[HN Gopher] FreeBSD 13.0 - Full Desktop Experience
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FreeBSD 13.0 - Full Desktop Experience
Author : tate
Score : 281 points
Date : 2021-03-17 14:47 UTC (8 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (www.tubsta.com)
| n00bdude wrote:
| How much more difficult is it to navigate a FreeBSD install vs.
| Linux?
|
| I currently use xfce4 with Ubuntu but have been considering
| putting FreeBSD on an old laptop
| latch wrote:
| I just spent this past weekend playing with FreeBSD. Pretty
| sure the answer comes down to whether your hardware is
| supported.
|
| I gave up trying to install it on my XPS due to the lack of
| support for 802.11ac and issues with video. But it installed
| fine on my desktop (wired network).
| n00bdude wrote:
| Thanks for answering - an XPS is actually what I was
| considering to install on
| amelius wrote:
| Does it run NVidia's CUDA?
| nilsb wrote:
| I used to spend hours on getting things like window managers,
| X11, etc. set up just the way I wanted them to be.
|
| However, the older I get the less enthused I am about having to
| play around with config files to get basic features like
| suspend/resume to work on my daily work notebook.
| anthk wrote:
| OpenBSD for that when it works it does OOTB.
|
| Setup cwm, some XTerms, Otter Browser/Chromium, and done.
|
| Or xfce4, paper-theme and paper-icon-theme if you are lazy.
|
| Setup the theme, edit the panels, done.
| aj3 wrote:
| > Setup cwm, some XTerms, Otter Browser/Chromium, and done.
|
| Chrome patched three high-priority security vulnerabilities
| last week. And OpenBSD 6.8 hasn't rebuilt their package since
| October 1, unless I'm missing something: https://cloudflare.c
| dn.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/6.8/packages/...
| brynet wrote:
| OpenBSD 6.8-stable packages are in a different directory,
| the ones you linked are -release packages which are
| unchanged since OpenBSD 6.8 was released.
|
| https://cdn.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/6.8/packages-stable/
|
| The OpenBSD package tools will automatically prefer newer
| packages from this location.
|
| That being said, this is a best effort, not all packages
| receive updates, security fixes for chromium cannot
| backported to 6.8-stable due to significant changes between
| versions, and it would be a major burden for the
| maintainers to update to later versions without potentially
| also needing to update other ports dependencies. ABI
| breakages cannot happen on -stable.
|
| There are newer versions of chromium available for users
| who follow -current and are running 6.9-beta snapshots.
|
| https://cdn.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/snapshots/packages/
| aj3 wrote:
| Yeah, well that's kind of my point. Recommending new
| users to install stable OpenBSD as their work/home
| PC/laptop is irresponsible, especially if the lack of
| updates (presented as stability / ease of maintanence) is
| explicitly mentioned.
| brynet wrote:
| Who's recommending it? It's up to the user to decide
| whether to stick with -release/-stable, with the
| understanding that packages won't see significant updates
| or new features until they upgrade to the next release in
| 6 months. But they have the option of following -current
| and testing the same snapshots developers are running on
| their laptops, and they can even help contribute so that
| the next release has even more tested and up-to-date
| packages.
| aj3 wrote:
| The OpenBSD documentation does not really make that
| balance clear to the new user though. And of course there
| is no mechanism for regular updates either.
|
| > New users should be running either -stable or -release.
|
| https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq5.html
|
| EDIT: Haven't used OpenBSD in a while, but unless I'm
| misreading https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq10.html,
| syspatch & binary patches only apply for release branches
| - in which case you would need to either deal with
| obsolete packages or compile them yourself. On the other
| hand if you where to track -stable branch you would get
| semi-regular binary packages (not everything for example
| no chromium, but at least you get firefox), but in that
| case syspatch won't work and you'd need to recompile
| kernel & userland.
|
| Also, which exactly packages get updates is completely
| non-transparent for the end user if they follow official
| instructions.
| brynet wrote:
| > And of course there is no mechanism for regular updates
| either.
|
| Not true. There is both syspatch(8) to apply binary
| updates and sysupgrade(8) to upgrade to the next release
| or snapshot. And there are regular packages available for
| -stable and -current.
|
| > New users should be running either -stable or -release.
| That being said, many people do run -current on
| production systems to help catch bugs and test new
| features.
|
| Is the full quote from the page you linked. I won't reply
| to you further as it's clear from other replies here you
| have an agenda.
| asveikau wrote:
| > However, the older I get the less enthused I am about having
| to play around with config files
|
| That's why you leave around your config files from the '90s,
| you don't touch them and they still work!
|
| Sent from a FreeBSD machine running fvwm ...
| kbenson wrote:
| > running fvwm
|
| That's the secret. I've been running Windows 10 on the
| desktop for almost the last decade, but ran Linux for more
| than a decade prior to that. If I want a Linux desktop, I
| know I can pull out my old archived FVWM configs and be set.
| spear wrote:
| Yeah, I do most of my work inside VNC servers running fvwm
| with emacs, xterm+tmux+zsh, and firefox. My config files
| haven't substantially changed in 25 years. The desktop login
| environment has changed many times over this period
| (enlightenment, sawfish, compiz, metacity, mutter, mutter-on-
| wayland, even Windows 7 and 10 for work) but I only configure
| that enough to set up virtual desktops in which I just bring
| up VNC viewers for multiple hosts.
| [deleted]
| bengalister wrote:
| Same for me.
|
| I have spent way too much time trying different window
| managers: i3,i3 gap,sway,bspwm,etc. Usually you also need to
| find a menu bar, customize it, deal with screen locking,
| multiple screens setup with different dpi, etc.
|
| I stopped trying to create my personalized environment. I just
| installed Gnome Wayland (Arch) on my personal laptop with some
| extensions: dash-to-dock, unite. It is good enough for me,
| requires almost none maintenance and has a MacOSX vibe. It has
| been quite stable since I made the switch (more than a year).
|
| I still keep an i3 config that I use in a VM running on my work
| laptop (I prefer it over WSL2). Because I wanted to keep a very
| lightweight WM environment. But I don't really use i3 tiling. I
| just launch Tmux in a maximized terminal window. I do some
| light development in it with neovim and OPS from it
| (cloudformation, terraform,etc.). I ssh connect to it with
| VScode.
|
| If the CPU performance gap is not reduced between Mac CPUs and
| intel/amd laptop cpus for ultrabook, I think my next personal
| laptop will be an Apple one. I don't want to spend too much
| time on making the whole setup work.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Similar experience here. I was one of minority of die-hard
| Linux users until I had a hardware issue and just said f*ck
| it let me get a company provided mac. I had a super
| customized i3 setup but now on a 2020 mac I can get by just
| fine with the OS but the hardware is a ton better. My
| previous laptop was a higher end dell though not an XPS and
| the keyboard on this is 100x better imo and the trackpad is
| 1000x better. And MacOS is a bit more annoying in places but
| it-really-just-works and I don't think about it really.
|
| I brew installed all the gnu core utilities so now I've got
| gcat and g-this and g-that. I use many workspaces and
| fullscreen apps usually with a terminal side-by-side and my
| productivity is better. I guess I discounted how much good
| hardware means to me.
| perfmode wrote:
| I am solemnly transitioning from neovim to JetBrains for this
| reason.
|
| Feels weird to be on a subscription model for my fundamental
| text editing needs.
|
| Life on the teat.
| danieldk wrote:
| I have used vim and later Emacs + evil for years. Recently, I
| subscribed to the whole JetBrains suite. I had a license for
| IntelliJ 7-8 years ago when I needed to write Java for work.
| But these days it's hard to beat CLion, PyCharm et al. It's
| just so more productive, especially when you have to refactor
| code.
|
| Magit is still the best git porcelain though ;).
| nullserver wrote:
| I miss when vim was my full IDE. But on a large project, I
| could not it keep it from thrashing the system while
| indexing.
| hpoe wrote:
| I'd plug Doom Emacs my friend, all the power of a full IDE
| with all the keybindings of Vim.
| patrec wrote:
| If you think Doom Emacs has all the power of a full IDE,
| you have no clue about IDEs.
| wiz21c wrote:
| I'm an emacs fan. But when it comes to Java and big
| codebase (5+ developpers), JetBrain or Eclipse are just
| the way to go . They provide : code navigation and fast
| indexing (emacs LSP is just so slow), super integrated
| debugger, tons of predefined stuff to open common's file.
| They just more intelligence about your code packed in.
| With emacs it's all bare bones. So basically for me it's
| about big project == big IDE and everything else is emacs
| (which is a sizeable share !). Also, I'd say that Emacs
| makes my life much more pleasant too : the community, the
| license, the endless customization, the millions
| packages; that's part of my life too and the more "pro"
| IDE's just absolutely don't deliver on that side.
| jhardy54 wrote:
| Instead of being rude and snarky, maybe you could
| highlight some IDE-only features that you find
| compelling?
| vulcan01 wrote:
| Have you tried setting up LSC on either vim or emacs? It
| does everything an IDE does, aside from a debugger.
| Compile time errors are highlighted as soon as you're
| done typing, and many other IDE-like features.
| patrec wrote:
| LSP provides the bare minimum semantic support
| (navigation, completion, inline error annotations and
| basic refactoring support) to make emacs or vim worth of
| consideration for serious coding at all, and only because
| the inferior code understanding both have even with LSP
| is often more than compensated by other advantages such
| as being able to work in a terminal compelling plugins
| like magit for emacs, or, at least in the case of vim,
| general snappiness. I like and use all three, they all
| have their pros and cons, but saying that LSP (via LSC or
| one of the other myriad of lsp-support plugins) is about
| as true as saying that Jetbrains + Vim plugin lets you do
| everything you can do with VIM.
|
| BTW: emacs does in fact have a debugger: GUD (with a bit
| of tweaking, it's bearable, too).
| cgh wrote:
| LSC is just a language server plugin, right? That's not
| even close to covering what an ide like Intellij does, eg
| static analysis, code coverage, profiling, etc.
| nix23 wrote:
| >However, the older I get the less enthused I am about having
| to play around with config files
|
| Ha! i am the opposite, i love to customize my system to
| perfection and use it then for years.
|
| My newest project:
|
| http://wotho.ethz.ch/tk4-/
|
| yes i want my mainframe :)
| nullserver wrote:
| Got a massive jump start to my career by spending high school
| recompiling X11 and such endlessly.
|
| I have much gratitude for how much I learned. Apple had made
| great money in my desire to never do that again.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| I'm guessing at some point in the distant past the
| distribution you were running didn't build X with the options
| you needed this wasn't normal 18 years ago and it certainly
| isn't now.
|
| A Linux Mint install normally consists of a friendly gui
| installer followed by installing common software from an app
| store interface. It's more friendly than installing windows.
| maccard wrote:
| > It's more friendly than installing windows.
|
| When's the last time you installed windows? I installed w10
| about 3 weeks ago and I: - Plugged a USB key & Ethernet
| cable into my PC - clicked through a handful of GUI options
| - Made a coffee
|
| And when I returned (~15 minutes, I didn't time it), it had
| installed windows, done the post-install reboot crap, and
| was ready for me to install my own software. Out of the box
| I had internet connectivity, power management, semi-modern
| graphics drivers (< 3 months old) and was ready to rock.
| mirchiseth wrote:
| I had a non-standard monitor (mid-90s) which will not work
| with xf86config out of the box. Spent a nice summer trying
| various settings and was such an aha moment when it worked.
| jcadam wrote:
| Installing slackware from a stack o' floppies. Fond HS
| memories...
| danieldk wrote:
| Why would you recompile X11? Back in the 90ies, early 00s, I
| did compile kernels to make them lean and enable some
| functionality that was not in the default kernels. But I
| never saw anyone recompiling X11 outside Gentoo and other
| source-based distributions.
| nullserver wrote:
| Slackware. Constantly trying to install things managing
| dependencies breaking the entire system starting from
| scratch etc.
|
| All I really wanted at the time was a Photoshop clone
| (GIMP). Broke high schooler that didn't want to pirate.
| aardvark179 wrote:
| I certainly remember rebuilding X to get it to work with a
| new graphics card. Normally a little investigation to find
| out the changes I'd need to make to the code for
| identifying the card and sometimes some other small
| changes.
