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BSD Operating Systems

FreeBSD Passes 9000 Ports 131

Dan writes "Kris Kennaway believes that the french/med port has the honour of being the 9000'th in the FreeBSD ports collection. Congratulations to everyone who has helped to make the Ports Collection such a success over the past 9 years!"
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FreeBSD Passes 9000 Ports

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  • by discoinferno ( 137207 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @09:54AM (#6550267) Homepage
    Based on the lack of activity in this forum, I think that it is safe to say that BSD users have been driven out by the trolls.... or they are just too busy downloading all those ports to actually come and post here. ;-)
  • BSD Support (Score:5, Funny)

    by GeXX ( 449863 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @10:27AM (#6550539)
    Naa, we've already updated our Ports for this morning. Both Source & Programs.

    We are at work currentley making money, we don't have the luxory of summer vacation like the linux'ers.
  • Uh oh! (Score:5, Funny)

    by dasunt ( 249686 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @11:34AM (#6551118)

    [ BSDhead #1 ]: Did you hear? FreeBSD has 9000 ports now!

    [ BSDhead #2 ]: Crap! It is too popular! It has hit the mainstream!

    [ BSDhead #1 ]: That's what I was thinking - lets switch to OpenBSD

  • by blate ( 532322 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @03:00PM (#6552893)
    I've been a FreeBSD fan for several years now. Had I been smarter when I was younger, I would have been a fan even longer than that :)

    FreeBSD, IMHO, comes pretty darned close to Linux in terms of ease of install and, in many ways, exceeds it in ease of use. Configuration files are where you expect them to be. Utilities are named what you expect them to be named.

    And, to tie into this article, the ports collection provides a wealth of great software. There's no issue as to which flavor of Linux you have... if you're running FreeBSD, the port will generally work on your system, whether you compile it from sources or download the precompiled package from one of the ftp mirrors.

    Kudos to the FreeBSD team for all their hard work and for giving us such a stable, reliable, useful platform to develop and play on.
    • I guess you've been a FreeBSD for too many years now... All (living ones anyway) linux-distributions today use glib-2.x.x (of varying versions) apart from that there's not many showstoppers from allowing you to compile software for any distro from the same sourceball...
      Ie. there aren't any difference in the distros anymore, and hasn't been for quite some time...
    • by IamTheRealMike ( 537420 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @01:30PM (#6561385)
      And, to tie into this article, the ports collection provides a wealth of great software. There's no issue as to which flavor of Linux you have

      FreeBSD is cool and all, but you could equally say "Debian apt is really great! there's no issue as to which CPU arch you're on, if you're running Debian, there will be packages for you".

      ie, don't overhype ports. Useful yes, something amazing that only FreeBSD has, no.

      • by blate ( 532322 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @02:28PM (#6562177)
        You make a good point... apt and rpm do a nice job, perhaps as good or possibly better than ports.

        One place where ports has an advantage, however, IMHO, is that the "database" of available packages lives on your local filesystem... you don't have to go searching around the web for the package you want, and you don't need a GUI to fetch and install packages.

        Yes, I know, rpm and apt have command-line modes, but I'm not aware of a way to "browse" collections of these types of packages without a GUI. I'm usually more at home in a console window than a clunky, slow X app.

        I guess we're at the point of arguing matters of taste, which is usually fruitless. FreeBSD is a wonderful OS, as is Linux, but it doesn't get as much press. The ports collection is something the FreeBSD team can and should be proud of.

        • by naelurec ( 552384 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @03:04PM (#6562711) Homepage
          Please don't think RPM is even close to apt-get and ports. Nothing quite like trying to install an RPM that *SHOULD* work only to have it complain about tons of dependencies. I like the FreeBSD way much better as it will go fetch the required parts, compile & optmize and be done with it. :)

          The RPM based distros really should go to something like apt-get, ports or portage (gentoo)
          • by Eraser_ ( 101354 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @01:28PM (#6572015)
            The "...and be done with it" is what I like about FreeBSD. RedHat is a PITA to get software installed on, but we are forced to use it to get a service contract for this new whizbang filtering software we run for the school district.

