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Old 7th January 2009
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TerryP TerryP is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Randux View Post
I don't think I should have to be a BSD-expert to be able to get the apps I want running, and I don't think compiling apps I do want without knowing every detail of the OS is some sort of capital offense except maybe in the eyes of a UNIX-snob or somebody with way too much time on his hands who makes snide remarks at the thought of anybody who had the nerve to ask a question like I did in this forum.
You don't need to know every detail of the OS or be a "BSD-expert" to install software on FreeBSD, you just have to take roughly 5 minutes of your life to read the documentation (ok, 10 if you read slow). The way you seem to be after for installing software, would dictate learning every software packages configuration options and dependencies in the first place -- how is that for a waste of time ? It's like writing an ELF binary in octal instead of using an assembler/linker, fun but wasteful.



Quote:
Originally Posted by Randux View Post
What is so offensive about asking if it's possible to make my own packages?
Nothing, but peoples paintaince is not unlimited.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Randux View Post
One of the things I like least about UNIX is the prima donnas. Some stereotypes are unfortunately too true. Have a nice day!
Would you prefer a group of Steve Ballmer clones? Considering that this is [sadly] mostly a male population (therefore, primo uomo not prime/prima donne/donna), and even among the women here; I rather doubt any of one here has sung the lead in an opera, although a few probably do use Opera. Thus I would generally consider that an attempt to insult some of these people, lol.


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Originally Posted by Randux View Post
I chose Slackware over other distros specifically because I have to understand exactly what goes into my system and I have enough control without having to be a kernel developer.
To do this under {Free,Net,Open}BSD, you must learn how to read and understand English. Being able to figure out shell script and Makefiles is also helpful to go to the deepest guts; but likely already a skill you have, from the ./configure --args && make bits.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Randux View Post
One of the things that bothers me most about Free, Net, and to a lesser extent OpenBSD is the package bloat. You have to install what the package maintainer wants, not what you want. I can build a Slackware system in about half the space of a similarly-equipped BSD.
At least on FreeBSD, many ports that have options that can be adjusted (MPlayer for example), will allow the user to adjust them via knobs or options. Likewise on OpenBSD, there are precompiled flavors of various packages installed to suit; and one can compile from source when they don't do what is desired.

Learn to read.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Randux View Post
Try building a desktop in any BSD without all that crap..a good example is ROX-filer. Look what you need to build it on Linux and then look what you get when you install it from pkgsrc or ports in *BSD. Scary, isn't it

I don't use pkgsrc, but I do use ports. FreeBSDs rox-filer port depends on the prerequisites from the X Windows System, GTK+, and a few Gnome related crap that appears to be required for common file manager stuff. What does Linux require?



Quote:
Originally Posted by Randux View Post
To be clear I never said I rejected prepackaged binaries or anything else. I simply don't want to *have* to depend on someone else porting something I want. I want to be able to do that myself, and my question was how much effort/knowledge, etc was required and if it was reasonable. Then we ran off on a tangent...
Independence is a virtue; being able to read is another one. If I was you, I would be thankful that there are few major desktop related programs these days that need porting assembly code, or transitioning the program to a different processor architecture outside the X86 family.



Quote:
Originally Posted by Randux View Post
In case anyone's interested, openSUSE has a VirtualBox package that is really amazing. First I tried the Xen and I was amazed at the poor performance.
I'm tired of typing, so I'll just link you: http://catb.org/esr/writings/unix-ko...ell-tools.html



Quote:
Originally Posted by Randux View Post
The scary thing about openSUSE is how much they hide the guts. I guess that makes it an outstanding bloze-replacement option and commercial choice. I hate to think what will happen if (when) all the magical smoke and mirrors break and something goes wrong.
Some people love that, others (like me) dislike it ;-)





At the knobs thing, they can vary but there are some popular ones. You might want to read the documentation.
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