| Galanwe wrote:
| I've had my fair share of X11 builds at different work
| places.
|
| The typical use case is when you have to work on some Linux
| dev box which does not have any (or a somewhat recent) X11
| and the distribution is either too old to get one, or
| simply you're not root.
|
| In these cases, the simplest (though annoying) solution is
| to rebuild X11 and a wm from source on the box as user.
|
| Given OP mentioned he was doing his studies, I guess he was
| required to work on some old boxes and wanted a decent
| modern environment.
| danieldk wrote:
| > or simply you're not root.
|
| Maybe I misremember, but didn't X11 require the SUID bit
| set before systemd-logind if you wanted to use a GPU?
|
| (Of course, if you want to run remote X11 clients, then
| you don't need elevated privileges.)
| asveikau wrote:
| I remember recompiling X11 around the time freedesktop was
| getting started. Because features like XRender, XFT, etc.
| were coming online and I didn't want to wait for my distro
| to update. Having decent fonts was that good.
| skeeterbug wrote:
| I remember Gentoo linux being quite the rage in the early
| 2000's (at least in my office). Compiling everything and
| getting your system up and running was a badge of honor, I
| guess.
| mbreese wrote:
| For quite a while, if you wanted to learn how a Linux
| system _really_ operated, you 'd build a Gentoo system.
|
| Eventually, you'd get tired of all the options and switch
| to something more stable, especially for servers. I have
| some fond memories of Gentoo and emerge and compiling all
| of my software, _just so_. Sadly, it was never very
| stable... and not really through any fault of it 's own.
| Really, the customization you could do was great... but
| there was always one more thing to tweak, one more knob
| to turn...
|
| Badge of honor -- yes. I'd almost call it a requirement
| for someone to work through once or twice.
| sneak wrote:
| > _For quite a while, if you wanted to learn how a Linux
| system really operated, you 'd build a Gentoo system._
|
| Because watching 'configure' output scroll across your
| screen 40 times makes one a computer expert, natch.
| shivak wrote:
| Compiling and installing large amounts of system
| software, a la `emerge world` or `make buildworld`, is
| great exposure to many system components. `make
| menuconfig` introduces one to various features of the
| Linux kernel, and yes, even a humble `./configure`
| illustrates how the software in question depends on
| libraries and hardware. I wouldn't casually dismiss the
| educational value of these experiences, nor the curiosity
| of those partaking. They're certainly more expository
| than the digests displayed in a `docker pull`.
| mbreese wrote:
| It wasn't watching the compiler output... it was choosing
| the components. You'll need A, B, C, etc. For each
| category there was often more than one choice. You had to
| choose which syslogger you'd use, for example. With
| RedHat or SuSE or other distributions, those choices were
| already made. You may not have otherwise known what
| options were available.
|
| Imagine starting out with Linux today and not knowing
| that systemd isn't the only option for an init system.
| (Regardless of whether or not you like it, it's helpful
| to know what alternatives exist).
|
| In the end, with Gentoo, when you had your config set,
| yes, you'd get hours of compiler messages. And if you
| were lucky, none of them would be errors.
|
| But you'd also know how the system worked. Honestly, it
| was also about control. With Gentoo, you could configure
| the system exactly as you wanted, down to the compiler
| flags. How many other systems let you really do that?
| Instead of targeting a well-known arch (ex: i686), Gentoo
| let you set your compiler flags for the entire system to
| match your exact CPU. The upside was that it was _your_
| system. The downside was that it was _your_ system and if
| /when it broke, you'd have to figure it out. If your goal
| is to learn how to use Linux, that's also a feature. If
| your goal is to have a stable server, not so much.
|
| Like the original parent commenter, I was playing with
| Gentoo back in the early 2000's, so much has probably
| changed. But I definitely learned a lot back then.
| culopatin wrote:
| Gentio taught me so much. When their documentation went
| through that weird phase where stuff went missing was
| when I dropped off and my Linux knowledge declined. I
| stopped using it and lost track of what's trendy
| nowadays.
|
| Compiz times with the cube desktop and compiling kernels
| overnight in my Pentium 4 kept me away from making out
| with girls many times.
| matwood wrote:
| I built a Gentoo system once or twice, and I learned a
| lot that I otherwise wouldn't. Even just following the
| directions forced me to go to parts of the system I
| otherwise wouldn't have.
|
| Now I use Macs on the desktop and linux on the server.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| I remember booting from a Knoppix live CD and using that
| to install Gentoo so that I could use a web browser, IRC
| client, and GAIM to keep in contact with friends while
| the full-day process of the stage1 install worked on my
| old, slow computer. I remember not including GNOME or KDE
| in my ebuild flags so that the build took less time, and
| then using WindowMaker as an X11 window manager because
| it took less time to compile and ran faster than trying
| to run GNOME or KDE on that old machine (PII 400, 96 MB
| RAM, 8 MB ATI onboard video back around 2003 or so).
| trinix912 wrote:
| I've used to do this for a very long time. I've tried to
| customize almost every aspect of the system. At the time, I've
| also used to bash on Macs a lot.
|
| I've later figured out it all stops being funny whenever I have
| some work to do quickly and am not in the mood for bothering
| with my tiling WM having too many windows open or some random
| broken packages.
|
| It finally clicked when I had to collaborate on a UX desgin
| project and it was a big pain... My teammates used Sketch and
| Photoshop. Sketch is not available on Linux (which I used at
| the time) and GIMP just didn't want to open/save PSDs right
| (there was always something wrong with layers).
|
| I've switched to macOS, it was quite a big change but I've
| since figured out I don't need to tweak every aspect of the OS
| _just because I can_.
|
| Don't get me wrong, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD... are great
| operating systems. They do _just work_ for lots of use cases.
| It 's just that customizing your OS often doesn't justify the
| time spent.
| Joeri wrote:
| A linux fanboy would argue that your problem wasn't linux, it
| was proprietary software that vendors won't port to linux.
| They might also argue that your team should not choose
| software which is so restrictive.
|
| For me though it boils down to two things: (1) linux does not
| go out of its way to provide stable ABI's, which makes
| porting proprietary software to linux and maintaining it
| there expensive and (2) if you are serious about doing
| productive work the best productivity software is often
| proprietary. Add those together and there is a sort of
| gradient over time where if you work together with non-linux
| users there are always things pulling you over to windows or
| macOS.
| jonhohle wrote:
| > (1) linux does not go out of its way to provide stable
| ABI's, which makes porting proprietary software to linux
| and maintaining it there expensive
|
| My impression is that the opposite is true for user space -
| https://yarchive.net/comp/linux/gcc_vs_kernel_stability.htm
| l Maybe you're referring to GNU or kernel modules? There
| are more than a few anecdotes of people running 20+ year
| old binaries that still work with X11.
| trasz wrote:
| Linux keeps the userspace<->kernel ABI stable, sure. But
| that's largely an implementation detail; what matters is
| the ABI presented to applications - at the library level,
| not underneath libc. And this varies between libraries
| and distributions.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| > They might also argue that your team should not choose
| software which is so restrictive.
|
| Which in the end is a valid point.
|
| I've seen offices fighting with their own MS Word templates
| because neither current MS Word versions nor alternatives
| like LibreOffice can correctly display and format them
| anymore. Meanwhile Microsoft Team's online Word is not 100%
| consistent with the offline package, and when you need your
| PDF export to _just work_ it 's not fun when suddenly
| PowerPoint decides to always invert the colors for no
| reason.
|
| Then there are cases like the subscription-based Adobe
| tools which are nice until you happen to be in a country
| targeted by a US trade embargo and overnight your
| subscription is cancelled with no way to even access your
| own files in cloud storage. Oops.
|
| Is Gimp inferior to a billion dollar corporation's top-
| seller? Sure. But I know tomorrow I'll still be able to
| open all my files on almost any device running a desktop
| OS. If you earn your salary with this kind of software
| that's still not very convincing of course and I get that,
| however on the other hand when you depend on this kind of
| software to be working reliably it's worth considering how
| much you really want to depend on some corporation's
| servers being online when you need to rely on it.
| m463 wrote:
| It's unfortunate about the ABIs - I think this probably
| adversely affects linux stability even when you have the
| source and allow a recompile.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Couldn't they trivially use QT and bundle the libraries
| needed with the software?
|
| This doesn't seem dissimilar to how one could ship software
| for windows.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| About (1), Linux itself actually does go out of its way to
| provide stable ABIs as do some very common infrastructure-
| level libraries like the GNU C libraries. X11 itself is
| also very stable and both code and the protocol has been
| compatible going back to the early 90s.
|
| _However_ everything built on top of those is not and does
| not care about ABI or even API stability and now several
| desktop projects are actively undermining X11 's stability
| with Wayland. Gtk+ breaks its API and ABI every major
| version as does Qt - and IMO even if Qt wanted to remain
| stable, as a C++ library it is _very_ hard to do. Also Qt
| is really middleware and its developers have very different
| priorities than what you 'd need for an actual platform
| (not to mention how intentionally misleading they have been
| towards users of their library).
|
| There is a stable desktop API on Linux, Motif, but that is
| ugly and nothing targets it anymore and the company behind
| it nowadays actively promotes Qt instead.
| dkabhina wrote:
| Regarding Gtk's frequent breakages, I really can't
| understand the thought process of whoever is making these
| decisions.
|
| Gtk is pretty much only relevant on Linux, the Linux
| desktop is itself a tiny fraction of the desktop market,
| and the amount of developers who're willing to write GUI
| apps for Linux, to write documentation or tutorials on
| the subject, etc. is already extremely low. So you'd
| think it makes sense to keep things as stable as
| possible, to make sure that no unnecessary effort is
| wasted and to encourage people to improve their apps or
| write new ones.
|
| But apparently the Gtk people don't care. So much effort
| has been wasted due to stability issues, not even talking
| about the multitude of good-willing people who got burned
| in the process and just stopped caring about Gtk
| altogether. It's really a sad state of affair.
| leephillips wrote:
| I jumped from Apple to Linux because I had to get work done
| and the scientific software that I wanted to use was a pain
| to keep working on Macs. Also, it was impossible to configure
| MacOS to work the way I wanted it to, unlike Linux.
|
| By the way, I use a tiling window manager (dwm) and I can't
| figure out what you mean by "tiling WM having too many
| windows open". I also don't understand why free software such
| as the Gimp should be expected to support the binary file
| format of some closed-source program. But I do understand the
| need to work with other people without making excuses, even
| if their choice of tools is shortsighted.
| trinix912 wrote:
| > I can't figure out what you mean by "tiling WM having too
| many windows open"
|
| Tiling WMs only work for me when I have <5 windows open.
| Afterwards, they just become a huge mess, unless you have a
| big screen with a huge resolution.
|
| > I also don't understand why free software such as the
| Gimp should be expected to support the binary file format
| of some closed-source program. But I do understand the need
| to work with other people without making excuses, even if
| their choice of tools is shortsighted.
|
| I'm not saying they should be responsible for supporting a
| random (tho admittedly quite ubiquitous) proprietary
| format. But on the same topic, where would
| Open-/LibreOffice be without support for docx/pptx/xlsx? If
| they never support any proprietary formats then there's no
| alternative to what everyone else uses.
|
| If you have the privilege of choosing what to work with in
| all situations then it's of course not a problem. But one
| can't expect a group of UX designers to completely break
| their workflow for a project with a strict deadline _just
| because one person holds onto their sacred OS_.
| shakow wrote:
| > Afterwards, they just become a huge mess, unless you
| have a big screen with a huge resolution.
|
| Or you can just use several virtual desktops.
| de_Selby wrote:
| Or use tabbed/fullscreen/custom views.
|
| The GP comment is so backwards that I wonder if they even
| used a tiling wm for any period of time longer than a day
| or two. Tiling window managers are better at managing
| many windows than having them all scattered randomly over
| a desktop with a traditional window manager.
| aerique wrote:
| Not all tiling window managers are the same and one of
| the bigger differences is what they do with new windows,
| so this is really dependent on the tiling WM you've used.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| If you plug every single window into the same workspace
| no matter how many windows you have you are basically
| using it ineffectively.
