Guest post by After about a year of work, the ArchLinux distribution now offers a variant running on the FreeBSD kernel. Says the developer, “Why would I do this? If like me, you enjoy FreeBSD and love it, but also like the philosophy behind Arch Linux, which is a fast, lightweight, optimized distro, I figured why not combine the both. Even though you could just do it on FreeBSD using the ports, not everyone wants to compile.” This now puts Arch in the same category as Debian with Debian GNU/KFreeBSD, which offers a Debian userland on top of a FreeBSD kernel.
Because you can’t optimize FreeBSD without using GNU
userland….
FreeBSD has binary packages….
He can do what he wants of course but I really fail to see the actual point in this.
Edited 2013-01-25 09:30 UTC
While I do agree with you, as a user of both FreeBSD and Arch, I am quite excited by this.
The real question is whether Arch’s full repos (baring stuff that ties directly into the kernel – for obvious reasons) and AUR are available. But with those combined, Arch has one of the largest collections of software available for it.
The only thing that stops me from running FreeBSD on the desktop more (I have done in the past, but mainly I use FreeBSD on servers) is because Linux has more software developed for it. (and while I could always port the rare few apps that aren’t available for FreeBSD, I do that every for work – so cannot be bothered to do that for ‘fun’ as well).
This is all just my personal views though. I’m sure plenty on here will disagree. Particularly as there seems to be a lot of rivalry between Linux and FreeBSD (which I’ve never really understood as it’s all just open source software with the same basic ideals anyway. But such is life).
Anyhow, I’m definitely going to give “ArchBSD” a play this weekend.
Edited 2013-01-25 11:40 UTC
The selling point of Linux over other free UNIX clones is that it supports just about any hardware you throw at it. The selling point of Arch over other Linux distributions is that it is the most *BSD like of them all. Using the FreeBSD kernel removes the Linux hardware support, but doesn’t add anything new that FreeBSD doesn’t do. We have already have a binary package system in place, and it’s not like pacman offers anything significant like delta binary updates.
As for the wide amount of software available for Linux, I fail to see how ArchBSD will rectify this. Developers code for what they know, and that is Linux. We’ve been complaining about the “Linux-ism” of free software since Gnome 1.x. Linux dependencies like HAL and PulseAudio or Wayland or don’t get added and then deprecated overnight.
I run FreeBSD and ArchLinux on a number of systems and have done for a decade now. So I’m aware of the selling point of each OS.
That said, I really don’t agree with most of what you’ve posted (not saying you’re outright wrong, I just see things from a different perspective):
FreeBSD has good enough hardware support for the stuff that matters (eg networking controllers). Plus many of the UNIX’s support features which Linux does not / or is not stable (not least of all, ZFS).
However, despite this, the appeal of Linux is usually more software support (which is a self-fulfilling prophecy as more people then write non-portable software for Linux).
You then also get users who learn Linux but refuse to learn other POSIX systems because it’s “not quite Linux”. ie Linux is what they know and what they’re comfortable with.
I’d already addressed that: AUR
Again, AUR.
If enough of the underlying Linux userland is ported, then hopefully we could see some of the Linux-dependant software ported over.
This is a big ‘if’ though. Equally there’s a chance that there’d be less software available as it needs ported to support such a specific platform. And if that’s the case then this is more of a “just because I can” exercise rather than one seeking any practical applications.
In either case, I think it’s a little unfair just to dismiss it outright.
Even with the AUR you still got the problem that a lot of software has a lot of Linuxisms.
And once again, I’d already addressed that.
Edited 2013-01-27 13:56 UTC
I don’t really see the point for this.
If it is only using pacman instead of ports, then what the deal? Not like, there would be more software available compared to ports.
Exactly, and ports is not hard to use at all!
make install clean
What is so hard about that?
I’ve switched to FreeBSD some months ago, and think FreeBSD is fantastic! Way more consistent, excellent documentation, fantastic backwards compatibility, ports is super easy to use. I wouldn’t be switch back to Linux any time soon.
I fail to see how this can be called Arch Linux if is making use of a BSD kernel.
It’s not called ‘Arch Linux’. It’s called ‘Arch BSD’. Just like Arch’s Hurd variant is called ‘Arch Hurd’.
