[GLLUG] GLLUG

[C. Ulrich]

On Wed, 2004-06-30 at 10:03, Edward Glowacki wrote:
> Unfortunately, with FreeBSD you have to compile your kernel any time you
> want to do an upgrade.  =(  For that matter, you have to compile almost
> *everything* on the system (except the initial install).  Most of it is
> pretty well automated (Gentoo Linux uses a similar process), but it
> still takes a while to build everything on aging systems.

Yes, when you upgrade FreeBSD, you have to rebuild the kernel as well as
all the userland software that comes with the base system. (/bin, /sbin,
/usr, /etc, etc.)

But this is a *good* thing. For starters, it's easy and it works. Every
single time I've tried to upgrade a Linux distro to a new version, it
either failed, left he machine unusable, or mucked the system up bad
enough that it wasn't worth salvaging. With FreeBSD, if you follow the
instructions and know what you're doing, your upgrade will almost
certainly succeed. Knowing what you're doing is easy, too, since FreeBSD
is very very well documented.

There are some bonuses to this method as well: both your kernel and
userland can be compiled with flags to optimize for your exact system
and it's extremely easy to build the operating system on a fast machine
and then install the resulting kernel and binaries on a slower one.

The ease and reliability with which FreeBSD can be updated far offsets
the disadvantage of having to wait for it to compile, in my opinion.

Additionally, the developers are working on a way to update FreeBSD
binaries directly. It looks like it will be pretty darned neat, but is
apparently quite a way off from being ready to put into production.

http://www.freebsd.org/projects/updater.html

Charles Ulrich