|
| Let us propose you have a really tiny 12" screen and you
| are using 5 windows that each really need your full
| screen area to be useful. It makes no sense to split it 5
| ways so instead each window is its own workspace. This
| hardly seems to be a situation where a tiling window
| manager benefits you you could very well arrange the same
| thing on any graphical environment by switching to each
| workspace opening each application and maximizing the
| window.
|
| However what it did do was keep you from dumping all 5
| windows in the same workspace because the result would be
| painful and ensure that instead of alt tabbing an average
| of 3 times per window switch or taking your hands off the
| keyboard and clicking on a ui element to select the
| individual app from the taskbar. Instead when you want to
| go from app 1 to 5 or app 2 to 4 you go directly to the
| correct workspace.
|
| It also automated maximizing the windows as they were
| created.
|
| To put it succinctly it encouraged a certain workflow and
| automated the window management steps when using that
| workflow.
|
| This is also true if you have 18 windows and 3 28"
| monitors. By far the most common arrangements are going
| to be simple arrangements of 1-3 windows on the same
| monitor which can be automatically applied as windows are
| added.
|
| If we consult one of my favorite infographics
|
| https://xkcd.com/1205/
|
| To save 2 seconds 100 times a day (not depicted) we can
| spend 96 hours learning to use a tiling window manager
| and come out ahead over 5 years. In reality the time
| required is probably on the order of 2-4 hours and as it
| is a low stress, simple activity it can trivially be done
| during downtime in the time when you would spend on
| social media as opposed to when you ought to be working.
|
| In effect you are trading a few hours of playtime for 96
| hours of more effective work time which if you think
| about is a pretty good trade.
|
| It's also entirely possible that you don't enjoy this
| workflow and thusly wouldn't benefit which is OK too.
|
| Insofar as LibreOffice vs Gimp you are entirely correct.
| On a related note Bloom although not free claims to have
| great PSD support
|
| >You say Bloom imports PSD files. What specifically does
| it import and does it support layers? We understand why
| this question comes up. :) A lot of packages claim to
| import PSD files, but then either end up importing a
| single flattened image, or layers stripped of styles,
| masks, and blending effects. We are proud to have created
| the best-in-class PSD importer for Bloom, which supports
| not only layers and groups, but also masks on both of
| them, all layer blending modes, and even layer blending
| effects such as drop shadows and glows - even on groups!
| While we can't guarantee the documents will look pixel-
| perfect compared to Adobe Photoshop (they are completely
| different software packages, after all), they are very
| close in terms of their appearance, and all key
| information is preserved.
|
| https://thebloomapp.com
|
| I haven't tried it personally but it has a free demo.
| tga wrote:
| I've been running a work Linux virtual machine (or a few of
| them) on a MacBook. Best of both worlds really -- I don't
| have to worry about running Linux on the hardware or
| running dev tools on macOS.
|
| As a bonus, a full system backup is a simple folder copy to
| a USB stick, and with that stick I can instantly continue
| working on any machine, Mac, Linux or Windows.
| leephillips wrote:
| Yeah, I think there is virtue in this approach. If I had
| figured this out back then (and if it were possible--I
| don't know) I might have gone that route.
| temp8964 wrote:
| As a tech fan, but not a professional programmer, this only
| took me a couple hours to figure out :-)
|
| Basically the moment you start to use Linux desktop, you will
| immediately start googling how to twist this and that. Maybe
| in an hour, you will start to go to this and that folders to
| change this and that cfg files. For me, I quickly realize
| that 1) I won't remember what I did and I don't know all the
| implications of those changes I made, and 2) I don't want to
| spend time on those stuff.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > 1) I won't remember what I did and I don't know all the
| implications of those changes I made, and
|
| That's why I keep a log of everything. Any error message I
| encounter, any change I made and why. Neatly organised, in
| an org (org-mode) file.
|
| I make exactly the same as I do in programming project or
| server configuration: keep notes, explaining to my later
| self (and to others) what I did and why.
|
| > 2) I don't want to spend time on those stuff.
|
| As I commented already: then you're forced to adapt to
| things others thought it would be best for you instead of
| adapting the system to your way of working.
| pnutjam wrote:
| Bingo, I just learn to accept the defaults as much as
| possible. If I can't love them, I accept them.
| klibertp wrote:
| > It's just that customizing your OS often doesn't justify
| the time spent.
|
| That really depends on a) what you choose to customize, and
| b) how adept you are at customizing. In other words, it
| depends on your skill and foresight.
|
| With enough practice - you get it by simply working with
| computers over the years - you can recognize the pain points
| with the biggest payoffs quite accurately. With enough skill,
| you can fix them relatively quickly. This way you get a "10x"
| setup tailored for your specific needs.
|
| Of course, trying to indiscriminately customize everything
| while putting a lot of time into learning how to customize
| them is a net productivity sink. That's normal. Most people
| start with such approach, get burned by it, and conclude that
| the whole customizability-as-a-feature is not worth it.
|
| It's quite possible that it's true for majority of users. The
| well-tuned, A/B tested, in-depth researched defaults can be
| good enough for many. I have nothing against such defaults.
| However, forcing me to use them, while I know precisely what
| I personally need to be more productive, is something I can't
| agree to.
|
| My current setup is Linux, AwesomeWM, Firefox, and Emacs. I
| customized away all the pain points I had with them a decade
| ago (half a decade with Awesome). The time spent on
| maintaining the configs across upgrades is trivial, on the
| order of tens of minutes a year.
|
| To sum it up: customizing your OS can be well worth it if you
| do it right. You can also go wrong with it, too. But, using
| software which doesn't allow for customization not only
| removes the risk of customization going wrong - it also robs
| you of the possibility of doing it right.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > My current setup is Linux, AwesomeWM, Firefox, and Emacs.
| I customized away all the pain points I had with them a
| decade ago (half a decade with Awesome).
|
| Amen brother! Exact same setup here: Linux / AwesomeWM
| (with a dedicated modifier key on my keyboard only for
| AwesomeWM related keybindings), Firefox, Emacs and the
| occasional IntelliJ IDEA for Java stuff.
|
| > The time spent on maintaining the configs across upgrades
| is trivial, on the order of tens of minutes a year.
|
| Exactly.
| erikbye wrote:
| > It's just that customizing your OS often doesn't justify
| the time spent.
|
| Of course it does, spending a tiny bit of time optimizing my
| workflows here and there, now and then, whether OS or text
| editor, saves hours yearly. Not to mention reducing
| annoyances and plain friction.
| auggierose wrote:
| saves hours, yearly? tiny bit of time optimzing?
|
| Hahahaha. Keep telling yourself that.
| lycopodiopsida wrote:
| I was a linux and freebsd user in my younger days for a decade,
| until I switched to macOS. Now I am approaching my 40s and I
| would never do a customisation craze of my younger days, where
| I would spend time selecting a wallpaper and themes. My
| wallpaper is grey, I barely see it, so why bother?
|
| But I still customise - just different things. Mac lets me
| customise my workflows with little effort. All the UI
| scripting, keyboard maestro, Launchbar actions and hyperkey
| shortcuts help me a lot. Computers are good at tedious and
| boring tasks, but I am not. It may seldom get me back the time
| spent for doing the workflows, but it helps me to stay sane
| with all the mouse-clicking, keeps my RSI in check, and gets me
| some satisfaction knowing that my craft is not only good for
| reading sales items out of the database.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Same experience on my GNU/Linux zealot days, eventually I
| settled back on Windows, macOS and whatever Linux distributions
| do by default.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > However, the older I get the less enthused I am about having
| to play around with config files...
|
| I'm in my late forties and I don't play with config files a lot
| because... Once X11 / Awesome WM is set up it is set up, well,
| for years. Literally years. Does not move: not a iota.
|
| At times I've had my "workstation" (just a big PC) with an
| uptime of 6 months. 6 months of uptime, for a desktop. That's
| how stable things can be. (I had my reasons for leaving my
| computer up at night for one of its core was computing
| something: but that's not the point... The point is these Linux
| and BSDs can be so stable you can, if you want and kernel
| security patch excepted, easily reach one year of uptime).
|
| My current desktop PC is six years old and I'll soon buy a new
| one and I'll reinstall everything from scratch: I've got notes
| and may need to "fight" new hardware and whatnots for a few
| hours (if I'm unlucky) but then hopefully I'll be good for
| another six years?
|
| The thing is: if you don't like tailoring your system to the
| way you like it to work, then you're forced to use the way
| others thought it'd be best for you...
|
| So, sure, it may be a bit more work than a Windows or OS X
| machine, but the stability and uptime is also on a whole
| another level.
| hpoe wrote:
| I hear that from people all the time who are more advanced in
| their careers than me. But I can't imagine finding myself in a
| place where I don't have my current setup. I am able to do
| everything so much faster having my custom i3, Emacs setup than
| anyone else I work with. People often comment "Wow you are able
| to do that so fast."
|
| Now that I discovered Vimium I consider it a UX failure if I
| ever have to use the mouse. Like I don't think I could ever go
| back to having a system that doesn't navigate by jkl;,
| everything else seems to slow and clunky. Like yesterday I had
| to upload a file and the interface only supported drag and
| drop, and I took it personally that I had to use a mouse.
|
| Sorry I am ranting, but after having experienced the power of
| the keyboard all time and the ease of doing things in the
| terminal how can you stand going back? This isn't rhetorical
| either I genuinely just wonder how you overcome the additional
| pointing and clicking required?
| Galanwe wrote:
| I guess it's a spectrum.
|
| I share OP's point of view. I've had my youth years of
| complete custom desktop experience, every single detail under
| control and finely customized, on whatever distribution was
| the apogee of the time (gentoo, arch,...).
|
| Years passing by though, I've grown past it. Now I just
| install Ubuntu, I don't want to loose time on wifi drivers,
| keyboard backlight, acpi suspend/resume, etc.
|
| Doesn't mean that I don't customize my environment though.
| I've been using i3 for 10 years and would not stand anything
| else. Same for my vim configuration.
|
| I just prioritize some things (i3, vim) over others
| (distribution, package manager).
| gautamcgoel wrote:
| Can you explain why you're so find of i3? I've played with
| it but it never stuck.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Not the original commenter here but
|
| - i3 treats individual monitors as virtual desktops
| instead of having them stretch across all monitors which
| makes it easy to shift say a workspace with a browser or
| a chat app into a secondary monitor without losing the
| current task or having to rearrange everything.
|
| - i3 lets you define keybinding modes that work much like
| modes in vim
|
| - i3 is very simple and comprehensible its about as non
| magical as can be making it using it predictable and
| simple
| [deleted]
| nilsb wrote:
| For me personally, it's about putting the right amount of
| emphasis on your tools. Using your mouse shouldn't be
| outright verboten, but I do see your point about having a
| properly set-up editor. I could probably be 30-50% more
| efficient with just the right vim config. For reference,
| here's mine:
|
| $ ls -l .vimrc ls: .vimrc: No such file or directory
|
| However, as a counter example, instead I've spent time on
| learning how to use Ansible which lets me automate parts of
| my job in a way that just wasn't feasible 15 years ago. To me
| that provides a much larger benefit (easily 10X, maybe even
| 100X).
|
| I guess my point is that I don't want to spend too much time
| on the plumbing part of technology and leave figuring that
| out to someone else - much in the same way we're using
| libraries nowadays instead of re-implementing hash tables
| ourselves in every new project.
| kingaillas wrote:
| >how can you stand going back
|
| For me, like many things, it is a tradeoff. Am I THAT more
| efficient in some uber config - balanced against the time it
| takes to fix/update/tweak/keep it current, and deal with
| multiple systems and repeated setups.
|
| And the answer for me is, well, no, no I'm not. So these days
| I use a much smaller set of "must have" custom configs and
| mostly go with the defaults.
|
| >a UX failure if I ever have to use the mouse
|
| I can see that for certain systems/applications. But, I have
| to deal with various webapps - jira, confluence, continuous
| integration settings, our internal source code instance, etc
| - and I can't imagine the scenario where spending the time to
| configure and learn keyboard-only navigation would result in
| an efficiency payoff.
|
| It's similar to the argument about why
| dvorak/colemak/workman/etc is "better". Yes, yes they are,
| but there is no way I'll ever get the time back in efficiency
| that it would take to become proficient. I'd need some
| outside motivation, such as RSI or an injury to alter the
| cost-benefit calculation.