[edit]
It might also be worth pointing out that the OSAlert headline isn’t the same as the linked article’s, which reads: Arch BSD: Arch Linux Atop The FreeBSD Kernel
Edited 2013-01-25 11:43 UTC
Original submitter here. The title I’d originally proposed was, “What do you get when you cross ArchLinux and FreeBSD?”
As to the question, “why do something like this, when Arch has a limited number of followers and FreeBSD has a limited number of followers?” the answer is clearly, “to see if we can do it.” It’s the best answer for half of the cool stuff that hackers and tinkerers do, these days. Be glad we can tinker at all – the massive gadget/device lockdown isn’t far off, I’d say.
Already happening. As of Saturday, it will be illegal to unlock phones in the US.
God bless the land of the free and inventors of the open market. <_<
….say what? I can’t really comprehend what I just read. It doesn’t compute.
Are you sure you’re not talking about North Korea or Cold War-era Eastern bloc states?
In some ways I miss the cold war. Sure, we almost blew ourselves up but at least there was some checks and balances and a “lets not be as bad as those guys” attitude.
(Edit: A Google search later and my brain just stops working. “This comes into effect under concerns of national security”. WTF?? Did I just step into Orwell’s 1984?)
Edited 2013-01-25 13:24 UTC
Indeed. It’s so completely over the top that it must be made up.
Actually if I remember correctly in many European countries that is the same.
You can get prosecuted if you have a business that unlocks phones.
I can’t find any hard information supporting this claim.
All I can find are vague claims like “some countries in Europe” so I’ll call not true on that until someone actually provides hard evidence.
There’s plenty of examples where carriers are required to provide an unlock service, free or at a charge, by law.
Sure the carriers are obliged by law to unlock the phones, at least at end of contract.
What you cannot do (legally) is to go some IT shop and ask to get your phone unlocked.
These shops do exist but “no one” does it.
Again, I can’t find any credible reference to exactly where in Europe having your phone unlocked by a 3rd party is illegal.
What can be found in 5 minute googling:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIM_lock
In Portuguese:
http://www.computerworld.com.pt/2010/08/30/mais-facil-desbloquear-t…
The important part is this one:
Meaning you have the right to unblock the phone but only in certain scenarios as allowed by Portuguese law.
Or if you can read Spanish
http://www.liberar.ws/
Again the important part translated:
The Wikipedia link above gives similar scenarios for some European countries.
The main point is that you can not just unlocked when you feel like doing it, and additionally the operators themselves are the only ones allowed to do it.
Does blocking equal locking in this case?
And NONE of them states that it is illegal to unlock your phone yourself or have someone do it for you, at least not for any of the European countries on the list.
Nope. They’re entirely different things
And yet the Portuguese law states otherwise.
http://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?contentId=1027945
Google translate link,
http://translate.google.de/translate?sl=pt&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en…
Article number 3. Only the entity that locked the phone is allowed to perform such operation.
For us locking means both SIM lock or any other form of device locking.
Uh no, that’s not what it says. It says the provider is obliged to perform unlocking if requested by the customer. It does not in any way say that it is illegal for you to do it yourself or have someone do it for you.
Maybe that’s a Google translate problem but that is what it says in the translated text.
Blocking isn’t the same as locking.
A block is there to stop the phone being used if it’s stolen. It’s the telecoms equivalent of having your bank card blocked if you suspect someone has stolen your wallet. Thus it’s in the best interest of the consumers to make blocking illegal (not that it does much to stop phone theft, but at least it’s intentions are honourable).
Locking is just an arbitrary restriction to prevent a phone being used on different networks (or ‘carriers’ as Americans refer to it). There’s no good reason why you’d want to make that illegal – aside to deliberately screw consumers over.
Thus unlocking phones is -as far as I’m aware- completely legal in the EU, but unblocking is illegal.
People need to lobby their representatives right away. I think if as big a stink was made about this, as was made about SOPA, we’d get somewhere.
The DMCA is a terrible law that needs to be repealed, the spirit of it was respectable, but things like this are notoriously hard to implement in a manner which balances consumer freedom and intellectual property interests.
This speaks to a larger, lack of education in US politics surrounding technology as a whole. It is extremely dangerous given how we live in a more connected world every day.
Reality gets even weirder when you realize that the “librarian of congress” is the branch assigned by congress to enforce this.
