[Tfug] Maintainable free UNIX

[Chris Hilton]

On Wed, 31 Jul 2002 14:58:28 -0700
"Nicholas Esborn" <nick@netdot.net> wrote:

> I have to agree with Scott.  FreeBSD is the most maintainable OS I
> have worked with.  The ports tree has always been better than
> RPM-based Linux distributions, IMO, and portupgrade fills in all the
> functionality that Linux users might have been wishing for.
> 
> But I think it's much more than just packaging systems.  I think the
> BSDs(all three) have a more quality-oriented mindset.  The "core team"
> system is basically a council of elders who are responsible for
> keeping the system internally consistent.  Debian also has this
> mindset, but I think it suffers from the fragmentation of the GNU
> software base it draws from.
> 
> Back to the ports tree, I find that it works much more often than not.
> Some statistics from freshports.org:
> 
> Port count 7413
> Broken 95
> Forbidden 64
> new 24 hours 6
> new 48 hours 18
> new 7 days 37
> new fortnight 60
> new month 150
> 
> Less than 2% of the ports are broken or forbidden, which is typical. 
> Those numbers go down a bit around a major release.
> 
> Linux has been, and will continue to be, the darling of open source.
> Linux has plowed a huge channel into the public's consciousness and
> commercial IT.  Those are its chief contributions.  Maintainability
> and maturity are best found with the BSDs.
> 
> That aside, if Linux is the only option, then Debian is the only
> option.
> 
> -nick

Well I've found similar functionality and ease of maintainance with
Gentoo linux.  It uses a ports type system incorporating the ease of
portupgrade with even more versatility.  It really does take that
argument away from the bsds.  And I have found I can do everything with
Gentoo's system I am able to do with apt-get or dselect, though I'm no
expert on either of the deb tools.

-C-