            Oh, and rock on rc.conf!
            • Install apt4rpm and setup a local package repository, no more dealing with dependencies unless you install something not in your repository and even then you could add that package and it's dependencies to your repository so that you only have to fight with it once.
          • the rpm based distros do have an rpm based apt-get, get it from rpmfind.net, search for apt :P
          • Mandrake has urpmi. Arguably just as good as apt-get. When I first tried out MDK back in the 7 or 8 days I ran into so many dependency problems I was going crazy, then I discovered urpmi and haven't seen a single dependency problem yet. The number of packages that are available for MDK are amazing compared to what I find for RH. "urpmi --auto-select --media update" will automatically upgrade all upgradeable packages from the update source you specify. "urpmi mplayer" will grab the mplayer rpm from my Pengui
            • Thanks for the info on urpmi .. sounds like a nice system. Does it also allow for things like recursive removal (ie I want to remove XFree86, can I specify a flag that will remove all RPMs that depend on XFree86 (ie kde, gnome, apps, etc..)) Definitely will be on my list of things to check out. :)
        • by arturogatti ( 550637 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @07:40PM (#6565807)

          "One place where ports has an advantage, however, IMHO, is that the "database" of available packages lives on your local filesystem... you don't have to go searching around the web for the package you want, and you don't need a GUI to fetch and install packages."

          With apt (assuming you've run "apt-get update" at least once since the system was installed, and thus have package lists to search) you don't need to go online to search the package database. You can use the "apt-cache search" command for this. Just type, for example, "apt-cache search alsa" to produce a list of all packages containing the word "alsa" in their names or descriptions.

        • by Nothinman ( 22765 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @09:12PM (#6576211)
          There are several console apt front ends that let you browse, search, etc available packages. dselect, aptitude, synaptic, etc.
        • Others have already mentioned the CLI tools for apt, plus for rpm if you're using Mandrake instead of RH you have urpmi which is arguably just as good as apt, and urpmq and urpmf to browse packages from the command line. Good ol CLI.
  • almost 3 per day (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 1nv4d3r ( 642775 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @04:09PM (#6553365)
    9000 ports in 9 years is like 2.7 ports a day. That's pretty impressive.

    (not to equate quantity with quality, but still...)
    • Re:almost 3 per day (Score:5, Informative)

      by satanami69 ( 209636 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @06:12PM (#6554222) Homepage
      Not to take away their thunder, but p5-Unicode-Lite 0.12 counts as a port, so an entire program may have 15 sub-ports. Still, I like it better than Gentoo.
      • by Anonymous Coward
        + ports:
        -make is still better than python - a base system should not rely on anything else than shell and C (and, well, make). Thanks for removing perl back to ports in 5.
        -checks for dependencies before trying to uninstall
        -mergemaster kicks ass compared to etc-update

        + portage
        -USE Variables

        Maybe FreeBSD should add a single file, like /etc/with.conf, where all of those WITH_FOO=yes knobs are listed and which is sourced before each port is build.
        So portupgrade would respect those, too
        • Re:almost 3 per day (Score:5, Informative)

          by m0rten ( 307847 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @04:45AM (#6557413)
          Maybe FreeBSD should add a single file, like /etc/with.conf, where all of those WITH_FOO=yes knobs are listed and which is sourced before each port is build. So portupgrade would respect those, too


          You do know that portupgrade reads the /usr/local/etc/pkgtools.conf file when upgrading, reinstalling, etc ports? This is a excellent place to put your WITH_* knobs. There's even a few examples in the file to get you going..

          Also, I believe they can be put in /etc/make.conf, but then they will be global and will be used for all ports!
    • We could build a pyramid at that rate
    • Re:almost 3 per day (Score:3, Informative)

      by junics ( 664175 )
      And accelerating :)
      (Gnu)plot of growth [freebsd.org]
  • awesome (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 28, 2003 @04:41PM (#6553571)
    congrats!

    I've learned to appreciate both the version stability and back-patching done by Red Hat, and the wonderful selection of customizable ports offered by FreeBSD.

    However since Red Hat seems to be abandoning the small end of the market, little by little, I find myself recommending and using FreeBSD for most folks, unless they need to admin themselves (red hat is a little easier for those folks).