The DMCA is turning out to be a magnificently awful piece of legislation as some predicted…
The Librarian of Congress has also made Jailbreaking legal and ripping DVDs fair use, so its not all bad.
The DMCA is just terrible though.
Edited 2013-01-25 22:22 UTC
They got it right with the jailbreaking. However the librarian’s exception, for ripping DVDs in the USA, only allows for educators and students not the general public.
Things are going to get weirder and weirder, as congress tries to regulate things they have the capacity to understand less and less.
Agreed. Hopefully as a lot of these old pasty guys die off and younger people are elected to Congress, we can see a more modern approach to technology.
Either that, or cede the decision making power to an agency that actually knows what its talking about. FCC comes to mind.
I dunno, a lot of the people pushing for these kind of laws are younger (relatively speaking).
That would seem to be an at least marginally better approach.
I think the really creepy part is that it is “for reasons of national security”. Really? Using a phone with a different carrier would be a threat to the security of one of the, supposedly, most powerful nations on earth? I’m getting flashbacks to the 80’s and East Germany.
Either the librarians of congress are morons or they’re lining their pockets.
The FCC? You mean the people that demand and enforce censorship of modern media? The very same people that had the bright idea to only allow a few unlicensed frequency bands, with the result that Bluetooth, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, and RF devices share the same spectrum resulting in a massive interference problem in crowded areas (5 ghz N is not as widely used as it should be and few consumer-grade routers implement it well)? The very same agency that claims to love cel phones and mobile devices, but demands hundreds of thousands in licensing and testing fees to the point that actually increasing an existing network (or starting a new one to compete) becomes prohibitively expensive? That FCC? You think they understand technology any better than the crackpots in charge of it now?
Only partially. Want to jailbreak your phone, go ahead. Want to jailbreak your iPod, your Tablet or, perhaps in the future, your PC? Too bad, you’re a criminal! Plus, it’s anyone’s guess how long even the legal jailbreaking of phones will stand, seeing as how jailbreaking is usually the first step to third-party unlocking.
Not exactly. They’ve said that you are permitted, if creating a remix video or other artistic work, to rip clips from protected DVDs. The request for an exemption to rip entire DVDs and transcode them has been requested for years, and to this date, is still denied. Not that anyone actually cares, of course.
On that point, we are in complete agreement.
ex-Cold War-era Eastern bloc state here: please don’t compare us to NK. The political system may have been thoroughly f’ed up, but I assure you we didn’t pull crazy shit like systematically starve our own people to death. Compared to NK, Cold War-era Eastern bloc countries were free market democracies.
unlock like in “unlock carrier” or unlock like in “I want to run another kernel on this device”?
Unlock. Not installing bespoke ROMs or even jailbreak / root hacks. Literally just unlocking for the sake of using a different carrier.
I live in Colombia (U know…South America) and it has become illegal to unlock cellphones since a lot of people were being killed just to steal a FreaKIN’ cellphone (just in case they are brought illegally from other countries) but to balance things up the government forced carriers to sell unlocked cellphones, smooth move I have to say.
There aren’t that many Arch Linux and FreeBSD (desktop) users, so the targeted audience for this ehm, operating system, is a small subset of these two combined groups.
To me it seems FreeBSD users use FreeBSD because they like FreeBSD and want to use FreeBSD. Same for Arch Linux users with Arch Linux. Just wondering why they’d give up any experience for opting for a less pure experience.
It’s not like FreeBSD is slow or people don’t love Arch Linux.
When I used to use BSD systems as a desktop, is because I didn’t want to use Linux after a lot of it at the time was not particularly well documented compared to other systems like OpenBSD.
I’ve always preferred the OpenBSD … if we say it supported it works, if we say it doesn’t it doesn’t or is likely to cause headaches.
I’ve used FreeBSD for a while on the desktop, but I already had a few years Linux experience (which we had running on servers at work) and too many things were the same, slightly different or very different.
In the end I found it too confusing to be using both so I sadly had to let go of FreeBSD.
Personally I find switching between Windows and *nix more confusing than switching between Arch, Debian, SLES, Solaris and FreeBSD every day.
At least with the different *nix’s, they’re all largely POSIX and any terminal mistakes takes just a couple of seconds to spot (eg using ps ax in Solaris, forgetting I need to use the hyphened switches instead).
Switching between Windows and *nix, I’m confronted with not only a different type of terminal shell entirely (the number of times I type ls into cmd.exe is just embarrassing), but a completely different file system hierarchy and even a unique different.
Quite honestly, it almost always takes me 5 or 10 minutes of guess work before I’ve readjusted to Windows.
Edited 2013-01-25 12:49 UTC
Oh, I’m pretty cool with that, it’s just I sometimes try to exit Notepad.exe by pretty <esc>wq.
The problem I had with Linux vs FreeBSD were mostly the command switches. Many I don’t know, until I sit behind a Linux prompt and have to type them. On FreeBSD some are the same, some are not, some have different effects.
As it was my desktop OS it made more sense to switch back to Linux as its desktop development went much faster than FreeBSD’s and I already knew how it worked.
Nothing bad to say about FreeBSD though.
BTW I’m tidying up my house and I found many more watches.
haha +1
I’ve done that in so many GUI editors I’ve lost track!
Yeah. Funny enough i did edit my post (sorry about the ninja edit there) to talk about that a little more.
The changes in switches are annoying, I’ll grant you that. FreeBSD tends to be pretty good in supporting a lot of Linux’s standards though – or it might be GNU supporting BSD switches. I can’t recall off hand. But switching to Solaris is even harder in terms of switch incompatibilities.
I appreciate that. I wasn’t intending to criticise you there so I hope my comments didn’t read that way.
I was just expressing my own anecdotal evidence to anyone who might be interested.
Oh nice one. I’m still yet to find an affordable watch I like (and I’m not about to spend a lot on a watch that’s going to be warn everyday and thus accidentally banged into things.
It’s amazing this is the one habit that people apparently mistakingly apply at the wrong places.
Oh, I didn’t think that. I think FreeBSD is great so I wanted to make sure lurkers knew I didn’t switch it for Linux because anything was wrong with it.
You could adopt my strange behavior and have several watches for several occasions.
Right now I’m wearing one I stole from the merchandise window of a bank, because I was well annoyed with them. So in a way I robbed a bank I guess. If you think about I paid for this watch several times already anyway.
We’re planning to go to the jewelry shop this afternoon. I’m bring a few watches that need small repairs or a new battery. Also I’m bringing the Seiko UC-2002 pocket watch:
http://forum.pocketcalculatorshow.com/displayForumTopic/content/292…
I also have 2 keyboards to which it can dock, but the connection doesn’t work so I’m hoping at the shop they might know some people who can fix it.
Wow. So, the law enforcement employee in me is in shock right now, but in reality I’m laughing my ass off!
Don’t worry! It’s probably a cheap generic watch you can order with your own logo/color(s) in bulk.
I put in a new battery and the inside was the same as another watch where I only removed an empty battery.
Had I asked for it I would probably have gotten it.
The strap is bright green, making it cool to wear in the summer. Not when visiting the bank of course.
I think I remember you telling me about that watch in an email conversation a while back…you just neglected to mention that it was contraband!
I didn’t want to leave a paper trail!
Good job you didn’t talk about it on a public forum :p
Seriously though, I might send you on a hunt for a watch for me. I’m close to giving up (again)
First, why not consider not wearing a watch at all? Clocks are everywhere, for one on your computer screen, mobile phone, car, on the wall, etc…
If you do want one, go for the Casio FW-91W. It’s got its own Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_F91W
It’s cheap, runs years on a battery. Features an alarm, hourly chime, light, 24/12 notation. What I like about it that it’s very light and small. So it’s easy to wear, no problems with clothes, doesn’t get in the way and you’re less likely to hit anything with it.
Like I said, it’s cheap, so if you destroy it the financial loss is small. You can buy several for the price of one average priced watch.
Terrorist!
Never burn your bridges, blow them up!
The watch that makes you a terrorist.
So does unlocking your phone in the US!
Because I like the idea of wearing a watch.
I know it’s a vain reason, but it’s literally the only reason I want one.
It’s a nice watch, but it’s not really ‘me’. The sort of thing I was thinking about was one where you could see the mechanics of the watch (the cogs et al).
But it’s totally you! Cheap, plastic.
There are a lot of watches that show their inner working, but the “real” ones are quite pricey. Of course you can also find a cheap one, but the quality/reliability may range from poor to excellent.
If you value a watch a lot, go for one with gorilla glass and that’s water proof. Spend some money, but you know it will last.
There are a number of “computer” watches about and if the Pebble becomes a hit we might see more of them. It may be worth the wait if you’d fancy such a watch.
hahaha
yeah, I had a feeling you might say that
I’d not heard of the Pebble until just now. Looks pretty cool.
It’s also ‘only’ ^Alb100 (though the money I’m saving on the exchange rates I’ll probably end up paying in shipping and import tax hehe).
I’m actually quite tempted by this.
This one?
http://i.marktplaats.com/00/s/NzY4WDEwMjQ=/$T2eC16FHJIYE9qUcNSt1BQc…
Yeah, that one!
Oh my yes. Sometimes it’s little things like the requirement that switches to e.g. ls go *before* and not after the file list. Why? Historical reasons, or something; GNU figures out what you meant, the more traditional versions rely on the order.
At last FreeBSD (and to some extend other BSDs) are willing to include improvements when they are improvements. My favorite example: You can use -print0 with FreeBSD’s find, an extension that AFAIK originally came from GNU. Now I understand why a lot of the crazy GNU extensions don’t get adopted everywhere, but the fact that the most modern find distributed with Solaris doesn’t support -printf or -print0 is just plain ridiculous. Is it any wonder that most Solaris admins’ first act is to install the GNU file utils?
A favorite gotcha of mine: Conflicting utilities! FreeBSD supplies a watch(1), but it’s not the watch(1) you’ve come to expect if you’ve used Linux. Little things like this can be frustrating. Then there are the “I didn’t know that wasn’t standard” things that are pretty much the same across all Linux distributions but which are actually Linuxisms and not the same elsewhere–things like behavior and usage of ifconfig/netstat, or managing disk partitions.
FreeBSD is, compared to its commercial brothers, a modern and forward-looking *nix that is extremely straightforward and logical. If you’re coming from the oddities of traditional UNIX I’m sure it’s a breath of fresh air, where Linux would be a much scarier radical departure. That said, coming from the Linux side FreeBSD seems needlessly stodgy and Solaris and other commercial Unixen can be positively asinine.
It’s because of xargs.
Solaris has for a long time included GNU equivalents in /usr/sfw. Modern Solaris and Illumos distros often include /usr/gnu/bin in your default PATH.
GNU tools are better in some respects (such as -print0 etc.) and only a fool would not use them. Many modern Solaris-derived distros (such as OpenIndiana) even install them by default (gfind).
watch(8) was first featured in FreeBSD 2.1 from 1995, probably a lot sooner than the Linux watch was developed. If it’s anybody’s fault, it’s probably the fault of the Linux guys for naming their utility by some conflicting name.
Well, disk partitions in particular were intimately tied to the hardware that the systems were developed on. Some people just have different ideas about how things should work – can’t blame ’em, a lot of it really comes down to taste (such as ifconfig/netstat).
I’m a heavy Linux and Solaris user and I honestly can’t follow your thinking here. Each system has its style and I consider neither inherently superior by design. So yeah, Solaris has some cruft that it has carried to implement such useless things as binary compatibility with older commercial software (who needs a stable ABI, eh Linux?), but on the other hand, some new stuff in Solaris was developed by people who put a lot of thought into it and it came out great: SMF, ZFS, FMA, DTrace, Zones, etc. Linux, at times, feels like a wild experiment of bedroom engineers, an asorted hodge-podge of “my pet project” ideas and really irrational design decision, but at times really great implementations and terrific performance (the networking stack has really matured and I find iptables’ structure quite logical).
Not sure what you’re getting at here, and elsewhere; it’s not about blame, I’m just pointing out aggravations.
I have an old Hamilton automatic watch, which my mother gave me about 5 years ago, as she was buying herself a new one. The fact that this little thing has survived my careless daily handling for so long suggests that your fears are unfounded. For a comparison, I have a hard time keeping cellphones in good condition for more than a year.
I did have to replace the glassy windows from time to time though, basically anytime it fell on it from more than 1m above. It costs between ^a‘not20 and ^a‘not40, depending on the shop which does it.
Edited 2013-01-25 15:32 UTC
I’m not scared of breaking it. I just wouldn’t want to scratch anything that cost a substantial amount.
Think of it like clothes, I wouldn’t wear a smart suit to do the gardening. But equally I wouldn’t wear a cheap pair of jeans to a wedding.
