. And of course you can always roll your own. But I still find Sarge to be too frustratingly old for a desktop system. None of this is to suggest that I think you made the wrong choice -- Ubuntu is a fine Linux distro, and really geared to being a reasonably up-to-date solid and stable desktop distro. I have it (Ubuntu Breezy 5.10) installed as my "fallback" in case my Debian Sid installation gets hopelessly broken by some ill-considered update, but that hasn't happened yet. (I fully expected at least X to be broken when Sid underwent the transition from xorg 6.9 to xorg 7.0, which is modular and makes quite a few significant changes to the layout of the server. Much to my amazement, the upgrade proceeded without a hitch.) You have to understand that "unstable" refers to the package selection, not to the state of the OS itself. Debian Sid, honestly, is more solid than some distros' releases, and of all the Linux distros I've tried, it is the one that provides what I find to be the best balance between cutting-edge features and software, and stability and ease-of-administration. Of course, that's completely a judgment call, and others would disagree. I just wanted to chime in because I get tired of people tarnishing Debian with the old and moldy label. For so long I kept reading that "FreeBSD isn't really appropriate for desktops," "FreeBSD doesn't support as much hardware as Linux," and other received opinions that kept me from trying any BSD for longer than it should have. The notion that "Debian is too outdated" is, in my view, a similar received opinion that keeps some people from looking at it twice, which is a shame. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Linux distro with ports/package type system?
On May 15, 2006, at 3:30 PM, Nikolas Britton wrote: On 5/15/06, vayu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On May 15, 2006, at 2:15 AM, Nikolas Britton wrote: > I have an older 440MX based laptop that I'm fairly sure FreeBSD won't > like, I don't want to run windows on this box... so I'm looking for a > Linux distro that has a ports like system. > > I need KDE, X.org, and a 2.6 kernel installed by default... dammit... > I don't want to #$%! with Linux, maybe I'll give FreeBSD another try > first, anyways, thanks for the suggestions guys. > > I've heard that Gentoo's package management system "Portage" is inspired by FreeBSDs ports, but I believe it's a bit of work to install and compile a working system. I've been using Debian based Kubuntu on my laptop, and find the package management excellent. The installation and maintenance is easy. It's my choice when I want to install and go. Thanks, I didn't know Kubuntu / Ubuntu was Debian based. I like Debian but the distribution always seems to be stuck in last year, It's still using a 2.4 kernel, XFree86, and KDE 3.3! Anyways, Kubuntu 6.06 Beta2 appears to meet most of my requirements so I'll give it a whirl. I like it. They do keep quite up to date. It is geared for the masses and as such there will be some stuff you don't need but it works on my sons PIII 450 with 6GB hard disk and 256MB RAM and the Install is easy and painless. (If you need a really trim system you can do a server install and then install KDE separately, then you'll bypass the Kubuntu value added features) ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Linux distro with ports/package type system?
On 5/15/06, vayu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On May 15, 2006, at 2:15 AM, Nikolas Britton wrote: > I have an older 440MX based laptop that I'm fairly sure FreeBSD won't > like, I don't want to run windows on this box... so I'm looking for a > Linux distro that has a ports like system. > > I need KDE, X.org, and a 2.6 kernel installed by default... dammit... > I don't want to #$%! with Linux, maybe I'll give FreeBSD another try > first, anyways, thanks for the suggestions guys. > > I've heard that Gentoo's package management system "Portage" is inspired by FreeBSDs ports, but I believe it's a bit of work to install and compile a working system. I've been using Debian based Kubuntu on my laptop, and find the package management excellent. The installation and maintenance is easy. It's my choice when I want to install and go. Thanks, I didn't know Kubuntu / Ubuntu was Debian based. I like Debian but the distribution always seems to be stuck in last year, It's still using a 2.4 kernel, XFree86, and KDE 3.3! Anyways, Kubuntu 6.06 Beta2 appears to meet most of my requirements so I'll give it a whirl. -- BSD Podcasts @: http://bsdtalk.blogspot.com/ http://freebsdforall.blogspot.com/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Linux distro with ports/package type system?
Bakki Kudva wrote: I have built both Gentoo and FreeBSD on an old laptop (Pentium II 400MHz with 384MB of RAM). The down side of both Gentoo and Ports, especially if you want to build a desktop env like Gnome plan on a week or more of build time. My latest experience with the ports was 2 weeks for the total build. It built 330 packages, skipped 200 and 77 failed. I had originally installed 6.0 binaries and after the build gdm is broken, wireless networking is broken. Haven't had time to troubleshoot yet. -bakki On 5/15/06, Garrett Cooper <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: That would be in fact Gentoo Linux. It's the only Linux distro I know that has a collection of files which describe the packages to install, sources, etc like FreeBSD's ports makefiles (they call them ebuilds), and compiles programs based on a local distfiles repository, like FreeBSD. The thing that's different about Gentoo than most OSes though is that it is a Linux distro where EVERYTHING (unless you specify a location to find binary packages) compiles and installs from scratch. So I'm not sure if you want to go that route, and I'm not saying it's a perfect system by any means, but in the event that Windows breaks (or I get tired of Windows (;..) I always have something to go back to, Unix wise, that has a lot of software functionality and is pretty stable. The best piece of advice regarding Gentoo that I can give is don't go for the hype, but rather for the options (software options that is), because you have the ability to greater customize your OS-for better or for worse-depending on what compile options you choose and the software you install. -Garrett I'd plan to not be using your laptop for a while. The total install would probably take your laptop a total of 4-5 days to complete the full compile, although many of the packages in fact available in the stage3 setup (it was not recommended as the installation configuration in the past but it is now), so to get the laptop up and running would be more trivial than before, but compiling gnome would take a decent chunk of time to do... finding a reliable package server with the same USE flags as you want would be very helpful if you wanted to pursue gentoo. -Garrett ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Linux distro with ports/package type system?