    Now somebody please just get a port for Berkeley's new XML database in there, and we'll be set! :-)
  • by fluor2 ( 242824 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @05:30PM (#6553888)
    thats,
    port #1: port 22 ssh
    port #2: port 21 ftp
    port #1: port 80 http ..
    uh
      • Re:wow 9000 ports! (Score:2, Informative)

        by DeltaSigma ( 583342 )
        Ports for the TCP/IP protocol. When programs talk to each other, they do so for ports. So when your browser communicates with a web server they go between your address and the server address on port 80 (usually). This is how you prevent network programs from being run on your network. Say you wish to stop kazaa, you close off the ports kazaa can use to communicate. Thus kazaa can't request information from kazaa servers, and servers can't establish a connection to the kazaa client to send it informatio
  • by jcgf ( 688310 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @11:55PM (#6556343)
    I'm a linux user that has recently given freebsd a try. I must say that I prefer it over linux. The only thing keeping me from switching full time is the lack of support for the triflex ide controller in my laptop (armada 7400). Linux just got it in 2.4.21 (maybe before in some patch somewhere).
    If anyone knows of a driver in development any help would be greatly appreciated.

    Jared
    • You might want to contact Soren Schmidt; he is currently developing the ATA driver last time I checked. His website is freebsd.dk [freebsd.dk], this is an excerpt of the relevant text:

      I'm currently the author and maintainer of the FreeBSD ATA driver (disk, cdrom, DVD, ZIP, LS120 etc).

      I also wrote the Linux emulator, the FreeBSD console driver syscons and libvgl graphics lib, plus various other bits and pieces, most of which I have handed over to new maintainers to concentrate on the ATA driver.

      The latest patches/en

  • Congradulations Team (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kiwirob ( 588600 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @03:26AM (#6557173) Homepage
    FreeBSD is dead, long live FreeBSD!!!! I've been using FreeBSD as my desktop for the last few years. It hasn't always been easy but it has been enjoyable. Since I started as a FreeBSD user the system has just got better and better. Big thanks to everybody involved in making this milestone possible. Here's looking forwards to the 10,000th port!!1
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @10:48AM (#6559054)
    ported to 9000 CPU architectures ;-)
  • Sweet! (Score:4, Funny)

    by neafevoc ( 93684 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @05:46PM (#6564573) Homepage Journal
    I better get started!

    cd /usr/ports && make install clean ...
    • Re:Sweet! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by mjuszczak ( 689793 )
      Dont forget to cvsup.... hehe If you really wanna have fun ... Install 4.0-RELEASE ... cd /usr/ports && make install clean && cvsup && portupgrade -ra .... see you next year. /me loves freebsd ... it does it all for you. Okay and what the heck is with these linux lovers? BSD is rock solid. I can't even crash the system if I wanted to (I've tried) ...
      • I can crash my system with Alt-Enter in X. Apparantly this is a "key sequence" to cause X to switch video modes; to an invalid mode in this case. After I do this, I have to use Ctrl-Alt-Bang to terminate X, and my console window is heavily dimmed, and X won't start again. So I have to reboot. I think we can say that I have crashed FreeBSD, since its GUI is now useless.

        Note: I've done all this as a normal user. I'd like to configure FreeBSD's X to not recognize the Alt-Enter keystroke in any case. How?

  • How well maintained? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    One of the things I like about OpenBSD is that they actually remove crusty, unmaintained, or otherwise useless ports. I'm curious as to how well pruned the FreeBSD ports tree happens to be... Anyone?
  • Not a BSD bash, or a ports manager bash, as they all do great work..

    Its just irritating when I keep running up to a port that just wont cooperate... Or one that doesnt have a cooresponding package, for low resource machines..

    Again, its not a bash.. I love BSD and all the good parts of it... But nothing is perfect :)

  • I've been using Free for years as well as Open and Linux, and one thing I want to point out without sounding trollish is that FreeBSD, and certain distributions of Linux (right now using Slack9) have become extremely bloated.

    When I order my Free cd's I never get passed using only one cd, and I know there has to be others who've done (and are doing) the same.

    I originally switched from Mac (System 7.0) to Windows, then to Linux, then to BSD (Open) because at the time it was lightweight. Enough to accompli

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