|
| I don't need to turn every webpage I need to deal with into a
| keyboard optimization puzzle in order to shave a few seconds
| here and there. That's the time savings we're talking about
| right?
|
| >I can't imagine finding myself in a place where I don't have
| my current setup
|
| Do you mostly work on a single system?
| Nullabillity wrote:
| > I can see that for certain systems/applications. But, I
| have to deal with various webapps - jira, confluence,
| continuous integration settings, our internal source code
| instance, etc - and I can't imagine the scenario where
| spending the time to configure and learn keyboard-only
| navigation would result in an efficiency payoff.
|
| That's the beauty of Vimium, it gets you 90% there, but
| those 90% work the same everywhere.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| My setups have never been customized _that_ deeply, but I
| used to be much more into the process than I am today.
|
| What changed that was the frequency of needing to set up a
| working environment from scratch, for whatever reason whether
| that be a fresh OS install or a change of personal or work
| machines. After a while it becomes tiresome, both in initial
| setup and in maintenance (regardless of OS, highly custom
| configurations are more brittle and can break in more ways).
|
| I still customize a fair bit but generally speaking I keep
| things closer to default and gravitate towards OSes and
| distributions that come reasonably close to where I want my
| environment to be out of the box so the amount of setup and
| maintenance is reduced to something sustainable.
| [deleted]
| boogies wrote:
| > Like yesterday I had to upload a file and the interface
| only supported drag and drop, and I took it personally that I
| had to use a mouse.
|
| keynav to the rescue! (As I've said before it's no
| replacement for proper vi bindings like Vimium or better
| Pentadactyl, but it is useful as a second-to-last resort
| before a hardware pointing device.)
|
| Dragging is not bound by default but it is easy to uncomment
| in the example config (cp /usr/share/doc/keynav/keynavrc
| ~/.keynavrc and gg72 in vi on Debian): ###
| Drag examples # Start drag holding the left mouse
| button #q drag 1 # Start drag holding middle
| mouse + control and shift #w drag 2 ctrl+shift
| lnx01 wrote:
| I would love to see a video of how one operates a GUI using a
| keyboard. I'm know _some_ vi and zero emacs, so how Vimium
| works eludes me, but it would be great to someone do some
| impressive stuff without ever touching the mouse. I imagine
| the learning curve must be _really_ steep, and not something
| I 'd like to sped any portion of my work day learning.
| jackcviers3 wrote:
| Vimium for gui in two secs: f - show keys to press to click
| something and open the link in the current window F - same
| except opens in a new window /<chars> <enter> - search, n
| for next and p for previous V - visual cursor selection, y
| copies esc - get out of anything
|
| There's a lot more, but you can go a long way just with
| that.
| hpoe wrote:
| Well if you are familiar with Vim learning Vimium was super
| easy barely any inconvience. I used an Anki deck to become
| familiar with all of the shortcuts and boom, off to the
| races.
|
| The biggest keys to remember is f which shows all the links
| you can click on. I should add a disclaimer however that I
| ended up using vimium probably only 50% of the time, I've
| noticed when I am in the middle of working I use vimium
| more heavily, during light browsing I tend to use the mouse
| a bit more.
|
| I will also say the other big thing that wasn't possible
| before Vimium is that I can now add a bookmark to pretty
| much any page I will visit more than once and then that
| page is only a 'Shift + b' and a couple of keystrokes away.
| Super efficient when dealing with giant bloated web apps
| that take 5 seconds to render every state change.
| echlipse wrote:
| Check out Luke Smith on Youtube.
| edgyquant wrote:
| I used vim for a decade and now use PyCharm+VSCode. I don't
| know what you mean about not using the keyboard as I still
| use the terminal for everything except editing code and I
| don't use the mouse at all. There are keyboard shortcuts for
| everything in both the ides I use,
| datalus wrote:
| Same, I used to spend a week+ tweaking things ever so slightly.
| Now I just install a base system and use kde5 plasma. Easy to
| theme, has an app launcher. (Which Windows also just got, same
| shortcut weirdly enough alt + space).
| colordrops wrote:
| 95% of my time re: configuration is dealing with getting
| suspend/resume to work and not corrupt the desktop environment.
| Why has this been so damn broken on open source OSes?
|
| The one thing I could do to fully stabilize my env is to ditch
| the gnome/XMonad hybrid and go full XMonad. That would probably
| solve all my config issues. Really wish that XMonad with gnome
| was a first class supported setup though.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| It's broken in open source because hardware is horrible but
| OEM's must make at least a minimalistic effort to make their
| hardware work with windows lest their hardware be returned to
| walmart. Presumably infinite effort to figure out how windows
| does it would yield software that works as well but in the
| real world of imperfect documentation and finite effort
| results in imperfect results.
|
| There was a thread on this a while back
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25385860
|
| Short answer buy hardware known not to suck at it.
| [deleted]
| 404mm wrote:
| Same here. My path was pretty much Gentoo -> Arch -> MacOS.
| There were some slight short lasting deviations, such as Ubuntu
| and Suse.
| gspr wrote:
| Me too. But that never drove me away from Linux. I just started
| embracing two specific things:
|
| * Sane defaults.
|
| * Slow moving software that's focused on not changing things
| constantly (for better or worse).
|
| I.e. Debian Stable :-)
|
| I still don't understand how people who primarily code or
| wrangle data can possibly prefer Mac or Windows. I'm too old
| for stuff changing under my feet, but at least on sane Linux
| distros I have some power in my hands when this happens.
| erikbye wrote:
| > I used to spend hours on getting things like window managers,
| X11, etc. set up just the way I wanted them to be. However, the
| older I get the less enthused I am about having to play around
| with config files to get basic features like suspend/resume to
| work on my daily work notebook.
|
| The most predictable top comment on HN ever.
| approxim8ion wrote:
| I'm there too right now. Went from using BSPWM on Arch with all
| kinds of custom hijinks to just sitting on KDE because it lets
| me go about my work without much hassle. Both have their
| merits, and if I was on weaker hardware I'd have no qualms
| going back to my WM-only setup. But KDE keeps getting leaner
| and lighter, and it's smooth and hassle-free for the most part.
| stemcc wrote:
| And now we get Wayland by default on 5.22.
| the_only_law wrote:
| I have a super petty reason for disliking wayland. There
| are no cool retro Desktops/WMs for it. On X I can run shit
| like WindowMaker, CTWM and if I want to CDE.
|
| That and my xdotool scripts don't work.
| approxim8ion wrote:
| Think of it this way: we get to use "cutting edge" things
| on Wayland now which people will be calling retro in a
| few years.
| approxim8ion wrote:
| Surprisingly usable, but I'm still holding out because one
| of the things I need (auto-type on KeepassXC) is still not
| available on Wayland. It's an active issue[1] and will
| hopefully be sorted soon. MOST of my workflow looks and
| works just fine on it though, which is very impressive.
|
| [1]:
| https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/2281
| paride5745 wrote:
| This is why I use GhostBSD instead of plain FreeBSD.
|
| It's like a Linux Mint experience but on FreeBSD.
| vr46 wrote:
| Is this not easily automatable? My Mac(s) is/are provisioned
| using Strap, and this includes configuration of the
| terminal/Neovim/general settings. Surely this could all be done
| for a BSD setup?
| deviantfero wrote:
| How often do you start from scratch when installing an OS?,
| I've changed my laptop 4 times now in 5 years for different
| reasons, when I do so, there's only a couple of things to
| consider:
|
| if I'm upgrading the HDD (for example when I made the jump from
| HDD to SSD or from my 2.5inch SSD to my M2 SSD currently) I
| need to clone the drive to my new storage, otherwise I only
| need to swap out my storage device from my old laptop to my new
| one.
|
| With linux it just works I don't have to fiddle for my devices
| to be found, everything is just where I left it, the biggest
| change was when I went from an intel based PC to an AMD one, I
| only had to switch the display drivers after the fact (I knew
| because X crashed, I had to do this from tty), but it is
| expected since the display cards are totally different, btw all
| it took was a: sudo pacman -S xf86-video-amdgpu.
|
| having a rolling release distro helps too, because you really
| don't have a reason to nuke your install and start from
| scratch, but even if I decided to do that for whatever reason,
| since most configuration is done via text files I can easily
| save those in a repo and just clone them to my new install and
| be done in a few minutes.
|
| drwx------ 2 root root 16384 Dec 25 2016 /lost+found
|
| ^ that's when I last installed linux, I've been using the same
| install through 5 years in 4 different devices, it's pretty
| cool.
|
| I'll be honest though I do still miss photoshop and
| Illustrator, I run Illustrator CS6 in wine, but it is missing a
| lot of features that have been added through the years, but
| Krita is a decent replacement for photoshop in the Illustration
| space, which is why I used photoshop in the first place, but
| nobody is stopping adobe from making a suite for linux I guess.
| Qahlel wrote:
| I have seen FreeBSD and other non-mainstream OS (as in not:
| windows, macos, linux variants) keep going but I have never seen
| a "reason" to use those except for the bragging rights. Can the
| developpers of these OS please enlighten me why I or anyone
| should use them?
| aduitsis wrote:
| Previous job was at a University, 15+ years using FreeBSD for
| almost all services. We've had Jails, ZFS, etc for a good part
| of those 15+ years, which was a huge asset. Not that it was
| completely trouble free, but assuming that with anything else
| it would have been easier, is simply a delusion.
|
| Why we went with FreeBSD in the early 2000s? If memory serves,
| the ports tree and the package management were completely
| blowing away anything else at that point. Nowadays it is
| considered given for any platform, but it was a great advantage
| to be able to compile packages reliably with your own options
| back in the day!
|
| The fact is, FreeBSD is (and was for a very long time) a
| trustworthy and very stable platform to run services in.
| FreeBSD has a very deep philosophy of trying to minimize
| surprises, which means that most of the time you can focus on
| your real tasks instead of fighting what has changed in the
| last version. And Jails are still a major plus, at least from a
| certain point of view, since they are very easy to manage,
| copy, install, administer, etc.
|
| Even today where Linux has catch up in all aspects, if you have
| a large set of services on FreeBSD, you'll invariably have to
| pay a huge upfront cost to switch everything to Linux and re-
| learn stuff all over again. It's not a question of freedom or
| open-source (FreeBSD and Linux are totally free and open-
| source, in their own way each), it's a question of overcoming
| the mountain to get across to the other green side. I'm sure
| it's exactly the same for Linux shops that would like to try
| out FreeBSD. Why should they pay the cost, if they cannot
| really get any significant advantage or profit out of it? So
| one basically sticks to what's known and trustworthy from
| before, since the investment has already been made and most
| people don't like doing the same stuff all over again.
| scaladev wrote:
| Well, if you're Sony, the BSD license lets you take the code,
| make hundreds of millions of dollars off it, and give
| absolutely nothing back. The PlayStation 3, 4, and (I believe)
| 5 operating systems are built on FreeBSD.
|
| I've seen some of the BSD folk present that as a good thing. To
| each his own, I guess.
|
| Concerning desktop/server usage, I like this quote:
|
| > "If it ain't broke, don't fix it": If you already use an open
| source operating system, and you are happy with it, there is
| probably no good reason to change.
|
| https://docs.freebsd.org/en/articles/explaining-bsd/comparin...
| andrewzah wrote:
| "I've seen some of the BSD folk present that as a good thing.
| To each his own, I guess."
|
| Yes, this is the whole point of making something Open Source.
|
| With FreeBSD companies like Netflix contribute to it, and I'd
| imagine it's similar for OpenBSD as well.
| scaladev wrote:
| I thought the original idea behind free software was to
| provide more freedom to the users (to thinker with,
| replace, and learn from said software), and not to pad the
| bottom line of a multi-billion dollar company by saving
| them the need to spend millions of man-hours building their
| own OS from scratch?
|
| If GPL didn't force companies to contribute back, would
| Linux ever be where it is today?
| trasz wrote:
| Thing is, the decision whether to open source your code
| comes first, not last. GPL doesn't force it in any way,
| GPL prevents one from using GPL code if they don't intend
| to immediately release everything.
