Re: Looking at giving DF a go... advice?

[Matthew Dillon <dillon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

    Hi Mark.  What I recommend is that you track the DragonFly_Stable
    tag.  There is a cvsup file available (see the download section of
    the main site) that tracks that tag.  Then you won't be exposed to
    the VFS work being done in HEAD.

    For ports, what we recommend is that you use 'pkg_add -r' to install
    the prebuilt packages from gobsd.  e.g.

    pkg_add -r XFree86
    pkg_add -r kde

    And not try to build things from ports.  We have a set of override ports
    but you need both /usr/ports from FreeBSD and /usr/dfports from DragonFly
    (which isn't a big deal, just more automated cvsup'ing), but we've only
    worked on the most aggregious ports issues as a stopgap until we have our
    own ports and packaging system.  Other then those quibbles, DFly should
    look mostly like FreeBSD.

    We are still trying to decide on how we are going to design the new
    packages/ports system.  Actually, David Rhodus and I have been talking
    about it recently and I think I may have finally come up with a method
    that is satisfactory, which I will propose to the lists as soon as we
    iron at a few details.
    
					-Matt
					Matthew Dillon 
					<dillon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>


:Hi all
:
:At the moment I am using FreeBSD 6.0-CURRENT on my Laptop. It generally
:works rather well. ndis seems to have broken over the last few days and ath
:still doesn't want to work, but other than that it seems to be pretty
:useable. I have downloaded an ISO of DF which had a date of 13th of
:September, I believe this to be because of the instability after this date.
:It seemed to boot alright, which has got my hopes up as I have to install
:FreeBSD 5/6 by running safe mode and then patching agp_ali.c otherwise it
:hangs and panics.
:
:I guess what I am really asking is, is the massive instability stuff fixed
:up now? If I update to CURRENT am I likely to get a system that is stable
:for atleast 3 days usage? I'll need to update to CURRENT in order to get
:ndis support I think, it didn't seem to be included in the 13th September
:release. Another thing I have heard is the whole lots of ports broken thing.
:I have quite alot of ports installed.. kde.. gnome... java etc etc etc...
:enough to be a rather nice general purpose desktop/light programmers system.
:Am I likely going to be able to achieve this with DF in it's current state?
:Is there anything that's going to catch me out or is it all still very much
:like using FreeBSD?
:
:I've read through all of the website now I think, the work you're doing
:sounds really interesting (even though I don't really understand much of it
::-)
:
:Anyway, are there any pointers you could offer me?
:
:Thanks in advance.