I was pondering if it would be a good idea to request that some permanent forums be set up, or maybe some system where temporary subject-based forums could be started by any person (well, maybe apprentice and up) here on Advogato.
FreeBSD
I installed FreeBSD last night, accidentally overwriting
my Debian /usr partition, but I'm not too disappointed,
because this is turning out to be quite nice. I've installed
bunches of applications with Ports, and I'm having a ball.
Although I have a few gripes. It took me quite a while to
figure out how to update the skeletons in ports, and I'm a
debian user, so I'm used to things like apt-get
update. After finding some 3rd party
documentation, and a little bit of tweaking around, I
figured out how to update the skeleton. Also, the Makefile
in /usr/ports really needs some work in the 'update' rule.
It doesn't check to see if $SUP or $SUPFLAGS are defined,
and it tries to run
$(SUP) $(SUPFLAGS)
$(PORTSSUPFILE).
This is obviously bad, because I
had no
idea that I needed to define $SUP and $SUPFLAGS from the
error messages I got (It was trying to execute
$PORTSSUPFILE). I think I may submit a patch that
helps out with the usability of this Makefile. Maybe check
for $SUP(FLAGS), and if they're not defined, use default
values, and if the 'cvsup' command isn't on the system,
recommend that the user install the cvsup-bin port.
I also had a few more ideas for contributions. A set of
update scripts that updated each different ports tree with a
different 'cvsup' command. This would require writing (or
generating on-the-fly) several different supfiles, one for
each ports category.
My other idea was to write a script that upgrades all
currently installed software if there is a new version in
the ports skeleton tree. I have to figure out the system a
little better before I tackle that one, though. Oh, and if
any of this stuff has been implemented already, please
someone let me (carmstro)
know. :)
Other than these few problems I've had so far, I must say I've been quite pleased with FreeBSD so far. It's a much more "integrated" system than most Linux distributions, even moreso than Debian, at least in my first impression. We'll see if that impression lasts long, though.