Re: Stable tag will be slipped Sunday and release engineering will begin Monday

[Gabriel Ambuehl <gaml@xxxxxx>]

Rahul Siddharthan wrote:

>Similarly, if one doesn't upgrade the system for 10 months, "apt-get
>upgrade" or "apt-get dist-upgrade" just *works*, you rapidly have an
>uptodate system.  On any BSD, portupgrade or not, it's a royal pain.
>A fresh install is easier.
>
>
>  
>


I have mixed views on this. I've had very good sucess in updating
Kubuntu (essentiall Ubuntu hoary with KDE) with apt-get daily (except
for one major screw up where my KDE taskbar died but that's a QA issue)
for the past few weeks. OTOH, Knoppix based systems never lasted long
once I started using apt-get (and as for Debian itself, that one is just
plain unusable as old as it is). I don't think apt is quite that smart,
either (surely not as smart as some of the more complex FreeBSD ports are).

To make matters worse, there are two major competing package formats and
loads of minor ones on Linux whereas on any of the BSDs, you got just
the one (and possibly pkgsrc).

I have servers (can't be bothered with BSD on the desktop right now)
that are running since 3 years on the same installation, no problem at
all. But seeing that I believe that only current machines are reasonably
safe machines, I update them regularly and never need to catch up 10
months. The possibility to decide myself just how the software is
compiled is very required for servers, too.

All in all, it's mostly a question about the philosophy you prefer.
Building from source takes longer, sure but it's much more flexible.
There have been numerous times when I cursed the Ubuntu reps for not
having this or that package (WTF isn't there kdebluetooth, for one?).
FreeBSD probably got the largest ready to run software collection of all
OS out there (discounting one major issue: Java).