Please note: following is a long email but I think it's
a very interesting and worthwhile topic to think about.


Hi all,

this is a really interesting email by Gan Uesli Starling
and I thought I'd respond to it to perhaps give us
(NetBSD 'ers) something to think about.

I'm a very BIG fan of NetBSD. Like it says in the doco
NetBSD is well written, lean, well engineered code that
is a pleasure to work with. There is no better operating
system to have underneath you. And the community is
most helpful, friendly and interesting. But. There is a
but coming, but wait.

I started with Linux in 96 then FreeBSD in 98 and NetBSD
in 2000. Nowadays I have a FreeBSD box at work running
ORACLE. A NetBSD at work for my main machine
on desktop. NetBSD desktop at home. NetBSD on sparc
at home. And another utility box with Redhat 6.2 on an
old pentium at home.

However here is the but. For developing code and for
shear UNIX pleasure NetBSD running CTWM is damn
unreal.

But I NEED certain tools to do day to day work with, at
work and at home. I need these to work straight away.
Least mucking about possible. I need Netscape browser,
Netscape mail, Staroffice for microsoft word docs because
I must be able to read and respond to these in my job, and I
need to run ORACLE so I can carry out development
work in this area. Also it would be nice to be able to run
some things like the Real audio player that I suddenly
needed the other day.

Now all the above apps are Linux binaries run under
emulation. The trouble is that there all collectively
flakey. Some are a bit buggy. All are hard to upgrade.
Some don't work as well as they should. Some don't
work at all. And the round and round the circle problems
with the package source system experienced by Gan Uesli
Starling is something I am quite familiar with. I often
end up having to upgrade my entire OS and package
source and packages to get one new app to work.

I think that to some extent NetBSD 'ers don't need
to care about some of this, and fair enough I reckon,
because NetBSD is really about a top quality operating
system. And honestly thats a very good goal. It's just
from a practical standpoint I need these other apps
to serve my needs as well. And I do find NetBSD and
FreeBSD for that matter having to run Linux emulation
all the time, a bit lacking. I do hope that this is taken
as constructive discussion / criticism. I want to still
run NetBSD wherever possible.

So anyway guess what? I've embarked on a project
at home at present to find a free hard disk and install
Linux  (yes! Linux!!! :) on it. Try and install CTWM
on it, so I don't feel so "not at home", and get my needed
applications running on it. This can be my desktop box
at home. And if it is a real success then I might put linux
on the desktop at work and on the ORACLE box at
work.

For me, believe me this is totally AMAZING! It's a tiny
bit like going back to windoze in the early 90's, unthinkable:).
But nowhere near that bad:)).
I hope it works out. Linux is still cool. It's still UNIX.
Still it's sad for me to do this and I don't really want to do it.
I wish I could stay total NetBSD but it's just not practical.
I 'll still have a least one NetBSD box running on SPARC.
And at this stage it's still a project yet to prove itself. I'm
not sure if running Linux will reveal horrible things that I
find difficult to live with yet, but I need to give it a go. So
I'm not "leaving" NetBSD, not by a long shot. But for these
applications I have  to give Linux a shot at that role or part
of my computing infrastructure.

In the interest of NetBSD.

regards,
Paul.




oinkfreebiker@att.net wrote:

> WHAT I ATTEMPTED: Tried to pkg_add KDE 2.x over ftp
> URL...
>
> ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/1.5/i386/All/
>
> ...without success. Only some very few things installed,
> not enough for KDE 2.x. (I have entered that command so
> many times I have memorized the URL -- I am giving up on
> FTP install from now on).
>
> WHAT HAPPENED: Got a whole lot of "add of dependency
> failed" and other failures. Only some very few things
> installed. Not enough to run KDE 2.x. (Which gives me to
> wonder where are they if not in the directory "All"?)
>
> WHAT I NEED: So now I want to install KDE 1.x instead.
> Have truly ALL the dependencies on cdrom, as have done
> before on a laptop from the Wasabi disks. But it happens
> that the some few things that did install are newer
> dependencies than KDE 1.x needs. So I get "resolve this
> conflict" from pkg_add.
>
> So I pkg_delete on those packages. But pkg_delete does
> not fully delete. So I still can't pkg_add. And further,
> pkg_info reports that the package that didn't fully
> delete is not installed.
>
> So it looks like I'm stuck. Am getting very, very
> frustrated with NetBSD. Except for the time already
> invested, I would most likely give up on it. Damn near
> everything I attempt to do is thwarted in some oblique
> (and often seemingly undocumented) fashion. If it weren't
> for the new NetBSD 1.5.2 complete CDROM set from Wasabi
> Systems being due out soon, I swear that I would give up
> on NetBSD.
>
> I have spent the whole damn weekend and got practically
> nothing to show for my time. If, after I get the new
> multi-CD set from Wasabi, I still have these kinds of
> major difficulties...then I WILL give up on NetBSD, and
> switch over to FreeBSD, or maybe Linux. At least those
> OS's have got a book that I could go out and buy.
>
> Unhappily,
>
> Gan
>
> --
> Mysterious Starling -- Rarest Extinct Bird
>      _
>    <(+)__        Gan Uesli Starling
>      ((__/)=-    Kalamazoo, MI, USA
>       `||`
>        ++     http://starling.ws
>
>

--

____________________________________________

Paul      (pts@bom.gov.au)
National Climate Centre
Australian Bureau Of Meteorology
____________________________________________