Re: Which BSD?

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Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 12:34:25 +0000 (UTC)

On 2003-11-06, Rudolf Polzer <denshimeiru-sapmctacher@durchnull.de> wrote:
> Scripsit ille »David Douthitt« <ssrat@mailbag.com>:
>> Note that none of the BSDs offer a slick user-friendly graphical
>> "geewhiz" installation. However, if you can install Slackware or
>> Gentoo you can certainly install any of the BSDs.
>
> BTW, is there a Gentoo-like (Any)BSD install process? The only thing I
> liked about sysinstall from FreeBSD was the partitioner, the rest was a
> PITA. Just because the mirror I chose was missing the package index
> file, it tried over twenty times to download that index file: five times
> for each package it wanted to install. If I had pressed ^C, I'd probably
> have had to start over.

Sysinstall is not bad. But it could be more friendly.

> After a long long time, I was finally able to choose another mirror. But
> such installers suck. Gentoo's installer is /bin/sh - it at least does
> what I want it to do.

Then boot the live CD, and roll your own BSD system. What's the difference?

>> One benefit: the BSD kernel seems to be leaner than the Linux kernel -
>> I routinely am able to run BSD in places where a Linux system won't
>> fit - like in 8M of memory....
>
> I'm running Linux on my 486 notebook with 8MB RAM (Linux kernel 2.2.25,
> no fat 2.4.x or even 2.6 kernel). I am not running a BSD there because
> the notebook only has a 500MB hard drive which is already completely
> filled up with the world, world sources and ports tree.

Then don't install them, or mount them from NFS. If I compile debian
base myself, I will need all those sources too.

> On small hard drives I like Debian much better especially because I can
> save space by installing a library without the static library and header
> files (libxyz packages are split up in libxyz - the runtime files - and
> libxyz-dev - the files you need to compile programs against it - and
> eventually libxyz-doc).

Maybe yes. OTOH that makes the amount of packages unwieldy large, and
adds another level of complexity (which is already not ideal under Debian).

Unfortunately I have to use Debian on my old PowerMac. I use that one for
compiling and Linux is (on macppc) significantly faster than linux, but
the package system keeps annoying.

> But I noticed that a BSD kernel is built much faster than a Linux kernel
> and does more seldomly fail to compile because of undocumented
> dependcies of kernel options; additionally, on BSD I don't need to
> recompile almost the whole kernel because I have changed one option.
> However, these things have changed in Linux, the 2.6's Makefile system
> works - at least as much as I tested it - as well as BSD's.

I usually run with generic on FreeBSD, except when security issues arise.
(then I upgrade kernel+world)

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