Comments on pkgsrc and DragonFly

[Stephane Russell]

>> So at most, BSD forks can only be used seriously as strong servers. That's
>> how I'm using dfly.
> 
> FUD. All my desktop systems have been running on FreeBSD or DragonFly for
> more than 10 years.
> Sometimes the lack of a good Microsoft Word alternative is a bit painful,
> but with LibreOffice now unleashed, there's a good chance this matter
> will be resolved relatively quickly.
> 

That makes two systems, FreeBSD and DragonFly. Unlike Linux, none is a
full Windows replacement for a user like me, so this would make three
systems to learn and maintain, with two doing a similar job (Windows and
FreeBSD as desktops). Also, I gave up on FreeBSD, because I didn't like
the orientations it was taking - too strict, too serious and too apart
from other *BSDs. Open Source us fun and open collabortion (while
Windows is dull and commercial - bad path FreeBSD)! And I won't learn
Linux over all this.

I'm using FreeBSD as server and development station since 1996, with a
preference for FreeBSD v4, then DragonFly since v1.6, and I'm really
happy with it, I won't change that for anything - with or without
desktop and multimedia support. But I never made this a religion. I kept
Windows for where it's good at, as long as I can't substitute it with
one single system, not two or three Unix variants. No stress here for
me, I'm living well with the situation.

I have to say, I started on an old Zilog computer with CP/M and BASIC on
the begginning of the '80s. Than we had DOS at home with BASIC and
BASICA, then DOS/Windows as it was called. Worst, I like Bill Gates! (I
toast here ;-) A university C programming teacher (a true one with a big
white bear) made me a UNIX lover at university, but access to UNIX
wasn't easy back then. Being able to use a UNIX system at home, and
better, browse it's source code until late at night was really a dream
come true. I really wanted to replace everything with it. But if some
are used to UNIX ways since the beginning, I have to live with my old
ways too, so Windows remained.

In this, you answer large parts of my long time worries:

> Part of the problem with porting is software checking for platform
> names whereas it should be looking for features.

This would help the code porting problem for applications like KDE. On
the end, that's what interests me here. Please understand that I'm not
trying to tell anybody what they should do, I have deep respect for the
DragonFly developper's decisions and hard work, and to their UNIX
dedication. I'm more interested in knowing the orientations decided by
them to plan how I'm going to use DragonFly in the future and where I
should place my energies, for example wheter or not to help KDE or Gnome
DragonFly ports. Its clear to me, I now plan to spend energies on
porting server applications instead. So your answers help me here.

SR

P.S. My Windows stations are stacked with UNIX stuff, like Thunderbird,
Firefox, Gimp, OpenOffice, Dia, Bouml, Cygwin, etc. It does the job,
well behind my DragonFly's firewall, gateway and Samba server. I may not
be "pure" enough, but Windows users might see it differently ;-)