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by ajross 111 days ago
> 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.
1 comments
rednb 111 days ago
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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chuckadams 111 days ago
> Since all packages are treated the same on Linux

This is no longer the case in "immutable" distros such as Bluefin/Aurora, which uses ostree for the "base" distro, while most other user packages are installed with homebrew. Nix and Guix solve it in a very different way. Then there's flatpak and snap.

A lot of poor *BSD advocacy likes to deride Linux for its diversity one moment, then switch to treating it as a monolith when it's convenient. It's a minority of the users for sure, but they naturally make an outsized share of the noise.

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