Ports is "Nice"? How do you figure that out?

It's insane!

Install something fundamental, like exim, and all of a sudden exim's config files are in /usr/local/etc! Apparently, this made sense to someone who was sat up the UNIX mountain and who wanted to separate "the base system" from "the site-specific stuff".

Unfortunately, an MTA *is* part of any "base system" in the real world. I suspect that the REAL reason for the whole "we use /usr/local for everything not in the base system" is that most of the software in /usr/ports is ass, and not subject to any quality control over and above "does it compile when one types 'make install'?". Separate it out from "the base system", and all of a sudden the FreeBSD people have a LOT less software to worry about. Sure, Galeon2 doesn't work from ports (it just opens a bazillion windows and then segfaults), but that's SEP[0], right?

I'm intrigued by FreeBSD, and I want to know more. One of the primary reasons for using it that I've had relayed to me is that it's "better quality" than Linux.

So far, I'm really, really not seeing that. Granted, if your idea of Linux is Slackware or Mandrake, then I might see where you're coming from. I subscribe to debian-devel. These people are absolutely religious about quality.

Right now, FreeBSD is looking pretty darn poor compared to Debian.

[0] SEP: Someone Else's Problem