Hello. I'm interested in trying out FreeBSD but even after reading the manual and relevant documentation I'm still very confused about some things.

1. I understand there's different levels of packages you can install. Releases, stable and current. I'd like to know how I would go about changing to the stable branch. I honestly couldn't find information on this that helped me. Would I have to rebuild the system if I switched to the stable packages branch?

2. The pkg_add tool is used to fetch and install packages but it doesn't seem to offer any way of checking for updates. I realize that the release branch NEVER gets updated but I previously said I'd like to switch to the "stable" branch.

3. Is there a better tool for working with FreeBSD packages in general? Something like pacman for Arch? It's really a joy to use so I would like to see if something similar exists for this.

4. What exactly does freebsd_update do? When I run that and get the latest release it updates the FreeBSD kernel right?

Release is just that, it's the current release - FreeBSD 9.0

Stable is "Stable Development", kinda similar to Debian Testing (for want of a better definition) - this will become FreeBSD 9.1, 9.2 etc

Current is the "Bleeding Edge" branch were things can be a bit unstable and is intended for a major point release - FreeBSD 10.0

Check this out

pkg_add, pkd_delete and pkg_info are usually all you need

It's a security patch tool for software running on FreeBSD and can be used for major release upgrades - read this

Actually, re-read the whole of chapter 25 of the handbook - it takes time for it to sink in...

Check this one: http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=26140

Check the link above.

The PKGNG is in the beta state, it is more similar to pacman/apt-get from Linux world.

Check this for more info about PKGNG:
http://www.mebsd.com/make-build-your...e-manager.html

It checks, fetches and applies SECURITY patches to the RELEASE branch in binary form (without compilation), it does not provide any BUG FIXES to RELEASE branch.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks for that, must have been asleep when that was announced - will take a look at it.

Welcome, feel free to ask more questions.

Thank you very much for the response! I'm slowly still figuring it out. That link was super helpful and it explained a lot. It seems as though it's not too easy to deal with packages yet. I'll be looking into this PKGNG thing right now.

Thanks again.