Re: FreeBSD or DEBIAN for remotely administered internet server

From: cedric (rixed_at_happyleptic.NOSPAM.org)
Date: 09/09/04 

Date: Thu, 09 Sep 2004 08:18:35 +0200

I didn't put any arguments in my post to avoid a flame war. So first
let me tell you all that I doubt not that freeBSD will provide me the
same ease of use than debian when I will know this system better. That's
why it run my home-server.

What, then, do I manage better on Debain than FreeBSD ?

Program Installation / Upgrade :

- On debian : a single program (dselect) upgrade the package database,
shows me what's new, what need to be upgraded and why (security fix or
new version), what needs what, what can make use of what ("suggest"
dependencies), what conflicts brings which package, etc, and I can make
my choice of what package I want to install, upgrade, deinstall or hold
and after that install everything. A child would understand (apart from
the keys which are madness). If a package needs to know something from
me, it will ask (several level of guessing, configurable system-wide or
package by package, but I never had to change it). If a package have
something important to tell me, in interactive mode it will display it
and wait for a key, in non-interactive mode it will send me a mail. When
I quit dselect everything is up and running. Every packages share the
same behavior for installation/upgrade.

- On FreeBSD : I have a multitude of commands + makefiles that let me
with the impression that I have to achieve all those things at a lower
level : first upgrade the ports, then one or two commands to upgrade the
package index, then getting the list of what's new with portversion, and
installing package one after another (or with portupgrade -Rr so that it
install many related things but I have no time to see precisely what and
why), then another command to see warnings (pkg_info -D IIRC), because
if a package needs something it may ask or just let me resolve things in
the config file. If an important warning must be shown, it does not stop
until I read it. When this process is all over, I now have to figure out
where the config files are to finish configuring things and/or activate
daemons.

File System :

- On debian (since woody, and sarge is even better on this point) you
tell me what a file is, and I can give you its location. Things are
uniformly designed around a simple specs telling what file must reside
where, and there are no /opt, no /usr/local, and the whole configuration
is under /etc or /etc/package_name.

- On FreeBSD, I have to remember if programs are in /usr/local or not,
and configuration can be in /etc/rc.d/scripts also (ntop for example).

Stability of the system :

- On debian, when you install "stable" distribution you get all security
fixes but you know that the program you use will not need upgrading to
another version - that is, as long as there are no new "stable" (even a
bit longer, actually).

- On FreeBSD, I had to upgrade all my ports to add BitchX ; I did, then
upgrading apache and php without me noticed it. Every websites went down
because of the new packaging of php. I get a little upset against this,
but I heard something about ports-fixing, I need to investigate on this...

Conclusion : I have still a lot to learn. I use FreeBSD in confidence
that, one day, I will do all I do with Debian. After all, every user of
FreeBSD keeps telling jokes about Linux distros... They can't be all
wrong, can they ? :-)

Relevant Pages

  • FreeBSD Security Advisory FreeBSD-SA-01:40.fts [REVISED]
    ... All versions of FreeBSD prior to the correction date including ... RELENG_4_3 branch after the correction date. ... # make depend && make all install ... An experimental upgrade package is available for adventurous users ...
    (FreeBSD-Security)
  • Re: Packages have been kept back -- What to do?
    ... The version of apt used by Dapper added this ... from what came with the package? ... and then try to upgrade again. ... suggest doing is trying to install the four packages (e.g. su apt-get ...
    (Ubuntu)
  • Re: Installing VS6 After VS.Net 2003
    ... The setup package has different version of controlthan the client ... it tries to upgrade the control on the ... controls, which don't need upgrading, so they are just ignored on install. ...
    (microsoft.public.vb.general.discussion)
  • Re: Installing VS6 After VS.Net 2003
    ... The setup package has different version of controlthan the client ... it tries to upgrade the control on the ... controls, which don't need upgrading, so they are just ignored on install. ...
    (microsoft.public.dotnet.general)
  • Re: upgrading xorg?
    ... care of a nice and tidy upgrade after cvsup. ... or comparing *BSD ports and Debian's package systems. ... Please not that I'm brave enough to be running FreeBSD 7.0-CURRENT, ... none of my Gentoo systems outperformed any Debian machine till date:( ...
    (comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc)