Hi,
Ben Munat wrote:
Yeah, I saw that... however, the motivation here is lack of cutting edge stuff in portage. Ironically, the portage tools are what I'd miss the most in switching, but what I can -- and can't -- get with those tools is the big issue.
So, you basically like gentoo, but it isn't bleeding edge enough for you? Interesting ;-).
I don't know how you got the idea that FreeBSD is updated faster then gentoo, but if you want to get some hard facts just compare:
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=freebsd http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=gentoo
There you can look into other distributions, too. I work with FreeBSD and use gentoo at home, and there are a few things I can say (but keep in mind I've more experience with gentoo and therefore am biased).
1.) Switching isn't easy. If you sit in front of a bsd, you start to learn how far linux deviated from the original unix philosophy at times. You will learn a lot, but expect to invest much time.
2.) Community. This is highly subjective, but from what I saw out there in the forums, mail lists etc. one of gentoo's strong points is the community and it's helpful attitude. Someone who describes himself like "I just like being able to keep up with patches/upgrades in a few minutes a day (on average)." could be in for some, well, funny looks in the smaller freebsd-community. Not that you get me wrong: I found valuable expert suggestions while configuring a rather involved PAM-Setup on freebsd, but I already knew all the basics.
3.) Gentoo is more "modern". As you already said yourself, gentoo is a modern variant of freebsd+ports. While the ports build system mainly consists of Makefiles, gentoo has some of the best package manager scripts I've ever seen. To get a quick impression of what is possible with ports, have a deep look into the freebsd docs. I found it rather difficult to wrap my brain around the local customs on freebsd (samba starts with "/usr/local/etc/rc.d/samba.sh start"), but perhaps you are right - the less you're used to linux, the easier it may be.
Frankly, I don't think you will be that much happier with freebsd if you don't accept the fact the living on the bleeding edge is exactly that: loss of blood. Pain. Thrills. Sweat. Neither gentoo nor freebsd has the developer manpower to feed you superultramodern apps without problems. If you can accept that, use one of the many providers of custom ebuilds and the portage overlay support. If you can't afford long downtimes or just aren't keen on babysitting the system longer than necessary, ask yourself which features of the new packages you mentioned you'd really use. On my own private server I use Debian, log in once a week, fetch the security updates and then leave it alone again. Of course, compared to my workstation or laptop (both gentoo) the software is dusty and rusty, hopelessly outdated, rotten, but...
gluttony ~ # uptime 05:31:17 up 342 days, 14:13, 1 user, load average: 0.15, 0.03, 0.01
To sum it all up:
Redefine your goals. Try FreeBSD. After 4 Weeks, evaluate. Then switch if you like freebsd better, but before stop by here and tell us how it went ;-).
Regards, T.
