I like FreeBSD. There are some things which don’t appear in any documentation which I’ve yet seen, though, which make your life a whole lot easier once you know them.
For example: at every point in time, there is a magic compiler version which just works with basically every package of the 14000 or so which have versions modified to work easily with FreeBSD. However, the specific version number of the magic compiler is never mentioned, and using any other compiler or version will give you infinite headaches.
The magic compiler right now is gcc 3.4.6. This has changed in the last few months; a while ago, it was 3.4.4, and my life has been much simpler ever since I found this out and upgraded the compiler (which was the correct magic version for the moment I downloaded the install cd).
For a system with otherwise excellent documentation, though, I’m surprised that there is no mention of how specific the compiler requirements are. Maybe I just haven’t looked in the right places, but I would expect information like this to have fairly prominent mention somewhere.
No comments yet.