Re: Real life use of pkgsrc from a happy user

[Sarton O'Brien <bsd-xen%roguewrt.org@localhost>]

On 8/09/2009 8:29 PM, Niels Dettenbach wrote:
> On Tuesday 08 September 2009 08:48:22 you wrote:
> > software installations, they do not help you very much with the upgrade
> > hell which is inherent to many if not all linux distributions.
> ...That is why afaik many *BSD users today are using Gentoo Linux if linux is
> "required" within a project.
>
> The Gentoo Linux portage system bases on a widely similiar concept like
> pgksrc, ports and pkgs.
>
> But however, Gentoo alternatively provides / could use the pkgsrc system too.
>
> I can't understand why users are paying huge money for i.e. RedHat or SuSe
> repositories which making upgrades nearly the same mess like on M$ (but maybe
> this is what many users expect froma "professional system") - without any
> improvement on flexibility. It seems that concepts mainly targeting the
> distributors market concept - less the user needs.  Even dpkg from debian
> allows (so my experiences) a "softer" upgrade path then the main commercial
> Linuxes do offer.

I agree, though the lack of frontendedness is probably partly to blame. 
If we had a gui based bootstrap and management frontend I imagine 
adoption would accelerate (my apologies if something does exist). In 
saying that, you lose the learning experience pkgsrc presents as is.

Something like pkgsrc-dashboard 
(http://code.google.com/p/pkgsrc-dashboard/) is a good start in the 
right direction as pkgsrc users tend to have more than one system using 
the infrastructure.

As accessibility and awareness increases, so does the user-base. I still 
find that most BSDphobic users have no idea what it is but hopefully 
that will change :)

Sarton