Subj : NetBSD 10
To   : niter3
From : Arelor
Date : Wed Apr 03 2024 06:29 pm

  Re: NetBSD 10
  By: niter3 to tenser on Wed Apr 03 2024 12:47 pm

 > What makes it feel like a toy?

I can't speak for him.

For me, out of heavy duty distributions and laser-focused specialist distributions, most Linux distributions feel like somebody's Hobby project.

* Lots of distributions lack support schedules. You don't really know how long the distribution will be supported.

* Many distributions have a small number of actual developers doing the supporting, so only the most popular packages get good support. Every other component is hit or miss. This is also true with some BSDs to a lesser extent, but then BSDs prefer to remove dead code rather than let it rot in the ports tree.

* Many distributions are released with minor usability issues that would never get a pass in a production-ready system, and get discovered within 30 minutes of regular use. For example, installers that have hundreds available language packs, but the list in which you are supposed to select the language you want is unordered and has no search function, forcing you to wade throuought the whole list (which takes a good while).

* No supply chain guarantees. Serious distributions have some build system and build their repositories from source code themselves. Many hobby distributions take binary submissions and incorporate them directly.

And then there are the countless distributions that are toolkits rather than actual distributions. I am talking about stuff such as KISS Linux, or Carbs, or Crux, or Funtoo if you press me. Those are for people who love to tinker with their systems and discover something new everytime they want to install a library. I love this kind of system, but in the end of the day I want to do my accounting on a well supported distribution rather than on some clustermess I duct-taped together for fun without knowing how.
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