Gregory's ServerOK folk answer me this. Why as a constant #Linux user since the early 90's do I keep leaning towards #BSD ? Yeah I'm going to use it on my homelab but i keep yearning for it to be my daily driver too. Is it an age thing and if so does this happen to most Linux users in later life ? I feel like Eve wanting to taste the forbidden fruit if that makes any sense at all ? π :freebsd:
#RunBSD #FreeBSD
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83 comments
@tranzystorek_io I really can't quite put my finger on it just yet. I do realise that hardware compatibility isn't on par with Linux though. π€ @withaveeay I haven't bitten yet still exploring and trying to work out why I'd be thinking like this ? Never mind I'm off work from tomorrow for two weeks so I'll have plenty of time to find out. @justine If it's for your desktop, it may mean that the pain you endured with void and other recent forays wasn't intense enough. π  ... Don't get me wrong, I love Linux, and haven't even booted BSD in a month. But it's not hard to list off the silly problems. @RL_Dane All of the above I suppose. BTW how did you get inside my head and pluck some of those thoughts ? π€£ I think it's a kind of self-sorting thing -- people who love UNIX and the unix philosophy get increasingly frustrated by Linux's increasing weirdness, and increasingly interested in stalwart old BSD. ;) So, great (and cranky minds) think alike! π€£ But I'm glad Linux is here and weird, and trying all kinds of crazy random things. It pushes things forward, even if some of us are at the tail end, dragging our heels and running cool-retro-term to try to recapture the 90s magic. XD Sure, I totally get that. I think there will always be more ideological Linux projects like deVUAn and Trisquel for those who are more into purity (and I don't mean that as a bad thing). And there are definitely times I really wish Linux wasn't such a big ball of wax. The Arch Wiki is the closest thing it has to a standard base of documentation. I do give them props though, for being such an excellent community effort at documentingβ¦ all THAT. ;)  @RL_Dane @justine This exactly. Iβm giving a RHEL clone a couple weeks to see if I actually want functional steam games, otherwise Iβm going back to my FreeBSD desktop. I do wish that projects would stop ripping out BSD support though. Itβs making me feel like the boundary POSIX chose for compatibility is too narrow. Sure exclude packaging, but we need service control, firewall, kernel capability APIs. A standard firewall config file format that can be parsed/executed by various competing backends would be a fascinating compromise. @RL_Dane @justine We had a deeply flawed firewall dsl in chef that supported multiple backends, but it was exhausting and continually unmaintained. I donβt know if the nftables backend ever got implemented. I was trying to break it apart last year. @justine Personally, I feel like: @justine Can't explain your #BSD fascination directly, but I now have a similar relationship with #Debian. I started out on RH9 in the late 1990s, then for some unknown reason tilted to OpenSuse. But their mgmt sw drove me crazy, plus strategy changes, etc. Moved decisively to Debian in 2017/2018, and haven't looked back. It's reliable, runs on multiple hw platforms, and it. just. works. Plus it being the basis for #RasPiOS def helps π @justine systemd. When it doubt, no matter what the problem is, itβs always systemd.    @justine I ran FreeBSD at home and work in the 90s. It was rock solid as a production web server. Today Iβm more curious about immutable-root distros like Silverblue or the NixOS approach of formally defining the configuration. Iβm glad the BSDs exist for diversity but donβt plan to return to one soon. @justine I've tried using BSD before and I could never really stick with it, for me it's more difficult to set up and use than Linux and has serious disadvantages, and less features and hardware support. That's just my opinion tho. However I do use a MacBook Pro running macOS as my main computer and iOS devices, and Apple's OSes are derived from BSD so they sorta count.  @justine I suppose Void Linux is my middle ground, though the documentation's still in a ridiculous state. @malin Hmm I've not found a lack of packages although you have to look at their excellent ports to find more sometimes. @justine It's been half a decade since I asked, so maybe they have more. Can you do a standard tiling window manager setup, with lf and the latest yt-dlp? @justine Gah! My arch nemesis. I switched over too soon...twice. It was all broken, and janky, and back I went to X. I need to switch eventually of course. X is dead. Maybe I could do BSD alongside it. Even on linux, I always install yt-dlp via pipx so I can have the very latest. FreeBSD has tons of packages. I don't think I've ever found a single thing I use that wasn't in their package system, or *easily* compilable. Haven't run it in a while, though, TBH. Mostly on Debian these days, with a little OpenBSD on the side.  @malin @justine Malin, there are over 34K packages in the FreeBSD Quarterly repository, and 35K packages in Latest. Ports collection is still more extensive, plus very very simple to build different versions of apps in an isolated environment far easier and effectively than attempting to do the same on linux distributions. Before spreading misinformation about FreeBSD please review the facts and check out the numbers for the mainline linux distros... really, please look for first hand evidence. I have no idea what you think is 'simple'. 'Spread misinformation'? @winterschon @malin @justine by the way, FreeBSD has more programs, just less packages. Unlike others, we don't do -dev, -doc, so Debian/Ubuntu actually has 1/3rd of what it advertises.  @justine it's the IT equivalent of saying "fuck it all" and moving to the country to live off-grid and become a potato farmer.  @justine I'll give more details here: https://events.eurobsdcon.org/2024/talk/LNMLZX/ - there will be a video. I've also written something about it here: https://it-notes.dragas.net/2022/01/24/why-were-migrating-many-of-our-servers-from-linux-to-freebsd/ @EnigmaRotor @justine True, the BSD Cafe friends have had huge spoilers :)  I got into Linux in the early 2000s, and BSD feels a lot more like an evolution of those ideas than Linux now. @justine For me it was like FreeBSD was a βrealβ Unix, while Linux always felt like trying to be something different. I started with SusE, and there was a thing like YAST, which should help you to configure your system. Actually it mixed everything up and eventually you had the same parameter three times in your config. Many of the later attempts to improve Linux felt for me like this tool. And FreeBSD felt like a rock in the surf. It was there, changing slowly and keeping the good things. @justine You don't think FreeBSD will just be another passing lust in chain of serial-OSogamies? Void, Chimera, FreeBSD.... but what's next for Justine? Maybe BSD will be the gateway drug leading you to Mac OS. π  @justine From my hobbyist perspective: I started trying BSDs last Oct, and now use it on two laptops and for one home server project. My /hope/ is that it's something I can understand enough of in a hobby timeframe to confidently use. With Linux the last decade it feels like it's been growing in multiple directions to be more DevSecFinMonkeyOps, and there are too many different techs you have to master to do even simple things if you don't want to take everything on blind faith and understand. @justine I think that everything has an evolution. It's the same for me, I installed FreeBSD about 2 years ago and I use it as much or more than GNU/Linux. @justine Iin France we had some publications like Login or Dream which provided a cdrom. Canβt remember the distrib it was, maybe one of the first Slackware. Well, i will dig the web to find my first distribution. Found : Yes was a vanilla Slackware because I remember the darkstar host name !, @EnigmaRotor @justine same here. i think it was Slackware on a coverdisc, too. And it was like BSD said "hello, old friend. Long time no see"... @justine and god, having a mainframe-like prompt in my PC was a wonderful achievement. During this period my dad had a hpux server at work (not knowing how to use it, he was an accountant with no great training, yet was curious) it was running a Pick-system based emulation for a business app. But when I visited him there, I starred at these CRT terminals with some Unix prompt in a great orange color β¦ and I knew I would love this Β« login: Β» line for the rest of my life. @justine I"m in kind of the same boat. I'm in youngish semi-retirement now and am enjoying mainstream (read 'systemd') Linux less and less. I use Alpine Linux (which I do like a lot) for a lot of home/community projects and am also using the BSDs more and more (mosty OpenBSD, but enjoy FreeBSD as well). I can see myself hitting the point where I'm using only/mostly BSD in the not too distant future. I really appreciate how cohesive and simple they are. And the docs. π  @justine while I run Void Linux on my main home/work machine, I have been using both FreeBSD and OpenBSD on my hobby machines. I like the BSD machines for the fact that what I am learning now will still be viable 20 years from now. They move slower and put security and stability ahead of the latest features. I'm seeing FreeBSD reaching out on a number of social media platforms, and I think that it is only a matter of time before BSD is more mainstream, which will be great for support :freebsd: @nenos @justine @justine I'm the opposite, so it's not age... I was a ravenous FreeBSD fan, ran (and still would, were it not for performance) OpenBSD as a firewall/router for many years. Currently maining Linux because work - BSD world is a much smaller market to find a role in. I think the BSDs just attract a certain type of person, whether it's traditionalist, "KISS", or to paraphrase SwiftOnSecurity... "sacrifice her to the ancient ones". π€£ But definitely not age related. I must admit that I have also been thinking about this. Are we just sticking on *BSD just because it didn't change significantly during the last 20 years, neglecting all improvements? Isn't it just like sticking to an old Volkswagen Beetle with air cooled boxer motor, just because it's so reliable and easily to repair? I don't have an answer yet, but that's something I'm thinking about... These are mine reasons on 'why' I have chosen FreeBSD. - https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2020/09/07/quare-freebsd/ - https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2018/09/07/my-freebsd-story/ How rewriting ifconfig(8) into ip(8) helps that? ... or ditching netstat in place of ss(8)? > (...) and for daily drivers most of them don't matter. To be honest - I changed to FreeBSD from Linux BECAUSE they were pissing me off that much on my DAILY DRIVER, so maybe not for You but for me definitely yes :) @justine@mastodon.bsd.cafe I dunno about others, but I (Linux user only since 2002) have been slowly leaning towards BSD since, anymore, Linux slowly feels less Unix-like over time. If/when the day comes that Slackware stops feeling like old Linux, I'll probably move over.  I have been on BSD almost as long as Linux (Linux = 95, FreeBSD = 97, OpenBSD = 99) and I have noted that BSD, in general, feels a lot better put together. Linux is drifting away from the original UNIX simplicity, while BSDs stay true to their roots and stick to proven, tested technologies. While this provides a bit less 'excitement', it also provides something simpler and much more stable. @justine Perhaps it's just a "the grass always looks greener on the other side" situation. You've been using Linux for so long that you know all the brown, muddy spots. In comparison, the BSD grass is looking green and lush from a distance, and those first patches you munched on certainly were tasty. π |
@justine What's so enticing about BSD? Does it do sth better or is it maybe some kind of linux fatigue?