|
| In other words, what would happen with GPL is that
| companies which don't intend to give the code back would
| simply go somewhere else instead.
| andrewzah wrote:
| "not to pad the bottom line of a multi-billion dollar
| company"
|
| The freedom in F/OSS licensing applies to me just as much
| as it does to multi-billion dollar corporations, as it
| turns out.
|
| Sorry, but this is a fundamental misunderstanding about
| the purpose and intent of Open Source software. If you
| want to arbitrarily restrict people from using your code,
| that's fine, but at that point it no longer is open
| source. It's completely within one's rights to maintain
| their intellectual property and license it out to
| businesses at a cost, but all of us benefit from F/OSS
| software, so it comes down to a personal decision.
| Imagine if things like curl were proprietary...
|
| They chose to use BSD licenses, which are fairly
| permissive. The most common F/OSS license is MIT, which
| is also very permissive. You could use GPL, AGPL, or LGPL
| "copy-left" licenses which impose specific requirements,
| but many orgs won't even look at projects with those
| licenses.
|
| edit: wording
| kkielhofner wrote:
| Technically speaking the GPL doesn't force companies to
| "give back". It simply says you must give the source to
| anyone who's been provided a binary. Not even by default,
| you can comply by making them ask and mailing them
| physical media (if you really want to be a jerk about
| it).
|
| A vast majority of the GPL "giving back" I see is Company
| XYZ dropping a messy tarball in some obscure portion of
| their web site. The code never goes anywhere, and
| frequently not upstream. No one else benefits from their
| work or GPL compliance.
|
| Not that this is a good approach - the real companies
| that "get it" know they're better off upstreaming
| anything they want/need to depend on in the future.
| jbjbjbjb wrote:
| Not everyone wants to maintain a fork though so there are
| incentives to giving back.
| mjthompson wrote:
| I seem to recall at one point Sony tried to upstream stuff
| and it was knocked back for not being up to scratch.
|
| Netflix contribute back without any obligation to. But they
| track the development branch closely, making upstreaming
| easier than with the PlayStation OS, which presumably is a
| bit more 'frozen in time', making it much harder to submit
| patches.
| torstenvl wrote:
| FreeBSD is a nice, solid piece of Shaker furniture. It's
| simple, elegant, and done "the right way," meticulously planned
| out. There are no extraneous seams.
|
| GNU/Linux is an amalgamation of 2-3 of the highest quality IKEA
| sets. It's more up-to-date, with more bells and whistles. If
| you don't like one component from one set, you can (with enough
| elbow grease and fuckery) replace it with the analogous
| component from another set. However, there are bespoke seams
| everywhere, and the theoretical flexibility is often more
| trouble than its worth (just try using a mainstream distro but
| replacing systemd, for example). Also, the documentation is
| sometimes out of date, causing things to fail in utterly
| inexplicable ways, forcing you to resort to online forums and
| mailing lists.
|
| FreeBSD has somewhat fewer features, and doesn't work as well
| with the latest hardware. But the things that are supported
| largely Just Work(tm). It is, by and large, just less hassle to
| run FreeBSD and you don't have to tinker as much.
| zokula wrote:
| Typical BSD user cult-member response.
| nix23 wrote:
| >GNU/Linux is an amalgamation of 2-3 of the highest quality
| IKEA sets.
|
| Depends on the distribution :)
| ghostpepper wrote:
| What are some of the more cohesive distributions?
| Elementary comes to mind
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| This got really long. Sorry for that, TL;DR answer is "To
| understand design choices in OS design."
|
| Now for the full answer, with more than a bit of historical
| perspective ...
|
| It is a subjective topic of course. In "theory" there are 2.5
| forms of mainstream operating systems; Windows, UNIX, and
| Microkernel UNIX (Mach derivatives).
|
| Microsoft has invested in Windows.
|
| Apple has invested in Mach/UNIX in the form of MacOS after the
| purchase of Next. (prior versions of MacOS are essentially
| dead).
|
| Then there is UNIX.
|
| UNIX was a product of AT&T, later it became the property of
| Novell and then the OpenGroup. Because it was a research OS
| originally (before System V was released) its source code was
| shared to other researchers and the folks at Berkeley Computer
| Science Research Group (CSRG)) created a their version of UNIX
| which they called the Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD). Sun
| Microsystems worked with CSRG to turn BSD into a commercially
| successful OS (SunOS) while AT&T struggled to turn their
| distribution into a commercially successful OS (System V). This
| got ugly and legal fights ensued and AT&T paid Sun about a
| billion dollars to merge their successful OS with the
| unsuccessful OS. It also resulted in the Regents of California
| working to rewrite/remove any "AT&T proprietary code" from
| their distribution which left them with a research OS that they
| controlled and didn't have to worry about getting sued over.
| That OS, called FreeBSD, is pretty much as close as you can get
| to being a UNIX OS without owning the trademark (which
| OpenGroup now owns).
|
| Then there is Linux. Andrew Tannenbaum wrote a "toy" OS that
| could be used to teach operating systems principles to college
| students and based it loosely on UNIX. He called it "Minix" for
| "minimum UNIX". Tannenbaum is, and this is putting it nicely,
| off-putting. He is one of those people who seem to rub people
| the wrong way. He got into an online fight with a teenager
| named Linus who had written his own "toy" OS that ran on the
| PC/AT computers at the time. He called it "Linux" and in his
| Usenet post suggested he didn't think it would amount to much.
|
| A satellite player, who becomes important later, is Richard
| Stallman. Who was so affronted by the legal shennanigans that
| AT&T was pulling, the increased restrictions on access to SunOS
| that Sun was pulling (mirroring DEC before them) that he
| decided he was going do his own thing and nobody would have any
| way of hiding any of it. He called it "GNU" for, "GNU is Not
| UNIX." He took a lot of pleasure in the recursive acronym, it
| is the kind of thing folks in the MIT AI lab would chortle at.
| He was explicitly calling out "Not UNIX" not because UNIX was
| bad, but because everyone wanted to run UNIX and AT&T was being
| a huge pain about people calling things UNIX when they weren't
| paying taxes to AT&T. So the joke was it is EXACTLY LIKE UNIX
| but we're "saying" it is NOT UNIX. See? Fun joke. We get to use
| all your cool OS abstractions and knowledge and you can't sue
| us, nyah, nyah, hee, hee! Step one was "We need a C compiler"
| and so that was the first thing they built, gcc, binutils, and
| make.
|
| At the time it was created, Linux, and the people who
| contributed code to Linux, were all UNIX fanbois. That is they
| loved "sticking it to the man" by building their own version of
| something that they wanted that someone else told them they
| couldn't have unless they paid them. At the same time Windows
| was a computer science joke. It was for "stupid people who
| didn't understand multi-tasking" and only lived in a single
| address space where random things could crash the system, and
| every tiny change required you reboot the thing from scratch.
| The joke was "did you try rebooting it" and used with much
| derision.
|
| Now here we get to an interesting fork. The Regents of
| California could not abide the "copyleft" ideas of Stallman and
| the nascent Free Software movement. It wasn't because they
| wanted things to be proprietary, rather it was because they had
| gone through a protracted legal battle and knew their their
| licensing had been litigated and would hold up. As a result,
| the CSRG was not going to use anything like gcc with its GPL
| license and stuck with their portable C compiler and later
| variants. Meanwhile the rebuffed Stallman found a lot of people
| who were willing to use their stuff and contribute to Linux[1].
| Writing as user land to mimic the UNIX tools was "easy" and
| done quickly, X was already open source from MIT and so that
| came too, and many people started writing the myriad of small
| device drivers that were needed to have this new OS boot on
| different systems. Many hands make for light work, and it
| flourished.
|
| In 1996 I had to choose between using FreeBSD 2.x or Linux 2.x
| in an Internet Appliance our company was building. While we
| loved that new drivers were appearing regularly for Linux, the
| entire environment _churned_ with change. There was no
| discipline in the userland between release to release. Command
| line options changed or were added, behaviors varied, and every
| new release had to be scoured for random "wouldn't it be neat
| if ..." kinds of change that someone had thrown in. FreeBSD on
| the other hand didn't get drivers as quickly but it evolved in
| an easy to comprehend way that didn't involve a lot of churn
| and it never changed important things in a "dot" (or worse dot
| dot) release.
|
| So the environment was that the "cool" companies, Sun, SGI,
| Next->Apple, HP, were using UNIX so the open source community
| worked to make Linux as UNIX-like as possible. And of the
| UNIXes (BSD 4.x, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD) moved along more
| slowly but with a very UNIX direction.
|
| Jump ahead now 5 - 6 years. And Sun, SGI, and HP are all dead.
| The "cool" companies (FAANG) are using Linux in their data
| centers (or as in Apple's case still a UNIX derived OS) but
| Microsoft has upped their game and now they have a fully multi-
| tasking OS that a bunch of teenagers spent their formative
| years using and learning to tweak. Those same teenagers would
| love to have an "open source" version of Windows but Microsoft
| is not going to accommodate them.
|
| So once again, you've got the "BSDs" which have a disciplined,
| ordered integration schedule. And you have Linux with its free-
| for-all user land. And these same folks decide they are going
| to start integrating features that they like about the Windows
| OS into Linux, in part because they can, and in part because
| Windows is no longer the lame besmirched OS that "only losers"
| use. And as a result of that activity, Linux begins to turn
| toward a new "north star" which is now Windows rather than
| UNIX.
|
| We can argue all day and all night if operating system
| configuration is best done with a registry or a series of text
| files, and never get anywhere. They are subjective choices and
| so, like policy choices, arguing them is not going to get you
| anywhere. There are a _lot_ of such choices that go into OS
| implementation. But as a result of the new influx of
| contributors to the Linux user land, and _their_ early computer
| experiences, Linux is now mimicking Windows design philosophies
| rather than UNIX design philosophies.
|
| So to answer your question about "Why should anyone use them?"
| the answer is to broaden your understanding of OS design
| philosophies so that you might better understand the tradeoffs
| and make better choices about which OS you might choose to
| support or not support in the future.
|
| Phew.
|
| [1] Linus has a similarly cautious attitude about the GPL as
| evidenced by his messaging over the years.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Actually, I was "forced" to go back, as java only did green
| threads on bsd, and the market was moving towards Linux.
|
| Super sad to do that, I loved my BSD jails back in '98 or
| before :-)
| downut wrote:
| Not a developer, and if I were I might find such a question
| puzzling. Here's why I use it:
|
| +zfs +(poudriere & /usr/ports) +(helpful mail lists) +bhyve
| !systemd
|
| FreeBSD since 1994, Debian since 1998.
|
| But underneath it all is a philosophy about how to live your
| life. If you want Big Corps deciding your computational
| experience, good for you, even Linux can provide that for you
| now. I don't. I don't care if I'm irrelevant. I approach
| cooking, reading, travel, etc the same way. And there are
| ranges. OpenBSD goes even further. I respect that.
|
| My partner lives in Big Corp IT land during the day and she
| loves the in house experience of our rather extravagent mostly
| FreeBSD "cloud". Some Debian in there too; got to run some
| appliances like unifi-video.
|
| Writing this on a FreeBSD NVIDIA desktop. Which I'm going to
| use to do my own taxes myself, with org-mode, and I'm going to
| file here shortly. For that I need chromium, which works fine.
| Otherwise I use Firefox, which ports tracks releases quite
| closely.
|
| All this unnecessary effort! Why would anyone do such a thing.
| Mysteries.
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| FreeBSD's ZFS implementation is really solid and if the
| integrity of your data cluster is a top priority, this is one
| area where it really pays dividends.
| toomanyducks wrote:
| > FreeBSD NVIDIA desktop. Any links to guides/docs? My GPU is
| really the one reason I haven't yet at the very least tried
| FreeBSD on my desktop.
| my123 wrote:
| The Nvidia binary driver is provided for FreeBSD too.
|
| Guide at http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/FreeBSD-x86_
| 64/460.56/... and driver at https://www.nvidia.com/Download
| /driverResults.aspx/170806/en... for the currently latest
| one.
| ashafer wrote:
| I am biased but FreBSD is very well supported on NVIDIA, so
| I wouldn't let it hold you back from trying it out. I think
| you could load NomadBSD on a usb and have NVIDIA drivers
| set up without any real trouble.
| remexre wrote:
| My shortlist would be, PF, jails, and the handbook. PF in
| particular is much nicer to use than iptables to an incredible
| degree.
| Koshkin wrote:
| [Not an OS developer] In my (admittedly limited) experience, a
| BSD somehow works better when you need an "appliance" that you
| can turn on and forget about.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| No. The BSD world doesn't work like that. You either use the
| system because you like it, or you don't. Nobody is going to
| convince you.
|
| The only "reason" to use any BSD over another system is because
| you want to. That's why you never get a good answer.
| brightball wrote:
| I switched from Mac to Ubuntu 4 years ago and I'll happily say
| that I won't go back.
|
| Everything does "just work" and I have a development
| environment that mirrors my production environment because of
| it. All of the dev tools run smoothly with Linux. As a bonus, I
| can run it on any laptop I like regardless of whether Apple
| decides the configuration should exist (RIP 17" MBP).
|
| Corporate environments or personal stuff, I haven't found
| anything that I personally need that I can't do.
|
| Legitimately, the only tool that I miss from OSX is OmniGraffle
| for making diagrams. Draw.io is good, but Omni was a special
| kind of polished. If they ever decided to release a cross
| platform version I'd buy.
|
| There was an initial learning curve the first month when I
| committed to it, but I don't spend time having to get into the
| weeds of the system unless I just want to do something
| complicated.
|
| All that said, this is something that I'm personally happy with
| and love. I won't recommend it to family and friends.
|
| I'll recommend Apple for them because I know I can count on
| Apple Care to handle all of their problems, which keeps me from
| getting those same tech support calls.
|
| For me though? I'll never go back if I can avoid it.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _All that said, this is something that I 'm personally
| happy with and love. I won't recommend it to family and
| friends._
|
| For family that uses their computers to access the internet
| and their email, Ubuntu LTS releases have been great. I'm of
| the opinion that if someone's use-case can be addressed with
| a Chromebook, then Ubuntu with Firefox or Chrome would serve
| them just as well.
| darrowG wrote:
| Hello fellow Ubuntu user!
|
| I made the switch from Windows almost 8 years ago, i actually
| loved the Uinity DE, these days i'm rocking Kubuntu on my
| work laptop, somehow Gnome 3 doesn't feel the same...but i
| reeallly like Plasma.
|
| Somehow everything just works, my hardware is probably
| running on blobs of proprietary software but i really don't
| care ( i care about getting my work done tho).
|
| I actually recommend Ubuntu/Linux to family and friends
| (granted that they don't do any kind of specialized work), my
| 8-yo nephews have been using KDE since the beginning of the
| pandemic and after a week of getting used to it i haven't
| received a support call.
|
| Totally understand the appeal of configuring/tweaking every
| single detail of the OS to one's desire (been there,done
| that), as times goes by and life happens i rather spent that
| time with my family or hobbies
| amatecha wrote:
| For diagrams, have you tried PlantUML [0]? I've just recently
| been trying it out and found it very easy to work with. Being
| able to compose diagrams with text is so powerful IMO (and
| excellent for collaboration). Definitely take a look if you
| haven't already. There are plugins for most IDEs as well so
| you can live-edit your diagrams. It's open source too which
| is a huge plus (if not a requirement altogether).
|
| [0] https://plantuml.com/
| jll29 wrote:
| I would agree Omni's software is the one thing that one might
| miss moving from MacOS to Linux.
|
| For me, I miss OmniGraffle and also OmniPlan. OmniGraffle
| lets one make nicer-looking drawings more quickly than
| anything on Linux that I've seen (xfig, ImageMagick & co.),
| and OmniGraffle is a slick and much simplear and cleaner
| project management software than e.g. MS Project and even
| Merlin.
|
| (For the record, I never "moved" from MacOS to Linux, but
| I've been using Macs on and off at work as secondary machines
| in parallel to Slackware Linux, SuSe Linux, Red Hat Linux and
| eventually the Ubuntu LTS Linux of the day).
| jxy wrote:
| Stability. I don't have to chase the "next shinny thingamajig".
| For example, I have a code that uses OSS that worked 20 years
| ago on FreeBSD, and it still works now.
| tlhunter wrote:
| If you hop in one of the BSD subreddits you'll find that every
| other post is someone asking your same question. You might find
| some enlightenment there.
| Koshkin wrote:
| Unfortunately, most of the answers that I have seen come down
| to saying one and the same thing, namely, that a BSD is
| better because its userland is "part of the OS." Though could
| be true, this is not very enlightening.
| ragnese wrote:
| I agree. That's not a very compelling argument at all, IMO.
|
| I've read some other stuff, too, though, such as praise for
| the ports system and FreeBSD's "jails" feature.
|
| But I imagine it's a little like Linux distros. If you
| don't already use Linux, it's kind of hard to understand
| why anyone cares about the minor differences between
| distros.
| 0xFFFE wrote:
| Perhaps your question is too generic? It all boils down to
| "right tool for the job". If you need support for latest
| hardware (as a Desktop OS) you will have better luck with
| Linux than the BSDs. On the other hand if you want a free,
| rock solid UNIX OS to run a network/file server, look no
| further. Also, ZFS & Jails (before Docker was cool).
| blacktriangle wrote:
| This is a struggle for any system where the advantages
| really are in the details, but that's probably the best
| reason to choose BSD over linux.
|
| At some point you just have to commit enough effort to try
| it out and experience the difference, or just be happy with
| Linux. After all if you're happy with Linux, then BSD's
| userland is part of the OS isn't a fix for you. But if
| working with Linux leaves you with this weird itching
| sensation in your brain that there should be a better way,
| give BSD a shot.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| I've been a life-long Linux user and took a dive into the deep-
| end with FreeBSD recently. I find it extremely difficult to
| articulate the why. For example, you can say things like, the
| entire stack is maintained by the same entity. Ookkayy... so
| what? But it matters, and it matters in a nuance ways that's
| difficult to articulate but you notice it when using the
| system.
|
| Kinda feel bad for not being able to articulate it. It's not
| like I can point at one thing, e.g. the system call function
| foobar(2) is better. I either don't have enough FreeBSD
| experience or I'm not smart enough. Here are some things I've
| enjoyed:
|
| - I didn't realize how terrible iptables was until I used pf on
| FreeBSD
|
| - I didn't want to master yet another networking abstraction
| that docker introduces for configuring containers. Granted, I
| have not used VNETs on Jails.
|
| - I like to _invest_ in the tech stack that I learn and not
| have it change the next release. I have more trust in the
| stability of FreeBSDs choices and roadmap.
|
| - I like how light-weight the base OS install is.
|
| - I like that FreeBSD doesn't use systemd and I like the
| simplicity of rc(8).
|
| - I like that jail has stronger integration with the OS, like
| installing packages into a jail.
|
| - I like that the book, "design and implementation of freebsd
| o/s 2nd edition" is available and my hope is that it's still
| relevant.
|
| Something things I don't like:
|
| - There are subtle differences in tooling and outputs that
| surprise me. Nothing I haven't been able to work-around. E.g. I
| learned that GNU Make has made _vast_ improvements to make
| that's available on BSDs. Not a big deal but had to install gnu
| make and invoke it as gmake.
|
| - I miss cgroups.
| ianai wrote:
| You can usually trust the manpage in bsd land. That's not
| anywhere near as dependable in Linux land. The system
| upgrades are much tighter when every component is maintained
| by one organization. Its historical killer feature (for a
| while) was zfs, but Linux has that now too. In FreeBSD though
| zfs is 'native'.
| andrewzah wrote:
| For me, stability. I put OpenBSD on my router and it is really
| quite nice to administrate it with unbound, dhcpd, and pf. Rc
| is significantly nicer to work with than systemd.
|
| OpenBSD's documentation in general is very high quality, and
| FreeBSD to a lesser extent. Other distros are not really
| documented as well, so I have to rely on adapting information
| from the arch wiki most of the time.
|
| For FreeBSD, jails are nice but I prefer docker. (which I have
| to use anyways for work).
|
| Both FreeBSD & OpenBSD have a nicer user experience in general,
| in my experience. That said, I can't use them as daily drivers
| due to not having docker and other tools, and gaming. Linux
| isn't stellar for games but I can at least run a lot of games
| these days through Proton, etc.
| craftkiller wrote:
| I'm not a developer of either OS, but I use both.
|
| Pro FreeBSD:
|
| - ZFS, the best file system. Its fully integrated into the OS
| so it always works and its always there. I've always run into
| issues using ZFS on linux like cache not getting freed causing
| processes to get killed when I should have had ram available.
|
| - VNET Jails. I can give each light container (FreeBSD would be
| jails, Linux would be docker/lxd/nspawn...) its own networking
| stack so it can bring its own network interface up and down,
| assign its IP address, get an address from my router over DHCP
| like any other computer, and run its own firewall. The firewall
| bit is particularly helpful for running brute force protection
| like fail2ban/sshguard/blacklistd.
|
| - Additionally, I can delegate a ZFS dataset to a jail and let
| the jail manage it itself. This lets the jail create sub-
| datasets with control settings like transparent compression.
|
| - After using pf (its a firewall) on FreeBSD, using iptables on
| Linux makes me want to walk into the ocean.
|
| - Its really trivial to build everything from source on
| FreeBSD. The base system comes with everything you need to
| build the operating system so rebuilding FreeBSD and installing
| your new build is just a couple of make commands away. For
| packages, FreeBSD has a tool call poudriere which is the best
| package builder I've ever used. I use that to compile packages
| with custom options and CPU optimizations enabled for the
| specific processor in each of my machines for multiple versions
| of FreeBSD. It also makes debugging and modifying FreeBSD a
| breeze. For example, at my previous company we had 802.1x
| authentication for our ethernet, but I wanted to run a
| container directly connecting to the network so I had it behind
| a bridge. Turns out in the 802.1d spec it specifies that the
| ethernet frames used for 802.1x authentication should not be
| passed over a bridge, so I found the part of the code that did
| that filtering, commented it out, rebuilt FreeBSD, and
| everything started working!
|
| - Bragging rights
|
| Pros for Linux:
|
| - The Arch Linux wiki is really top-notch. The FreeBSD man
| pages are better than the man pages on Linux but I much prefer
| the Arch Linux wiki over the FreeBSD handbook.
|
| - You get a lot of features from systemd that aren't in
| widespread use in FreeBSD. For example, you trivially get
| process monitoring/restarting and stdout/stderr capture for
| every service. You can get the same functionality with a built-
| in tool called "daemon" in FreeBSD but its up to each service
| to call daemon as opposed to being built into the init system
| so its a lot less common. Essentially, I have to write custom
| service files a lot more often on FreeBSD.
|
| - systemd user services
|
| - steam
| JdeBP wrote:
| For what it's worth, one can take systemd services and
| convert them into service bundles that run under a service
| manager on FreeBSD. Or use one of several hundred service
| bundles that have been done for you for various softwares.
| There is also a per-user service manager.
|
| * http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/
|
| * http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/worked-example.html
|
| * http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/guide/converting-systemd-
| uni...
|
| * http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/guide/per-user-user-
| services...
| brobdingnagians wrote:
| I use OpenBSD for most of my servers, with FreeBSD mixed in
| too. It is very simple to administer, easy to upgrade
| (sysupgrade every six months, syspatch otherwise), reliable,
| and fits how I like to administer it. Pf on OpenBSD has pf auth
| which allows unblocking ports for users who have sshed in,
| which is nice when you are on a dynamic IP. It is generally
| just a nice system, minimalist, and straight forward. I don't
| want a million moving parts, just a UNIX platform to build on.
| mjthompson wrote:
| I've recently switched my home network jump box to OpenBSD.
| Still learning the basics. I didn't even know about authpf.
| I'm reading the docs now and it looks great. Thanks for
| sharing that.
| aj3 wrote:
| > sysupgrade every six months, syspatch otherwise
|
| But that won't keep your system up to date with security
| patches, because OpenBSD does not rebuild binary packages.
| nix23 wrote:
| Sure they do, and he talked just about the system, remember
| packets and the system are two different thing in the bsd-
| world.
| aj3 wrote:
| I doubt anyone manages to get with just the OpenBSD
| system on their desktop. Browsers in particular are a
| gaping security hole if not updated regularly.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| They do now.
|
| _Binary packages for -stable are rebuilt only for security
| issues or other major fixes. Simply call pkg_add(1) with
| the -u flag to get the new files._
|
| https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq10.html#Patches
| aj3 wrote:
| But that's just not true, check out how often they
| rebuild Chromium for their stable branch.
| chungy wrote:
| Chromium isn't part of the base system. There's some
| misunderstanding here between the base system and ports.
| hpoe wrote:
| I'll say that the reason I have been considering switching is
| more of an ideological, not bragging rights, but after years of
| seeing free software be attacked and assaulted by supposedly
| "friendly" companies, who are constantly trying to take away my
| power to control my machine it pushes me to want to take some
| sort of stand. It may not be much but least I am doing
| something.
|
| The only other big thing holding me back was the tooling but
| now that I've switched most of my workflow to Emacs, the option
| of choosing FreeBSD is becoming more and more appealing.
|
| EDIT: Just be clear, I have been using Ubuntu as my daily
| driver since 2012; however I don't love all the decisions
| Canonical has made, I don't like how the entire ecosystem has
| grown to a level of complexity that makes it hard to understand
| what the hell is happening under the hood, and I am beyond
| peeved about the havoc systemd-resolver has wrought on my
| system.
|
| EDIT 2: If anyone has any other suggestions for a better more
| free distro that I can use I'd love the advice, the thing
| keeping me form Hurd is worrying that it won't have full driver
| support.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Why FreeBSD and not Linux?
| spijdar wrote:
| Based on the subtext of GP's comment, I'm guessing they're
| either offended by RedHat, Canonical, and/or Microsoft's
| various involvements, things like systemd or snapd, and
| think it taints the whole linux ecosystem.
| selectodude wrote:
| I'm curious how they would feel about Bell Labs. Sounds
| like a proprietary OS that happened to be open source
| wouldn't go over well either.
| jtdev wrote:
| > "years of seeing free software be attacked and assaulted
| by supposedly "friendly" companies, who are constantly
| trying to take away my power to control my machine"
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.en.html
|
| And how is upstreaming things an attack?
| mumblemumble wrote:
| Personally, I see Linux as a major attack vector. Binary
| blobs are a big skeleton in Linux's closet. One reason why
| big business got behind Linux is their ability to have
| closed source, binary firmware blobs baked into device
| drivers. You can choose instead to use Linux-libre, of
| course, but your user experience will suffer about as much
| as it would by choosing any other *nix with poor
| proprietary driver support.
| spijdar wrote:
| FreeBSD is comparatively more friendly to proprietary
| blobs, as it maintains a stable kernel ABI within major
| releases. [0]
|
| Even choosing to ignore any blobbed drivers, Linux will
| still have better software compatibility, and still
| generally superior hardware compatibility. Certainly not
| _worse_ hardware support. Linux supports more classes of
| hardware like wifi adapters, while FreeBSD is stuck
| trying to bring up newer standards. It also requires the
| same firmware blobs that Linux does -- in the end,
| whether on Linux or FreeBSD, if you dislike binary blobs
| in your drivers, you just have to limit yourself to
| hardware that doesn 't require them.
|
| [0] https://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=284199+
| 0+/usr/...
| pjmlp wrote:
| Big business like Sony and Apple prefer BSD exactly
| because of not having to provide everything to upstream.
| jchw wrote:
| > sysctl hw.acpi.lid_switch_state=S3
|
| Hmm. This makes it seem like it just blindly sleeps on lid
| events. I prefer sleep on lid close to wait a bit then check to
| see if any displays are connected and on. That works a lot better
| for docked setups. On Linux, some part of systemd handles this.
| Is there an alternative in FreeBSD?
| JediPig wrote:
| I would buy a modern , fully supported , freebsd laptop in a
| heart beat, 11th gen cpu or ryzen 4800 / 5900hx...
|
| However its a pain to find one fully compatible.
| aphextron wrote:
| The problem with BSD on a laptop has always been wifi drivers. Is
| it anywhere near usable yet?
| tedunangst wrote:
| Yes.
| topkeks wrote:
| Another comment in this thread with one of the most common
| laptops disagrees.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26492848
| sedatk wrote:
| > "Full Desktop Experience"
|
| > Now, write all these obscure commands on terminal, and edit all
| these cryptic text files.
|
| :/
|
| I love FreeBSD in many ways, but seeing bar for desktop
| experience that low saddens me.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Would the same argument work for an article titled "Well Done
| Steak" that mention how meat should be prepared before it is
| done
| ganafagol wrote:
| Totally. It's 2021 after all. It should just work out of the
| box. Who in their right mind would want to buy meat that's
| not fully cooked yet? And then discuss it on Chefs News?
| Ridiculous.
| sedatk wrote:
| If it's sold as a "ready to eat steak" (hence the title), I
| wouldn't expect cooking instructions, yes.
| sedatk wrote:
| If it's titled "Fast food steak experience", yes.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| Methinks you have a different cultural understanding from the
| auctor of this article.
|
| Terminal commands are typically not seen as some inferior way
| to do this, in want of a better solution to eventually be
| developed, they are given because they are the fastest,
| clearest way of doing something, especially in online
| discourse.
|
| Explaining via text, or even images, how to navigate a dialog
| window to achieve something is quite a bit more involved than
| telling a man to copy a simple command.
|
| There exists a dialog window based interface to `pkg`, as far
| as I know; it is simply seldom used as it is considered
| inefficient compared to the terminal commands.
| aflag wrote:
| I think the problem raised is that it should just work, not
| require tinkering, regardless of how you do the tinkering.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| I'm not sure how the philosophy of minimal install _vs._
| full install has anything to do with a "desktop
| experience".
|
| The "tinkering" is nothing more than installing optional
| software which one may or may not want, in this case
| suspending and installing _XFCE_.
| aflag wrote:
| Why would someone not want suspending to be enabled if
| their machine is capable? Why is DBUS, NTP and slim (I
| don't even know what that one is) not enabled by default
| when the user signals they want to use xfce? You have to
| have a lot of knowledge to just have a basic install in
| your laptop. Compare that to windows, macos and ubuntu
| that drop you in a desktop friendly environment as soon
| as you finish the install.
|
| I know that's not FreeBSD's goal nor am I saying that it
| ought be. I'm just stating the fact that it is not an
| easy to use system for the uninitiated and it will
| require at least a little bit of browsing the internet
| and trying things for all but the most experienced
| FreeBSD users, if they choose to adopt it as their
| desktop system.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| > _Why would someone not want suspending to be enabled if
| their machine is capable?_
|
| Because suspending is very hardware dependent, for it to
| work everywhere one must install specific drivers for
| everything.
|
| Note that the suspending installation steps are about the
| specific hardware of the auctor as an example.
|
| It's as though one expects not having to install drivers
| for one's specific graphics card very specific mouse that
| has unique features.
|
| > _Why is DBUS, NTP and slim (I don 't even know what
| that one is) not enabled by default when the user signals
| they want to use xfce?_
|
| Because installing a package does not automatically start
| a service, that would be very annoying.
|
| The user did not indicate that he wished to use _XFCE_ ,
| only that he wished to install it. -- I would personally
| be supremely annoyed if by merely installing software,
| which I might simply do to inspect some of it's files,
| all sorts of services would suddenly be started,
| especially if this be _DBus_ , which has a reputation
| with it's "DBus activation" mechanism of starting a bunch
| of other things because it guesses that the user wants
| them started based on similar heuristics as you
| suggested.
|
| The next thing I know, _DBus_ has started
| _NetworkManager_ , which has then suddenly overwritten
| some configuration files, all because I installed _XFCE_
| , without even deciding whether I wanted to run it.
|
| It is very good practice for installation to purely be
| installation and place files on the filesystem, not start
| any processes. -- the user can do that at any point if he
| so choose.
|
| > _You have to have a lot of knowledge to just have a
| basic install in your laptop. Compare that to windows,
| macos and ubuntu that drop you in a desktop friendly
| environment as soon as you finish the install._
|
| _FreeBSD_ 's cards are on the table here with their
| target audience.
|
| The systems you mentioned indeed take another approach,
| and I'm sure they have their reasons to, but _FreeBSD_
| has very good reasons for it 's own, and I personally
| find the idea of a system that starts all sorts of
| processes because it guessed that he user willed it so to
| be quite annoying.
| aflag wrote:
| > Because suspending is very hardware dependent, for it
| to work everywhere one must install specific drivers for
| everything.
|
| That's a solved problem (except for the most exotic
| devices) in Windows and Ubuntu. Mac OS, obviously,
| doesn't even have that problem.
|
| > It's as though one expects not having to install
| drivers for one's specific graphics card very specific
| mouse that has unique features.
|
| That's exactly what one expects from a desktop system.
| That the system just works out what you have and install
| whatever is needed to make it work.
|
| > The user did not indicate that he wished to use XFCE,
| only that he wished to install it. -- I would personally
| be supremely annoyed if by merely installing software,
| which I might simply do to inspect some of it's files,
| all sorts of services would suddenly be started,
| especially if this be DBus, which has a reputation with
| it's "DBus activation" mechanism of starting a bunch of
| other things because it guesses that the user wants them
| started based on similar heuristics as you suggested.
|
| You would be personally annoyed, but other people would
| be personally annoyed about not having a graphical
| interface ready after the install for their desktop
| system. On top of that, even when they try to install the
| graphical interface for that system, nothing works unless
| they understand (albeit not deeply) the inner workings of
| said system.
|
| I'm not saying you're wrong about not wanting that, but
| most people expect their desktop system to just work, not
| require googling around why xfce4 won't start. Remember,
| we are talking here about desktop computers, where the
| end goal is to run a browser, a video game, an IDE, a
| video editor, etc.
|
| > The next thing I know, DBus has started NetworkManager,
| which has then suddenly overwritten some configuration
| files, all because I installed XFCE, without even
| deciding whether I wanted to run it.
|
| NetworkManager does solve some of the problems for
| desktop users who don't want to understand any more of
| the system than absolutely necessary. Starting it as soon
| as possible will just help people.
|
| > FreeBSD's cards are on the table here with their target
| audience.
|
| This was a later edit on my post and you may have missed
| it:
|
| > I know that's not FreeBSD's goal nor am I saying that
| it ought be. I'm just stating the fact that it is not an
| easy to use system for the uninitiated and it will
| require at least a little bit of browsing the internet
| and trying things for all but the most experienced
| FreeBSD users, if they choose to adopt it as their
| desktop system.
|
| Not saying that FreeBSD don't have their reasons, just
| saying that most people expect something else from their
| desktop systems.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| > _That 's a solved problem (except for the most exotic
| devices) in Windows and Ubuntu. Mac OS, obviously,
| doesn't even have that problem._
|
| The problem is solved by simply installing the drivers
| and modules for everything.
|
| > _That 's exactly what one expects from a desktop
| system. That the system just works out what you have and
| install whatever is needed to make it work._
|
| That's what you expect, that has nothing to do with
| whether the system is "desktop" or not.
|
| The fact that many desktop-only systems exist that are
| worthless for servers or phones that do not follow this
| philosophy makes it clear that this is not what everyone
| expects, especially when many of these drivers are
| proprietary, and many users have ideological objections
| to having them on their system altogether.
|
| > _You would be personally annoyed, but other people
| would be personally annoyed about not having a graphical
| interface ready after the install for their desktop
| system. On top of that, even when they try to install the
| graphical interface for that system, nothing works unless
| they understand (albeit not deeply) the inner workings of
| said system._
|
| And they can use the systems they want.
|
| I am merely pointing out that how _FreeBSD_ does this is
| well thought out, and has it 's reasons with respect to
| what it's users expect.
|
| > _I 'm not saying you're wrong about not wanting that,
| but most people expect their desktop system to just work,
| not require googling around why xfce4 won't start.
| Remember, we are talking here about desktop computers,
| where the end goal is to run a browser, a video game, an
| IDE, a video editor, etc._
|
| I would be surprised if those were the end goals of most
| _FreeBSD_ desktop users.
|
| _NetworkManager does solve some of the problems for
| desktop users who don 't want to understand any more of
| the system than absolutely necessary. Starting it as soon
| as possible will just help people._
|
| _N.M._ has a reputation of being most undesirable
| software among many that not only very often leads to
| loss of internet, but also takes control of one 's
| configuration and alters it without warning. -- many
| avoid it as though it be the plague.
|
| > _I know that 's not FreeBSD's goal nor am I saying that
| it ought be. I'm just stating the fact that it is not an
| easy to use system for the uninitiated and it will
| require at least a little bit of browsing the internet
| and trying things for all but the most experienced
| FreeBSD users, if they choose to adopt it as their
| desktop system._
|
| What would any of that have to do with desktops?
|
| I daresay that desktops are probably more likely to be
| manned by "initiated" users than laptop and phones are.
|
| I fail to see what "desktop" has to do with "initiated"?
| are you suggesting that "initiated" users should rather
| use a phone or laptop?
|
| It is a desktop system for what you call the "initiated";
| these two are completely orthogonal axes.
| canadianfella wrote:
| Methinks?
