Re: CVS removal from the base

>From Mehmet Erol Sanliturk <m.e.sanliturk_at_gmail.com>:

> Supplying only a console-mode FreeBSD as a release is making FreeBSD
> unusable for
> peoples who they are not computing experts .
 
 
> To allow less experienced people to use FreeBSD easily , it is necessary to
> include a
> selected ports/packages into release distributions , therefore into
> so-called BASE as a
> /ports or /packages part .
 
 
> When a new FreeBSD release will be installed ,  it is becoming necessary to
> install many packages additionally , and setting many parameters in the
> *.conf , etc. , files to make it usable . One unfortunate situation is that
> some packages are NOT working at the release moment . In the packages tree
> , it seems that there is no any regular update policy for a specific
> release . It is possible to "make port_name" , but this is NOT so much
> usable also : For a specific package  , which is installing within less
> than 30 minutes by pkg_add , required more than eighteen hours by "make
> ..." . Reason was that MAKE is an extremely STUPID system ( without BRAIN )
> because , it is NOT able to remember that it has completed making a package
> part a few seconds before , and it is starting the same steps to apply up
> to the point that it is not necessary to make it once more ( after applying
> many steps which was applied before ) .

On an old computer with 256 MB RAM, or less, building some of the bigger ports can take many hours.

I never dared attempt to build KDE or GNOME!  But I don't think PC-BSD runs with 256 MB RAM.

In the recent past, FreeBSD releases offered extra iso images with packages, sysinstall even offered to install packages.

I tried that once, with FreeBSD 7.0, or was it 7.1 or 6.2, and didn't really get a workable system.

GNOME and KDE didn't work.  When I tried portupgrading, I messed everything, went back to Linux (Slackware), and when FreeBSD 8.0 was released, cleaned out my old installation, and installed FreeBSD 8.0 fresh.

Now, on a new computer, I still use icewm, haven't attempted KDE or GNOME yet. 

Tom