So what I’m after is a watch that I’m not going to be too precious about rather than something more ornamental to wear for special occasions. I’m just yet to find a watch that’s cheap, yet relatively sturdy and which reflects a little of my personality.
And that’s why I use GVim in Windows. I usually stick with terminal-mode Vim on *nix, but cmd and powershell are just embarassingly bad terminal emulators. I mean wtf, a DOS-style environment that can’t handle 256 colors? No UTF-8 support in 20 freaking 13?
Neither cmd or powershell are terminal emulators, so I wonder why you are surprised.
cmd.exe is provided for running dos apps and batch files, neither of which supported UTF8. Powershell is a .net scripting runtime.
Edited 2013-01-25 23:38 UTC
With BSD userland running on the Linux kernel.
From a practical standpoint, the Linux kernel is quite a bit more advanced than the BSD kernel.
And with a BSD userland, maybe we could get rid of all this Stallman GNU/Everything BS.
On a side note, why is GNU user supposed to be all that much beter that BSD? Personally, everyday I flip between my MacBook (10.6), Ubuntu 12.10 and RHEL, and on all of them, I spend 90% of my time in emacs and gcc.
So, I guess even though emacs and gcc are GNU programs, Stallman does not feel the need to call MacOS GNU/MacOS even though one uses emacs and gcc. MacOS also has other goodies like GNU grep, bison, and so forth, but we still don’t have to call it GNU/MacOS.
Now Linux on the other hand, we have to, according to Stallman, call GNU/Linux. Why? MacOS and Linux have the same suite of GNU programs. The differences I can tell, are that some other programs like ls as well as the c library were developed by GNU on Linux and the BSD folks on OSX. Thus brings up another question, MacOS uses BSD userland, so why don’t we have to call it BSD/MacOS?
Oh the HORROR!
Because Apple marketing prefers OS X.
Yeh, of course, but why isn’t Stallman pitching a b!@tch over OSX not being called GNU/OSX like he is with Linux?
Now that I think about it, emacs (which is a fantastic program) and gcc (also great) run just about everywhere, including Windows. So, shouldn’t Windows with Cygwin also be called GNU/Windows according to Stalman?
Personally I don’t care what Stallman thinks, even more so with regards to his relabeling preferences.
A name is just a way to easily refer to something. The way Stallman wants it is more like listing all components of a system in its name. Where do you draw the line?
It’s easier to refer to Windows, Linux and OS X. Or if needed include the version: Windows 7, Redhat Linux, OS X Lion.
I don’t think GNU adoption would explode or even rise if we’d stick it in front of everything. If GNU is the answer people will include it in their product anyway. In other words if you made your own kernel and see a commercial of GNU/Windows I don’t think it would make you say, “Of course, I cam use GNU to complete my OS!”.
I find it really difficult to explain to someone about Linux. I explained lately to my room mate that I don’t really need unity, which is a desktop ui, and I can use the same base in elementary that uses ubuntu.. I made myself confused when trying to explain it all.
Because of Mach??
Can you even compile the Linux kernel without gcc or gnu’s c library(es)?
Yes you can:
http://llvm.org/devmtg/2012-04-12/Slides/Mark_Charlebois.pdf
And if I recall correctly, the first versions of Linux were developed on Minix.
It was developed on Minix, but using many GNU tools such as gcc.
Clang will build the Linux kernel, though it doesn’t (yet) work well.
Intel’s compiler works really well for building the Linux kernel, or at least used to be a few years ago. I’d be surprised if that has changed.
And, there are other C libs that work. For example, uClib is designed to have a tiny footprint.
Debian FreeBSD, Arch BSD etc .. The FreeBSD project should take note and implement a proper binary packages system before they get lost into irrelevance even more.
FreeBSD needs a good “yum” or “apt” implementation.
It already has one: pkgng.
https://wiki.freebsd.org/PkgPrimer
It’s not clear from there if it can do a simple “yum update”.
No thanks. My FreeBSD installations have been perfectly free of dependency hell for years, and FreeBSD has one of the best package managers around. It actually compares to pacman in philosophy, as in, get the hell out of the way and let me install things. Apt and Yum, on the other hand: well, I’ve had more hell from those two than I ever had from Windows dll hell. Keep them out of my *BSD installations. We don’t want them here.