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| Probably the last remnant in English of Germanic impersonal
| verbs, a common feature of many Germanic languages where
| the subject of many nonvolitional verbs of perception is in
| the dative case rather than the nominative.
|
| It is fossilized now in a fixed expression, but the verb
| "thinks" here is actually a different verb from the modern
| verb "think". This difference is very much alive in, say,
| Dutch, where one would say " _Ik denk dat ..._ " for " _I
| think that ..._ ", but " _Me dunkt dat ..._ " with a
| different vowel for the same meaning as "methinks", which
| denotes a less voluntary perception, an observation if one
| will.
|
| It's not that dissimilar to " _To me, it appears that ..._
| " I suppose, with the key difference that the grammar does
| not demand another subject. It is simply " _Methinks that
| ..._ ", not " _Me, it thinks that ..._.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| In modern English, I don't see any difference between
| "methinks" and "I think" it's just two ways of saying the
| same thing. If anyone sees a different shade of meaning
| between the two, what is it? And "To me, it appears
| that..." is just more words to say "I think..."
| [deleted]
| ganafagol wrote:
| This is _Hacker_ news and the top comment complains about that
| the cited article uses some not-too-strange command line
| tweaks?
|
| That's sad.
| sedatk wrote:
| I criticize the article based on its claim, not my
| expectations.
| walrus01 wrote:
| I really like the _idea_ here - I was using a FreeBSD desktop 18
| years ago with KDE2.
|
| But in terms of actually being able to get things done as a
| desktop workstation, and software I can run natively on it, I
| could replicate almost exactly the same setup starting from a
| bare bones debian bullseye (testing) install, then adding xorg
| and xfce4 and customizing xfce4.
|
| That's the setup I'm using now - I ended up adding a ton of gnome
| and kde related libraries so that I can run software derived from
| both projects. Yes it uses multiple gigabytes of disk space, but
| now I have a solid setup that can run just about any Linux GUI
| application, and Windows 10 inside virtualbox full screen on a
| second monitor to the side.
| Koshkin wrote:
| And for some of us (not sure how many), there's Debian kFreeBSD.
| rleigh wrote:
| I used to run it. Initially as a VM on Debian, later inside a
| jail on FreeBSD. It worked nicely.
|
| The main criticism I have of it is that it is a solution in
| search of a problem. Why would I use it in preference to either
| vanilla FreeBSD or vanilla Debian? I eventually made the move
| and just went to vanilla FreeBSD. It avoids the potential for
| any subtle incompatibilities you might encounter between the
| FreeBSD kernel and a foreign userland that was never intended
| to be used with it.
|
| Don't get me wrong, it's a great technical achievement. But I'm
| sceptical that it has major value.
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| AFAIK, that has been deprecated at around the same time as LSB
| (2015?) due to systemd and gnomisms such as gnome's login,
| dbus, etc. invading every single package. I guess, nowadays the
| Devuan developers maintain a Debian version that should be as
| close to a starting point for a new Debian system running on a
| FreeBSD kernel as it gets.
| mikece wrote:
| I would love to be able to switch to FreeBSD but the one thing
| holding me back is support for .NET Core (and lack of VS Code
| support if that also doesn't run on FreeBSD -- but that's moot if
| .NET Core support isn't there). Docker support would be _nice_
| but isn 't essential since code can be checked in to a Linux-
| based build server and VS Code can attach to a Docker instance on
| another machine.
| jcadam wrote:
| Big sticking point for me is I'm doing development targeting
| Linux. As much as I feel *BSD is superior, I need the right
| tools to do my job.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| I dunno.. but the very first betas of dot net were actually
| available for FreeBSD. I remember downloading the spice for it
| way back. I'm surprised if it's not available.
| mikece wrote:
| Are you talking about "Rotor" back in 2005 or 2006 right
| before Silverlight came out?
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Uff I think it was actually before 2005. Was a long time
| ago. I recall it was open source, which was a surprise to
| me. It was definitely called dot net.
|
| I think it was more towards 2001 or something, with the
| whole Java dispute between SUN and Microsoft. Visual J++
| had some sort of dialect. (loved the IDE though, microsoft
| has always been good at developer tools).
|
| Before that I was more interested in fahrenheit //
| openscene graph between Microsoft and SGI.
| bpye wrote:
| .NET Core can be build for FreeBSD [0] but it looks like there
| isn't official support.
|
| [0] -
| https://github.com/jasonpugsley/installer/wiki/.NET-5.0-Prev...
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| It's coming. Progress is being tracked in these places:
|
| https://github.com/dotnet/source-build/issues/1139
|
| https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/14537
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > I would love to be able to switch to FreeBSD
|
| Curious what you think you would personally gain other than the
| much-repeated mantra of "they have organized man docs and a
| strong set of CLI userland tools because they are developed
| alongside the kernel"
| nix23 wrote:
| ZFS DTRACE and pf....oh and the mantra.
| mixedCase wrote:
| BSD ZFS I believe uses the same code as Linux nowadays or
| was at least planning to.
|
| eBPF should cover your other two needs, by way of itself
| and through bpftrace.
| laumars wrote:
| > _BSD ZFS I believe uses the same code as Linux nowadays
| or was at least planning to._
|
| Just because FreeBSD and Linux share the same ZFS
| upstream it doesn't mean the experience of running ZFS on
| Linux is in any way comparable to running it on FreeBSD.
|
| For starters, it's a default in FreeBSD rather than an
| optional driver you have to install yourself (or even
| compile yourself on some distros). And that along makes a
| massive difference when it comes to maintenance.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| What is the benefit of using ZFS on a personal or dev
| machine? I almost never tinker with filesystem partitions
| or allocation once I set them up as part of installing an
| OS. I occasionally do on a production machine if I've
| misjudged space needed for something, but there again
| it's pretty rare.
| JdeBP wrote:
| Boot environments for operating system upgrades. They
| take advantage of ZFS.
| laumars wrote:
| Snapshots was the biggie that made me switch to ZFS more
| than 10 years ago. Never looked back.
| [deleted]
| nix23 wrote:
| Oh it's massive especially for kernel-devs/os-devs,
| snapshots and boot-environments (bectl)....for personal
| machines...zfs-send..never have to think about correct
| backups/restores anymore.
| orhmeh09 wrote:
| Those sound like excellent gains in and of themselves.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Well, I was thinking more like "They have organized man docs,
| and a strong set of CLI user land tools because they are
| developed alongside the kernel." But I'm an Oxford comma man
| myself.
| YooLi wrote:
| Google Oxford comma. It's not simply a comma before an
| 'and'.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| I know, it was a joke on His dismissiveness. I'm only
| half as clever as I try to be
| shrubble wrote:
| I guess that is the question, is it the fault of .NET core or
| FreeBSD , that it is not availabe for FreeBSD?
| mikece wrote:
| I blame Scott Hanselman for not achieving "dotNet
| Everywhere." :-)
| mariusmg wrote:
| Funny thing is there was a .NET Framework "port" to FreeNSD
| a long time ago called Rotor...
| maxrev17 wrote:
| Looooool
| Koshkin wrote:
| Well, it's _not_ the hardware vendor who is usually blamed
| for a lack of a device driver for Linux (or a BSD).
| mumblemumble wrote:
| Maybe it's nobody's fault?
|
| I don't blame Microsoft for not spending limited resources on
| providing official support for an OS with (wildly guessing)
| 0.25% marketshare. And I don't blame FreeBSD for not spending
| limited resources on maintaining their own packages for an
| SDK with (wildly guessing) 0.75% marketshare among non-
| Windows users.
| shilch wrote:
| (A port of) Visual Studio Code is available for FreeBSD (using
| it myself); `pkg install vscode`. If you would like to use
| docker, you could run a Linux distro in a virtual machine with
| docker daemon and configure your host docker command to use the
| daemon inside the VM. That's basically how docker works on
| macOS.
| LeSaucy wrote:
| For docker on freebsd to get any traction, it would need to
| be implemented with the vm behind the scenes. The beauty of
| the macOS/windows versions are that they require 0
| setup/maintenance and are an implementation detail.
| nix23 wrote:
| >docker on freebsd to get any traction
|
| Yeah no thanks....run bhyve..with buntu and than your
| docker...have (no) fun.
|
| That's "docker" for freebsd:
|
| https://bastillebsd.org/
| pimeys wrote:
| Instead of _switching_, I just got a used ThinkPad from ebay
| for a secondary OS, installed FreeBSD to it and I'm having a
| blast exploring a non-Linux OS and trying things out on that
| side. You don't need to go all-in, but do things gradually and
| see if FreeBSD offers you any new insights how an operating
| system could look like.
|
| I also have a NixOS laptop and my main Arch Linux workstation
| for work use.
| billfruit wrote:
| Does steam work on Freebsd?
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| It can be made to run, but I can't really recommend it unless
| you enjoy tinkering/troubleshooting. It's still pretty far from
| being a "plug-and-play" experience.
| trasz wrote:
| Largely. Here's the web page tracking current status:
| https://github.com/shkhln/linuxulator-steam-utils/wiki/Compa...
| thesuitonym wrote:
| In some cases, better than Linux:
| https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux_ga...
| moistbar wrote:
| Just FYI, that info is now 10 years old. I recently
| researched switching to FreeBSD and found that the NVidia
| drivers don't support Vulkan, which is a requirement for DXVK
| to work, not to mention a lot of Linux ports. Can't comment
| on the other manufacturers' drivers though.
| Jonnax wrote:
| Nexuiz, OpenArena, World of Padman.
|
| I've got nothing against those games but they're ancient.
|
| They'd run on a 15 year old ThinkPad with integrated
| graphics.
|
| Steam Proton allows you the run new games on Linux like Final
| Fantasy XV, Witcher 3, Death Stranding, Hitman 2, Doom
| Eternal.
|
| Actual blockbuster games from the last few years.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| It's a 10 year old article. Of course the games are old. It
| might be that things are different now, or the same. But it
| still answers the question: Does steam work on FreeBSD
| (Yes), and is still accurate (Sometimes better)
| moistbar wrote:
| Considering the age of the article, and the fact that I'm
| unable to find any information on Vulkan support for any
| manufacturer's drivers, I'm going to go out on a limb and
| say that Steam (more specifically Proton) doesn't work as
| well as it does on Linux.
| trasz wrote:
| The documentation is certainly lacking, but sources such
| as https://github.com/FreeBSDDesktop/kms-drm/issues/130
| suggest that Vulkan support is there, at least for
| Radeon.
| Jonnax wrote:
| Steam was released on Linux 2 years after that article.
|
| Googling "freebsd steam" doesn't really indicate that
| it's easy to get it running.
|
| The frames per seconds in those results are 150fps+ 10
| years ago. You may as well have said that Tux Racer runs
| faster on FreeBSD.
|
| I doubt people are running variable refresh rate on 360hz
| monitors on FreeBSD to fully enjoy the advantage of
| playing these ancient games.
|
| What's the point in being disingenuous?
| minieggs wrote:
| Yes. Well enough to play Counter Strike: Global Offensive.
|
| Beware, as soon as I switched to FreeBSD on the desktop my
| trust factor tanked.
|
| https://www.freshports.org/games/linux-steam-utils/
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