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Comment by carbonica | Hacker News Reader

>>> "Don’t be afraid to compile code and modify it"

I was a bit thrown by this advice. Are there folks out there that are afraid to compile code and modify it?

Absolutely. The sad reality is that, to a lot of linux users right now (and I'm talking about people that know they're running linux, not android users), it's a black box.

Software is "packages" that you install with "synaptic".

Source code? Compiler? What's that?

This seemed like a developer-targeted article, though. I mean, who is having trouble with even 1 million directory entries, let alone 8 million, who is afraid of a compiler?

Developers who only write in interpreted languages :-)

That's not sad reality, that's success.

Both valid perspectives; it depends on your priorities. Some people want computers to be a black box, because when the black box works, it means less cognitive load to use.

The most interesting thing (in this subthread) is that Linux is able to be a black box. That wasn't the case not too long ago.

Well, once the hardware started working and the graphical toolkit options expanded beyond Tcl/Tk / Perl/Tk...

Ubuntu accelerated the process. Despite being a long time Linux user and programmer, I'd rather know the machine is goin' to work when I haven't done anything to mangle the beast.

I've spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours in the past just getting networking drivers to function. The brave new world of Linux is a good thing, the Interp-Only volken serve only to bolster the ecosystem, not harm it.

Throw a novice Ubuntu user into a FreeBSD system, and tell him to install a port, and 9 times out of 10 they'll freak out once they see GCC output on the screen.

Nothing against Ubuntu (RedHat, SuSE, Debian, Arch, et. al.), but source compilation is something they all have been letting their users avoid for a long time. The target audience is different.

That's because linux commands are generally quiet unless something goes wrong. ./configure, make and gcc can produce pages of output even when nothing is wrong.

Yeah, but packaged source code probably shouldn't be riddled with warnings.

I've rarely seen macports, FreeBSD ports, or NetBSD ports used as a harness to install modified versions of software. Hack jobs are almost always manual, so this purported benefit is a canard.

Speaking as a novice Ubuntu user, I don't even know what "install a port" means. Do you mean "open a port"?

Ports tree is the *BSD source package manager.

Nope, he does not mean open a port. Ports is the name of the packaging system FreeBSD uses, and a port is the equivalent (more or less) of an RPM or deb source package.

http://www.freebsd.org/ports/

Doesn't that become awfully confusing?

Only out of context.

If your server had a network connection problem and you needed to open up a port, we're already talking about network ports, not software, so you would try to diagnose your network.

If you asked me how you could get the old game `rogue` on your system, I would tell you to go install the freebsd-games port, which has nothing to do with networking, and so it clearly means that you need to look in your ports tree.

Arch has a Ports-inspired system called Pkgbuild. Given the level of competence the distro expects of the user to start with, I doubt most Arch users would have a great deal of trouble adapting to FreeBSD.

Even when there's a compilation step it can be hidden. Homebrew on OS X does compile each package, but produces no actual compiler output. VMWare Player regularly recompiles kernel modules when it detects a kernel upgrade invalidating them. To the user it looks like an bullet list installation step.

Are there folks out there that are afraid to compile code and modify it?

Some developers (myself included) may have a general preference for sticking with the "official" packages to avoid extra work when bringing up a new machine or migrating to a new distro version.

Surely it should be the other way around too. Compiling code then modifying it seems impractical. :)

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