Posted by Jim at June 2nd, 2004

I moved over to using FreeBSD as a desktop computer recently.

As a result, I’ve become much more familiar with the operating system than I was from using it at work. That’s because I’m just using it at work as a file and print server. After setting up samba and configuring a few programs of personal interest (I installed erlang, php, mysql…), I haven’t had much reason to change anything.

To be honest, owing to the fact that it’s not at all connected to the internet, I haven’t even bothered to do very many security updates on it. As such, I haven’t used the ports collection much.

It is easier to deal with than I expected.

Basically what the ports collection allows a person to do is to automatically download updated versions of the programs you use (or even the operating system itself), compile the programs and install them. There’s often some post installation work. Also, there are times when you have to manually download a file yourself (like java) and put it where it can be used (/usr/ports/distfiles).

It turns out that there’s a program to test which server would make for the fastest download (fastest_cvsup). In addition, there’s a program called “portupgrade” which allows a person to identify which ports need to be updated and to update them all at once rather than update each individually.

I’d argue that it’s not quite as easy as the Debian Linux system, but it does have it’s good points.