I have built both Gentoo and FreeBSD on an old laptop (Pentium II 400MHz with 384MB of RAM). The down side of both Gentoo and Ports, especially if you want to build a desktop env like Gnome plan on a week or more of build time. My latest experience with the ports was 2 weeks for the total build. It built 330 packages, skipped 200 and 77 failed. I had originally installed 6.0 binaries and after the build gdm is broken, wireless networking is broken. Haven't had time to troubleshoot yet. On 5/15/06, Garrett Cooper <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: That would be in fact Gentoo Linux. It's the only Linux distro I know that has a collection of files which describe the packages to install, sources, etc like FreeBSD's ports makefiles (they call them ebuilds), and compiles programs based on a local distfiles repository, like FreeBSD. The thing that's different about Gentoo than most OSes though is that it is a Linux distro where EVERYTHING (unless you specify a location to find binary packages) compiles and installs from scratch. So I'm not sure if you want to go that route, and I'm not saying it's a perfect system by any means, but in the event that Windows breaks (or I get tired of Windows (;..) I always have something to go back to, Unix wise, that has a lot of software functionality and is pretty stable. The best piece of advice regarding Gentoo that I can give is don't go for the hype, but rather for the options (software options that is), because you have the ability to greater customize your OS-for better or for worse-depending on what compile options you choose and the software you install. -Garrett ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Linux distro with ports/package type system?
vayu wrote: On May 15, 2006, at 2:15 AM, Nikolas Britton wrote: I have an older 440MX based laptop that I'm fairly sure FreeBSD won't like, I don't want to run windows on this box... so I'm looking for a Linux distro that has a ports like system. I need KDE, X.org, and a 2.6 kernel installed by default... dammit... I don't want to #$%! with Linux, maybe I'll give FreeBSD another try first, anyways, thanks for the suggestions guys. I've heard that Gentoo's package management system "Portage" is inspired by FreeBSDs ports, but I believe it's a bit of work to install and compile a working system. I've been using Debian based Kubuntu on my laptop, and find the package management excellent. The installation and maintenance is easy. It's my choice when I want to install and go. That would be in fact Gentoo Linux. It's the only Linux distro I know that has a collection of files which describe the packages to install, sources, etc like FreeBSD's ports makefiles (they call them ebuilds), and compiles programs based on a local distfiles repository, like FreeBSD. The thing that's different about Gentoo than most OSes though is that it is a Linux distro where EVERYTHING (unless you specify a location to find binary packages) compiles and installs from scratch. So I'm not sure if you want to go that route, and I'm not saying it's a perfect system by any means, but in the event that Windows breaks (or I get tired of Windows (;..) I always have something to go back to, Unix wise, that has a lot of software functionality and is pretty stable. The best piece of advice regarding Gentoo that I can give is don't go for the hype, but rather for the options (software options that is), because you have the ability to greater customize your OS-for better or for worse-depending on what compile options you choose and the software you install. -Garrett ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Linux distro with ports/package type system?
On May 15, 2006, at 2:15 AM, Nikolas Britton wrote: I have an older 440MX based laptop that I'm fairly sure FreeBSD won't like, I don't want to run windows on this box... so I'm looking for a Linux distro that has a ports like system. I need KDE, X.org, and a 2.6 kernel installed by default... dammit... I don't want to #$%! with Linux, maybe I'll give FreeBSD another try first, anyways, thanks for the suggestions guys. I've heard that Gentoo's package management system "Portage" is inspired by FreeBSDs ports, but I believe it's a bit of work to install and compile a working system. I've been using Debian based Kubuntu on my laptop, and find the package management excellent. The installation and maintenance is easy. It's my choice when I want to install and go. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Linux distro with ports/package type system?
> Linux distro that has a ports like system. I heard that gentoo has a port like system. Olivier ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Linux distro with ports/package type system?
I have an older 440MX based laptop that I'm fairly sure FreeBSD won't like, I don't want to run windows on this box... so I'm looking for a Linux distro that has a ports like system. I need KDE, X.org, and a 2.6 kernel installed by default... dammit... I don't want to #$%! with Linux, maybe I'll give FreeBSD another try first, anyways, thanks for the suggestions guys. -- BSD Podcasts @: http://bsdtalk.blogspot.com/ http://freebsdforall.blogspot.com/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
