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I would love to just be able to have a stable package base where nothing changed for years except security updates, and have special repos for things that neede

I would love to just be able to have a stable package base where nothing changed for years except security updates, and have special repos for things that needed to change (like firefox or chrome). Eg, like what Ubuntu does with their distro and PPAs. I personally hate the concept of a rolling distro, which is what the ports tree really is. Except for the things I care about, I don't want random stuff changing out from under me. Some ports upgrade 15 years ago failing led me to rage-install Linux and run Linux on my desktop for 10 years because I just didn't have the time to deal with upgrade failures and X not working. Thankfully, now that we have ZFS boot environments (making rolling back easier), I'm back running FreeBSD. But just 2 days ago, I was left with a non-function system when a pkg upgrade renamed "startkde" to startplasma-x11 or something, and it took me nearly an hour to work out that it wasn't the nvidia driver crapping out, it was just that my 'exec startkde' in my .xsession was failing. (Yes, I'm aware of the quarterlies, but that's about 8x too much change for me).

xorander 7y ago
I ran into that same issue with startkde being renamed. However, that's my fault for not reading the release notes beforehand. I wasn't frustrated with FreeBSD. I was frustrated with myself for not reviewing those release notes. Spending 5-10 minutes checking out those notes would have saved me the hour spent troubleshooting that problem. Now I always read the release notes before running updates/upgrades/etc. As a bonus, it's good for discovery of new/updates features. IMO, OSS documentation is one of the major areas where there's a large gradient when it comes to quality. When there are projects like FreeBSD and OpenBSD that write good documentation, it's definitely worth it to take advantage of it.
ComputerGuru 7y ago
I believe the issues you (and I) have had with ports are not fundamental issues with ports, which is to say that they are actually illegal changes in release repositories and would have been reverted if called out during development and testing.
petre 7y ago
Always go back and read the UPGRADING document if you encounter something like this in the future. It will save you a lot of time. You should use Ubuntu LTS if a major release every 6 months is too much for you.
- drewg123 7y ago
  That's my entire point. With FreeBSD ports, we have a rolling release. When I ran Ubuntu, I did run LTS. I could not care less about having the latest KDE. I'd actually be about 100x happier with the KDE from 10 years ago
  - LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
    Why not use this? [1] http://trinitydesktop.org/ http://trinitydesktop.org/
    - drewg123 7y ago
      Nice, KDE before it jumped the shark. Sadly, there is no FreeBSD port or pkg for it.

xorander 7y ago

I ran into that same issue with startkde being renamed. However, that's my fault for not reading the release notes beforehand. I wasn't frustrated with FreeBSD. I was frustrated with myself for not reviewing those release notes. Spending 5-10 minutes checking out those notes would have saved me the hour spent troubleshooting that problem. Now I always read the release notes before running updates/upgrades/etc. As a bonus, it's good for discovery of new/updates features. IMO, OSS documentation is one of the major areas where there's a large gradient when it comes to quality. When there are projects like FreeBSD and OpenBSD that write good documentation, it's definitely worth it to take advantage of it.

ComputerGuru 7y ago

I believe the issues you (and I) have had with ports are not fundamental issues with ports, which is to say that they are actually illegal changes in release repositories and would have been reverted if called out during development and testing.

petre 7y ago

Always go back and read the UPGRADING document if you encounter something like this in the future. It will save you a lot of time. You should use Ubuntu LTS if a major release every 6 months is too much for you.

drewg123 7y ago
That's my entire point. With FreeBSD ports, we have a rolling release. When I ran Ubuntu, I did run LTS. I could not care less about having the latest KDE. I'd actually be about 100x happier with the KDE from 10 years ago
- LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
  Why not use this? [1] http://trinitydesktop.org/ http://trinitydesktop.org/
  - drewg123 7y ago
    Nice, KDE before it jumped the shark. Sadly, there is no FreeBSD port or pkg for it.