Question about FreeBSD ports / binary packages / intel graphics drivers and Xorg
 

Hello Everybody!

Sorry to bother people with newbish questions but:

I know FreeBSD provides both binary packages and a collection of ports to assist compilation from source, but are the ports version and the binary packages the same version, I mean, is the binary package just a pre-compiled version of the port?

Edit:

No, by defualt, the binary packages are all the same binary packages provide at the release date of the package.


Also, is the 6.4 "legacy release" considered and officially supported release? In particular, is the ports collection supposed to work with the 6.4 release?

Does either the 7.1 or 6.4 release of FreeBSD use Xorg 1.5 or earlier? How about an intel Xorg driver from before the transition from tungsten to gem?

Edit:

Well the 7.1 release comes with Xserver 1.4.x, and Xorg 7.3.x and intel drivers at 2.4.2, unfortunately, I think those intel drivers are new enough to be using the GEM stuff, I'm not sure about 6.4 yet.

What's the motivation behind asking these questions:

I"m using arch linux now, and migrating through the various releases of new intel graphics drivers and Xorgs has been a real pain in the ass for me, recently, so I'd like to move to linux/BSD distro that's using an older Xorg and intel drivers, but at the same time, I'd like to be able to install other newer software, like Xfce 4.6. I was wondering if I could do this with FreeBSD.

Edit:

It looks like the intel drivers in 7.1 are too new for what I'm trying to do, on the other hand, it looks like I COULD do what I want to do in principle, though I may have to work with the 6.4 release. On the other hand, it looks like Arch Linux also provides a legacy intel driver, and as much as I've always wanted to play around with BSD. I may just give those a shot first.

Thanks!

That depends on how old the release is, older release, newer versions in ports, you can also DO NOT update your ports tree to have the same versions.

Yes, ports tree works even with FreeBSD 4.11 for example.

Yes, you can.

I kinda of have a question that goes anlong with this one. If need be I can open another thread. But I am guessing that pkg_add is used for binary files while you use make install when building from the ports directory. Is that correct?

Not trying to hijack your thread I just thought that this would compliment your thread and save from having to open another thread.

Yes. But there are also ports you can install to make the port maintenance process a lot easier. Two examples are portupgrade and portmaster. (The latter is what I use.)