[Perfect Reign]

I have a co-worker who decided that FreeBSD was going to be his entrance into the Linux/Unix world. I tried to move him to SUSE - if only because I run it on my laptops/desktops - but he's sticking with FreeBSD.

Now, he's asking how to install software. Apart from the download/tar/make/make install route, is there any package manger in FreeBSD? I looked but couldn't make heads or tails of the results I got from google and on the freebsd.org site.

<edit>
I just thought of something. I can't figure it out from the labix site, though. Can one use SMART with FreeBSD?
</edit>

[bryansmith]

What you are looking for is something called ports. It is a fantastic package management system of which Gentoo's portage was based off of. It is source based so it may take a while to install packages but you can get 16080 packages available through the ports system (as of Nov. 22 - it changes frequently). All dependencies are handled which makes it super easy.

Check here for more information: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO...rts-using.html

Bryan

[Zelmo]

Don't forget most BSD software is also available as pre-compiled packages. The FreeBSD Handbook also has an overview of both install methods to help you decide when to use each, and the following page helps you find software.

[anomie]

Apart from the download/tar/make/make install route...

That is not necessary (and may lead to trouble).

Have your friend closely read and follow the URLs already posted above, and he will be in good shape.

I just thought of something. I can't figure it out from the labix site, though. Can one use SMART with FreeBSD?

As in the smart disk monitoring tools? If so, then yes.

[hector@troy ~]$ cd /usr/ports && make search name=smartmon
Port:   smartmontools-5.33_5
Path:   /usr/ports/sysutils/smartmontools
Info:   S.M.A.R.T. disk monitoring tools

P.S. I'd also recommend using portinstall /path/to/port/here so that your pkgdb does not need to be updated manually. (This installed as part of the portupgrade software.)