FreeBSD "Package Base" Is Now Ready For Testing - More Conveniently Update FreeBSD

[phoronix]

Phoronix: FreeBSD "Package Base" Is Now Ready For Testing - More Conveniently Update FreeBSD

The developers at iX Systems continue to be on a roll this spring. Just days after announcing their new FreeBSD images built with "ZFS On Linux" for testing as the new FreeBSD ZFS implementation, this weekend they announced their new FreeBSD "pkgbase" images are now available for testing...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=FreeBSD-Pkgbase-CFT

[UnholyViking]

In b4 all butt hurt trolls: "Bla bla bla CoC, bla bla bla irrelevant operating system."

I on the other hand applaud this.

[cybertraveler]

How were end users updating their FreeBSD base OS files prior to this?

[rhavenn]

How were end users updating their FreeBSD base OS files prior to this?

Using the

freebsd-update

command. It works, but it's monolithic and not very flexible.

[ehansin]

In b4 all butt hurt trolls: "Bla bla bla CoC, bla bla bla irrelevant operating system."

I on the other hand applaud this.

Yeah, I saw the previous thread and all the CoC comments. I try and avoid politics. All I know is, I have started getting into ZFS, first testing on a RHEL 7 install using the official ZoL ZFS repo/packages for that, then did an Ubuntu 19.04 Server install to test there with the included packages. Then late last week installed the FreeBSD 13-current with ZoL image that iXsystems made available. I still need to finalize the setup, but plan on playing more with it this week. FreeBSD might be a great option for this kind of thing, certainly having these options is awesome. Thanks to all who put forth these efforts!

[Guest]

In b4 all butt hurt trolls: "Bla bla bla CoC, bla bla bla irrelevant operating system."

I on the other hand applaud this.

Well, you've called for it, so here I go:

Bla bla bla CoC, bla bla bla irrelevant operating system.

[labyrinth153]

I actually like that the base system was handled very monolithically. In my opinion the base system is so small anyway and it should always be in an "expected state". Though as time goes on it will probably no longer be "small" and changes like this will have to be made for thin clients and servers anyway.

[k1e0x]

How were end users updating their FreeBSD base OS files prior to this?

FreeBSD is a "full OS" (Unlike Linux, aka GNU/Linux) What that means is the OS after install has everything it needs to run and is always the same. (I don't want to say it's like Windows but.. it's basically more similar to a complete OS than Linux.. SoC or Firmware may be a similar analogy) Linux distros takes pieces of various software from different places and combines them into an OS.. (Kernel here, Grub here, Gnu Unerland, libc and compiler there.. etc) where as in FreeBSD all that is included in the source and it just ships. It's literally a tarball.

As for should the OS be updated with the package manager? Well... From Linux conventions this is very normal and expected but it *is* somewhat nice to have the package manager unable to break the system too or to have the OS separate from the programs installed on it. Even if pkg created dependency hell.. (and it doesn't to my knowlage) but even if it did the system would still boot. Ubuntu and CentOS can't say the same.

VirtualHugs to all FreeBSD devs btw. You guys rock. (sorry, I didn't sign the CoC deal with it.) lol

[edenist]

FreeBSD is a "full OS" (Unlike Linux, aka GNU/Linux) What that means is the OS after install has everything it needs to run and is always the same. (I don't want to say it's like Windows but.. it's basically more similar to a complete OS than Linux.. SoC or Firmware may be a similar analogy) Linux distros takes pieces of various software from different places and combines them into an OS.. (Kernel here, Grub here, Gnu Unerland, libc and compiler there.. etc) where as in FreeBSD all that is included in the source and it just ships. It's literally a tarball.

As for should the OS be updated with the package manager? Well... From Linux conventions this is very normal and expected but it *is* somewhat nice to have the package manager unable to break the system too or to have the OS separate from the programs installed on it. Even if pkg created dependency hell.. (and it doesn't to my knowlage) but even if it did the system would still boot. Ubuntu and CentOS can't say the same.

VirtualHugs to all FreeBSD devs btw. You guys rock. (sorry, I didn't sign the CoC deal with it.) lol

This is one of the reasons I like using FreeBSD. Having the system into three very distinct parts; Kernel, base system [world] and ports/3rd party programs. It's also nice to know that if things ever do get out of control from dependency hell or other shenanigans, worst case you can simply blow away /usr/local/ and you've basically got a clean base-system to start again with. I know that this change doesn't *necessarily* change this situation on it's own, but I've never felt the need for world to be updated or managed with pkg.

[aht0]

I don't like it. On TrueOS it made some of the ports I tried to compile (needed custom options) conflict with some of those "system packages". It became frustrating as ****