Whoa -- this is a migration path I've come across yet. Why are you guys doing this, if you don't mind me asking?

I've read the handbook, thanks. While it's good for your desktop, it just doesn't work for a cluster. See my response to laffer1 above. Packages aren't enough, especially when you need to customize what you're installing.

If I'm doing it wrong, I'd be interested in changing my ways -- what should I be doing differently?

This. I should have been clearer right off the bat. When I say "package management" I really meant software management. And since I like to keep things updated, that means ports on FreeBSD. Which, for a non-trivial deployment means cron-ing compile scripts, a staging area for /usr/local, and NFS exports to all my worker machines. For a small operation like mine (10 machines), it's a headache I'd rather not have to deal with.

I'm not dissing FreeBSD here -- it is a great operating system. I'm just saying things could be easier.

I'll check it out -- thanks for the reference.

I don't manage a lot of servers (10 in my little farm, maybe a 100 jails on those 10), but configuration management and software upgrades have become a bit of a chore. I've taken to simply committing /usr/local/etc and /etc to an svn repo for each host, making edits on my dev box, and then having a periodic script "pull in" the necessary changes from the repo. It works, but occassionally I look at the size of the repository and get kind of scared... surely there's a better way to do this?

Yeah, I looked into it a couple of months ago. It looks like a good start, but there are a few problems, at least from my point of view:

1) They appear to have knocked out the FreeBSD userland and replaced it with a GNU one. Nothing wrong with that, of course; the problem is that my "stack" (random scripts, and actual project code) assumes a FreeBSD userland. This is probably my fault... I should look into making my code more portable.
2) It's pretty sparsely developed. I don't expect corporation-backed support a la Redhat, but active forums and plenty of FAQs would be nice for any distribution I decide to use.
3) Finally (and this is strictly personal preference) architecturally, I like where the FreeBSD userland is/is headed. Clang/LLVM, ZFS, jails... all good things. I'm not if/when these things (or their equivalents) will ever make it into Linux.

Interesting!

I moved over to FreeBSD after ext3 ate my data a few too many times. It's a good operating system, but package management is a pain. If only if someone could port APT over to FreeBSD... sigh.

I wasn't aware that FreeBSD was a Linux distribution. At least it appears to be on the ranking site linked in TFA...

Indeed.

(Filler to get around garbage filter...)

Ever since I started using my books as Kindle, I'm down to about 4 feet.

I get 29Mbps down on Cablevision in middle NJ.

You bought two zunes?