System messed up, should I just reinstall?

[TerryP]

I haven't heard anything but down-hillish stuff about Gentoo in a while.


FreeBSD itself is usually a painless upgrade unless you do something like 4.11->7.1. The -U switch to mergemaster even makes the tedious part fairly quick on routine upgrades. Handling third party software on the other hand can be a bother at times.

Generally unless things are to far out of date for your needs, have security issues that can be exploited, or bug fixes you need and or desire: there usually isn't any need to upgrade stuff very often. As the old saying goes, if it isn't broken, don't fix it.

Usually I upgrade things every month or so in related batches, just to keep pace with what changes. That way when something big does pops up in /usr/ports/UPDATING, there isn't a dozen of them piled up from last years laziness.... haha

Originally Posted by AncientDragonfly

Thank you; I'm not new to technical stuff, just fairly new to compiling from source. I'm also pretty shy by nature, and hate to look like an idiot in public, even if y'all don't know who I am. lol, silly, I know.

Compiling from source can be tricky at first, because of the issues that can chrop up; unless you are used to developing in said environment (e.g. a hosted C environment), but most errors can be sorted with a little deductive reasoning and googling, even without knowing the underlaying parts. The aggravating part is when you know there has to be a logical reason, but can't find it. (usually a good time to take a short walk or play a few rounds of cards)