Re: Why Are You NOT Using FreeBSD?

From: O. Hartmann <ohartman_at_zedat.fu-berlin.de>
Date: Sat, 02 Jun 2012 16:18:45 +0200
On 06/02/12 14:47, Daniel Kalchev wrote:
> 
> 
> On 02.06.12 15:32, Erich wrote:
>> I know that the ports tree is a moving target. But it stops moving
>> during the release period. This could be used to give a fall back
>> solution.
>>
>> Or do I see this really too simple?
> 
> The ports tree is a moving target during release periods still, although
> there are efforts to make movements smaller. This is why, after a
> release it suddenly moves more :)
> 
> Daniel

Even IF the ports tree IS a moving target, updating of UPDATING, for
instance, follows most times AFTER the critical ports has been
changed/updated and folks started updating their ports without realizing
that they have shot themselfs into the foot!

Since I'm with FreeBSD, StarOffice, OpenOffice and even now LibreOffice
is a MESS! If you need to keep up with STABLE, in most cases due to
modern hardware (*), binary packages are NOT provided or if so, they
won't work due to some incompatibilities.
I witnessed those cases several times and at this moment, our four
remaining FreeBSD servers and my personal desktop as well as my private
box are rendered "unusable" in terms of having no LibreOffice since it
doesn't compile anymore on FreeBSD 9-STABLE/amd64 and 10-CURRENT/amd64.
At the moment, this mess is introduced with a new PNG library. And we
are updating on "life" machines, that means, they are not freshly
installed, they have been maintained for several months now. Very often,
when compalining about this, I get responses from people installing then
the critical software in a virtual machine and/or on newly setup boxes.
That doesn't reflect the way the systems have to be maintained.

Well, one may argue with me about "server" and "desktop". Comparing
Linux (several distros) with FreeBSd and Windows makes the limited
adavntages of FreeBSD getting rendered neglegible. We need PowerPoint or
a similar office product for presentations, I'm getting strangled by
students when using LaTeX and "beamer" or "PowerDot". The pressure from
the Windows world is large.

(*) It might be true that FreeBSD runs well on older hardware. But when
I order hardware from the budget I get, I do not want myself buying
outdated hardware.



Received on Sat Jun 02 2012 - 12:18:53 UTC

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