Re. http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-help/2003/06/26/0016.html

You can check the current number of packages in NetBSD's package system
(it's around 3000, I think).  However, I have two points of view on that:

 * After about the 1000 mark, pretty much everything that most users
   will want is already in there.  It's nice to have more options, and
   more obscure things, of course.  The more the merrier.  But, unless
   there's a specific package that you need that isn't there, I shouldn't
   worry.

 * Comparing two different package systems based on the number of packages
   seems a little bit dubious.  E.g., with NetBSD, you can choose to
   install the BSDi (I think) or GNU/LINUX version of Netscape; that's
   counted as one package controlled by a config variable you set for
   pkgsrc.  That could be handled as two (conflicting) packages.  On
   the other hand, there are multiple versions of Python in pkgsrc, and
   meta-packages like KDE (which farms out to a large number of subordinate
   packages).  Could those sensibly be handled as more unified packages?

 * Packages are nice, it's true.  (I've become so lazy under pkgsrc that I
   almost never bother to manually fetch/extract/build software.)  But
   decently-written software for UNIX-like systems will compile with little
   trouble on NetBSD (in my limited experience of having to do so; (^&).
   You don't *have* to use pkgsrc, or a pre-built binary package.  For huge,
   complex, and/or badly-written packages, you may not have the time, or
   possibly even the expertise, to port the software yourself.  This
   should rarely be a stopping point, however.


-- 
  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about."  http://www.olib.org/~rkr/