On Tue, 2 Jan 1996, Mike Long wrote:

> >b) Most stuff builds right out of the box anyway.
> 
> CDROMs, CDROMs, CDROMs!!!!  As Jordan has pointed out, FreeBSD pushes
> package creation in order to help 'Net-less CDROM customers.  Packages
> can also help users with slow connections; it took >90 minutes for me
> to FTP Emacs 19.30 over my 14.4k PPP link.

Absolutely.  I've got good access to the net myself right now, but if
I were to lose that, I would be looking for a way to get software on
CDs for my NetBSD systems.  Some sort of package form would be great
for those who want to be able to install binary kits quickly and
painlessly -- I've worked with DEC Ultrix systems a lot, and kind of
like their way of handling this, which even includes proper checking
of dependencies between packages.

Personally, I would still prefer to configure, compile and install
stuff myself, so I think it's important to feed fixes and config info
back to the developers of free software.  Now that burning CDs is
getting cheap, I can easily imagine a company making and sending out
CDs with lists of available free software, and then taking orders for
selections of kits to be collected and written on a CD for you...
Along with a subscription to a regular "fix" of NetBSD-current, that
would really be a great option if I should find myself without my
current direct high bandwith Internet connection.

It is further my opinion that Carthage...  Er, no, wrong speech.  What
I meant to say was that some mechanism is needed to keep archie
servers from seeing packages and mirrors unless they're told to; it's
become damn near impossible to find software distributions on the net
by use of archie these days -- it only finds Linux ports, or, now and
then, FreeBSD packages.  Aarrgghhh!  (Whew!)  :-)

-tih
-- 
Tom Ivar Helbekkmo
tih@Hamartun.Priv.NO