I have always wanted to get a BSD up and running, but never seem to get on well with them. Every time I try one out it seems to self destruct on me for one reason or another, usually gigantic problems with hardware compatibility. It is all just so much more delicate and fiddling than Linux.
And, for those like myself who enjoy the tire fire that is Linux, there is the nice fact that Slackware is still running strong and is entirely systemd free.
Lack of proper package management (want to uninstall that package?). Want those dependencies resolved? Want those packages automaticly updated to get the latest security patches? Tough shit.
This really all depends on how you define "proper package management." What should it do, and what should it not do? Yes, apt will track your dependencies, but at what cost? And is it easier? I recently decided to try installing and using Debian, and then Ubuntu when the first would not work for me. I could not even get started with Debian until I spent about an hour reading help information online and then editing my sources.list. And I did this by hand. Where was the automation? Then I tried for something like three hours to install the nvidia drivers. I could not even find a concensus on this online, and had to pick an approach and go with it. When it failed there was no easy way to roll back my changes as the installer had "tracked" my dependencies for me and I had no real idea what may have been changed. I never was able to get an accelerated driver on the system. I also could not install mplayer or any dvd player, either by deb or hand. Automation? Not really, and what there was simply made things complex and harder to understand.
Ubuntu was little better. I still had the same experience with hand editing the config files, and by the way, this involved finding what to put into them which is not self-explanatory. And, after perhaps an hour of tinkering and rebooting, I did get an nvidia driver. But, that was all. No Mplayer, dvd capabilities and so on. I never got anything working to my satisfaction beyond the nvidia driver, and that took longer than an entire Slackware install. I should mention that I spent the better part of three days tinkering with these two systems, and in the end this is not much time. However, since these are always touted as automatic and easy compared to the cryptic Slackware, surely three days to get 3D drivers or watch a movie is not too much to give?
Now, my feeling is that apt is neither easy nor automatic. It is nearly impossible to master. The details of using this tool are very far from intuitive and documentation, as far as basics and getting started, are nonexistent. Sure, it is probably powerful, but in the end all it does is install binaries and track dependencies. What is this power for? It seems like haveing a 500 horsepower lawnmower. Why is it so overwhelmingly complicated, and in a system which users brag about being so simple and automatic? And even when it works right, you are a slave to it. You cannot easily mix hand compiled apps with debs. The debs don't recognize the stuff you install youself and so you have to work through the tool. I am doubtful that the stability which would result from this mix too, just from my small experience of trying to do so. Because of this, what you have is a very complicated and inflexible system, which doesn't sell itself to me as superior at all.
On the other hand, there is Slackware. After the experiments I am even more certain that it is the best approach available. The package management is stable and easy. The commands can be explained fully in the man pages, and these are very brief. There are no flags to worry about and nothing to update and so on. You go to the server, download the app, and run installpkg. Want to remove it? Removepkg. Upgrade? Yep, you guessed it. Really, it is braindead simple. Of course, the complaint always comes along about dependencies and so on. True, it doesn't do it, but then is that bad? In Debian I could not manage to install Mplayer because the system seems so completely a slave to the package manager, but no such trouble exists in Slack. I can install half of Mplayer's dependencies from slackpacks and the other half from source, and then install Mplayer without issue, either by slackpack or source. And the system just won't care, and will be as stable as it was before the action. And removeing things is
Slashdot Mirror
I have always wanted to get a BSD up and running, but never seem to get on well with them. Every time I try one out it seems to self destruct on me for one reason or another, usually gigantic problems with hardware compatibility. It is all just so much more delicate and fiddling than Linux.
And, for those like myself who enjoy the tire fire that is Linux, there is the nice fact that Slackware is still running strong and is entirely systemd free.
"The average price of wage-labour is the minimum wage . . ."
This seems to be a novel way of finding an average. Is this some communist form of math I have not been previously aware of?
This really all depends on how you define "proper package management." What should it do, and what should it not do? Yes, apt will track your dependencies, but at what cost? And is it easier? I recently decided to try installing and using Debian, and then Ubuntu when the first would not work for me. I could not even get started with Debian until I spent about an hour reading help information online and then editing my sources.list. And I did this by hand. Where was the automation? Then I tried for something like three hours to install the nvidia drivers. I could not even find a concensus on this online, and had to pick an approach and go with it. When it failed there was no easy way to roll back my changes as the installer had "tracked" my dependencies for me and I had no real idea what may have been changed. I never was able to get an accelerated driver on the system. I also could not install mplayer or any dvd player, either by deb or hand. Automation? Not really, and what there was simply made things complex and harder to understand.
Ubuntu was little better. I still had the same experience with hand editing the config files, and by the way, this involved finding what to put into them which is not self-explanatory. And, after perhaps an hour of tinkering and rebooting, I did get an nvidia driver. But, that was all. No Mplayer, dvd capabilities and so on. I never got anything working to my satisfaction beyond the nvidia driver, and that took longer than an entire Slackware install. I should mention that I spent the better part of three days tinkering with these two systems, and in the end this is not much time. However, since these are always touted as automatic and easy compared to the cryptic Slackware, surely three days to get 3D drivers or watch a movie is not too much to give?
Now, my feeling is that apt is neither easy nor automatic. It is nearly impossible to master. The details of using this tool are very far from intuitive and documentation, as far as basics and getting started, are nonexistent. Sure, it is probably powerful, but in the end all it does is install binaries and track dependencies. What is this power for? It seems like haveing a 500 horsepower lawnmower. Why is it so overwhelmingly complicated, and in a system which users brag about being so simple and automatic? And even when it works right, you are a slave to it. You cannot easily mix hand compiled apps with debs. The debs don't recognize the stuff you install youself and so you have to work through the tool. I am doubtful that the stability which would result from this mix too, just from my small experience of trying to do so. Because of this, what you have is a very complicated and inflexible system, which doesn't sell itself to me as superior at all.
On the other hand, there is Slackware. After the experiments I am even more certain that it is the best approach available. The package management is stable and easy. The commands can be explained fully in the man pages, and these are very brief. There are no flags to worry about and nothing to update and so on. You go to the server, download the app, and run installpkg. Want to remove it? Removepkg. Upgrade? Yep, you guessed it. Really, it is braindead simple. Of course, the complaint always comes along about dependencies and so on. True, it doesn't do it, but then is that bad? In Debian I could not manage to install Mplayer because the system seems so completely a slave to the package manager, but no such trouble exists in Slack. I can install half of Mplayer's dependencies from slackpacks and the other half from source, and then install Mplayer without issue, either by slackpack or source. And the system just won't care, and will be as stable as it was before the action. And removeing things is
"What if people do it with their eyes shut or with their toes, is that something novel and worth a patent as well?"
And Tommy Lee can patent a new way to steer a boat.