probbka's Journal: You take the good, you take the bad...

You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have: The Facts of Life. After almost a week of running FreeBSD, I thought I'd do a little write-up on my progress, and my reactions. I've titled it "The Facts of Life", after my favorite early 1980s sitcom.

The Good:

• Ports: The ports system is the best package-updating system I've yet seen. When I first installed Debian Linux I was amazed at how cool apt-get was, but FreeBSD's ports are even cooler. In essence, the ports system is an easy way of getting and updating almost any piece of mainstream software. All you have to do to install a program is cd to /usr/ports/[port extension, for example firebird is www/mozilla-firebird], then you just make install clean. To deinstall, make deinstall, or to reinstall, make reinstall. So easy.
• GUI: Let me say that I am aware, first off, that there is nothing particularly special about FreeBSD's GUI, since it uses XFree86 just like anything else. However, I was actually able to get X up and running with Fluxbox, which is way farther than I got in Debian.

The Bad:

• GUI: Yes, I am aware I just put this as one of "The Good". However, as I type this I am still running in 256 colors, and I don't know how to fix it. Still waiting to hear back from some people at FreeBSD Forums.
• Compatibility: Lunix, Lunix, Lunix. That's all people build for. From Nvidia drivers, to flash, to mozilla, getting stuff for FreeBSD was a pain compared to getting it for Linux. It makes me want to go try Debian again.
• Gaim: Which is of course not a problem inherent in FreeBSD. But Gaim is a pain, in my opinion. I found all the options for it, and it seems pretty well customizable, however I CANNOT GET THE OPTIONS TO TAKE EFFECT. I'll uncheck a box, and nothing will happen. I'll look in the options menu. Yep, the box is still unchecked. Restart gaim. Didn't take effect. Yep, the box is still unchecked. Yeah, irritating.
• Sound: This is another problem I'm sure I'll have across the open source OS world. I can't get my integrated sound card working. It's not even pretending like it wants to work.

The Facts of Life:

FreeBSD is OK overall. I'm gonna keep trying to get to a decent color mode, and I'll probably just buy a $15 PCI sound card if it can promise compatibility.

I may just end up switching to Debian when they release a version that has the 2.6.x kernel in it. Until then, though, I'm going to keep playing with FreeBSD; if nothing else, it's fun to mess with.