> all the Xorg politics nonsense

Uh... Xorg is packaged by FreeBSD too...

Really the whole theme that (from the article) "FreeBSD ships as a complete, coherent OS" is belied by this kind of nonsense. No, it's not. Or, sure, it is, but in exactly the same way that Debian or whatever is. It's a big soup of some local software and a huge ton of upstream dependencies curated for shipment together. Just like a Linux distro.

And, obviously, almost all those upstream dependences are exactly the same. Yet somehow the BSD folks think there's some magic to the ports stuff that the Linux folks don't understand. Well, there isn't. And honestly to the extent there's a delta in packaging sophistication, the Linux folks tend to be ahead (c.f. Nix, for example).

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rednb 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The key thing is that on freebsd you do not risk bricking your system by installing a port. Even though this guarantee has become less true with PkgBase

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ajross 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> The key thing is that on freebsd you do not risk bricking your system by installing a port

What specifically are you trying to cite here? Which package can I install on Debian or Fedora or whatever that "bricks the system"? Genuinely curious to know.

	▲	rednb 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I was referring to the need to be careful to not modify/update packages also used by the base system. Since all packages are treated the same on Linux, you often can't tell which package can put you in trouble if you update it along with the dependencies it drags with it. This kind of problem happens frequently when users add repositories such as Packman on Linux providing dependencies versions different from the ones used by the base system of the distro. Experienced people know how to avoid these mistakes, but this whole class of problem does not exist on FreeBSD.

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user3939382 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> a huge ton of upstream dependencies

I think you missed the point in my original comment. I explained I moved my platform with all dependencies and had 1 bug which was actually a silent bug in Linux.

In other words, it works. Your particular stack might have a different snag profile but if I can move my giant complex app there, yours is worth a shot.

FreeBSD is more complete than you make out. They also have hard working ports maintainers.