<story><title>Debian developer prompted to revisit FreeBSD after 20 years</title><url>http://changelog.complete.org/archives/9317-has-linux-lost-its-way-comments-prompt-a-debian-developer-to-revisit-freebsd-after-20-years</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>penland</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s a good overall article - I&amp;#x27;ve been switching back and forth between FreeBSD and Debian for several years now, and I never spend more than a couple of month without using one of them.&lt;p&gt;The one thing that surprised me was his take on FreeBSD&amp;#x27;s package management system, pkg.  PKG is relatively new, having been released in late summer 2012. Prior to that, FreeBSD relied on the ports collection, which was (is) a vast tree of Makefile&amp;#x27;s allowing you to create custom builds of virtually any software imaginable.&lt;p&gt;While pkg is still raw on the edges, I VASTLY prefer it to Debian&amp;#x27;s hodgepodge of package management tools that all do 90% of the other, though none of them do it cleanly and none of them have straightforward interfaces.  Am I using dpkg here?  What about aptitude?  Or should I just roll w&amp;#x2F; apt-get?  All of these tools combine the ease of use of git with the flexibility of a Maven build.  If you know how to use to descend deep into the depths of git or Maven, this isn&amp;#x27;t an issue ( and for the author, it certainly is not ).  Yet there are numerous simple tasks ( like say, searching for a package remotely when you aren&amp;#x27;t sure the exact name ) which still require hitting up google and settling in for a Click-Your-Way-To-Adventure session.&lt;p&gt;PKG, in contrast, is both simplistic and flexible ( it reminds me of a industrial grade version of Brew in some sense ).  It&amp;#x27;s a tool that I find myself integrating into my workflow beyond simple installs &amp;#x2F; updates, particularly it&amp;#x27;s seamless integration with jails.  Configuration of remote repositories is vastly simplified as well.&lt;p&gt;PKG is not perfect by an means - it definitely has worts that need to be taken care of.  I&amp;#x27;m also sure that PKG probably feels a tad inadequte to some hard core sys admins - pkg has the look and feel of a tool designed by a programmer looking to handle normal cases than a tool designed to provide a sys admin with an atom bomb if necessary.  Yet the system is still relatively new and as the bugs continue to get ironed out it&amp;#x27;s a reminder to me of why I love FreeBSD in a lot of ways - the abstraction point is flawless and it gets out of my way.</text></comment>
<story><title>Debian developer prompted to revisit FreeBSD after 20 years</title><url>http://changelog.complete.org/archives/9317-has-linux-lost-its-way-comments-prompt-a-debian-developer-to-revisit-freebsd-after-20-years</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Alupis</author><text>The article makes some good points, and I&amp;#x27;m glad it didn&amp;#x27;t just rail on one single part&amp;#x2F;component since linux distrobutions have so much variety. ZFS is really a killer FS, and unfortunately Linux just doesn&amp;#x27;t have a native answer just yet (although BtrFS does have some promising parts).&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a lot of people either threatening to switch or are switching to one of the BSD&amp;#x27;s as a result of being dissatisfied with the systemd debate outcome -- apparently not realizing FreeBSD (and others) are in the early stages of working on their own systemd&amp;#x2F;launchd-like init system. Everyone seems to realize the need for a more modern init system...</text></comment>