I find the BSDs interesting, but as a desktop user I feel like using Linux is the right balance between freedom, desired features, and support from hardware vendors and developers. I don't know if...
I find the BSDs interesting, but as a desktop user I feel like using Linux is the right balance between freedom, desired features, and support from hardware vendors and developers. I don't know if I have the guts and the energy to become even more of an edge case.
SysV (and thus Linux, deriving from SysV) tends to interpret the filesystem hierarchy rather... creatively. If your system has it, /var/lib tends to be, um, something of a hodgepodge.
SysV (and thus Linux, deriving from SysV) tends to interpret the filesystem hierarchy rather... creatively. If your system has it, /var/lib tends to be, um, something of a hodgepodge.
I bought a used Thinkpad x220 from eBay for about 250 USD and it supports everything out of the box. Wifi, suspend, even hibernate. All I needed to do was install firmware for the wifi. I hate...
I bought a used Thinkpad x220 from eBay for about 250 USD and it supports everything out of the box. Wifi, suspend, even hibernate. All I needed to do was install firmware for the wifi. I hate fiddling with things these days (which is why I'm all-Apple otherwise), and this machine was truly a treat to set up. It's got an SSD and a reasonable amount of memory, so even building things from source is mostly reasonable. Works really well as a coding / LaTeX / Maxima workstation.
I used to be like that. Then my interests changed. I had a Funtoo (Gentoo fork) laptop that was incredibly customized, focusing on power management. I could get 24h of continuous use from it...
I used to be like that. Then my interests changed. I had a Funtoo (Gentoo fork) laptop that was incredibly customized, focusing on power management. I could get 24h of continuous use from it without plugging in. But I decided that I was spending too much time optimizing the system and not enough time using it.
dmesg lists it as "Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6205". The driver is iwn(4). I don't think it works without the firmware, but that was really the only thing I needed to do to get everything to work.
dmesg lists it as "Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6205". The driver is iwn(4). I don't think it works without the firmware, but that was really the only thing I needed to do to get everything to work.
That’s nice, but everything I read about BSD tells me that’s the exception. And I don’t think my Lenovo is very FOSS friendly. I also require oficial support for stuff, because I don’t have the...
That’s nice, but everything I read about BSD tells me that’s the exception. And I don’t think my Lenovo is very FOSS friendly.
I also require oficial support for stuff, because I don’t have the time or the knowledge to maintain neither the system nor my my own software.
Sounds like someone is not employing the Unix philosophy: small [devices] that do one thing well. Instead of making your BSD machine do Netflix, use a different device. Maybe even something cheap...
but not having Netflix is a downside for me while in a relationship
Sounds like someone is not employing the Unix philosophy: small [devices] that do one thing well. Instead of making your BSD machine do Netflix, use a different device. Maybe even something cheap like an rPi.
Well maybe a good middle ground is to install an external harddrive or another partition on your computer just to mess around with *BSD. Guessing from it being 7+ years old, it might be a bit of...
Well maybe a good middle ground is to install an external harddrive or another partition on your computer just to mess around with *BSD. Guessing from it being 7+ years old, it might be a bit of an issue to run a VM on.
Not everyone has the money for that. Or the time to bother manage multiple machines. And Unix philosophy is a dogma about software. It does not apply to hardware. I can not copy my laptop or...
Not everyone has the money for that. Or the time to bother manage multiple machines.
And Unix philosophy is a dogma about software. It does not apply to hardware. I can not copy my laptop or apt-get a thinkpad.
The license part is a bit misleading as it seems to imply you cannot do business with a GPL license. This is demonstrably not true considering examples such as Canonical, SUSE, Redhat etc.
The license part is a bit misleading as it seems to imply you cannot do business with a GPL license. This is demonstrably not true considering examples such as Canonical, SUSE, Redhat etc.
A number of really nice things here, several of them why I chose OpenBSD for the Thinkpad I have (though the primary reason was better hardware support than FreeBSD, where wifi support is still...
A number of really nice things here, several of them why I chose OpenBSD for the Thinkpad I have (though the primary reason was better hardware support than FreeBSD, where wifi support is still nascent, suspend is iffy, and forget about hibernate). The interesting items on the list for me are reallocarray(3) and freezero(3). I'd not heard of them until now, and they'll definitely be useful for a hobby project I work on every now and then.
A few of these aren't OpenBSD-specific, rather "just not the nonsense that is Linux", like kernel and userland, license, no -dev packages (I miss this every time I suffer through using Linux), base system concept, pf (yes, it's developed first as part of OpenBSD, but ports to other systems e.g. FreeBSD generally aren't meaningfully behind except for niche usecases these days).
Still missing the cool features from Solaris (RIP) illumos like ZFS and DTrace.
In the "just not the nonsense that is Linux" spirit, though, it should absolutely list "no systemd".
edit: a tyop or two and a little more detail about FreeBSD's poor laptop support
If it was not for GPL and GNU, all BSDs would have been as esoteric as AmigaOS at this point; it is only thanks to the Free Software movement that we can use FOSS desktops. -dev/-doc pakages and...
If it was not for GPL and GNU, all BSDs would have been as esoteric as AmigaOS at this point; it is only thanks to the Free Software movement that we can use FOSS desktops.
-dev/-doc pakages and systemd are distro specific. Few of the most prolific distros don't separate dev and docs packages (Arch and derivatives, RedHat/Fedora and derivatives), and there are quite good distros that don't use systemd. Plus, systemd is not the devil people make it into. Especially on workstations.
ZFS and Dtrace work with Linux.
FreeBSD supports wifi better, tho suspend/resume is tricky (I never got it working). OpenBSD is the only OS that I had driver issues with recently. FreeBSD supports more hardware in general, OpenBSD only supports a few configurations good.
Linux is a different approach, and works just as good. Plus, GNU coreutils et al are just better than any BSD equivalents.
I like GNU/Linux, FreeBSD and OpenBSD almost equally. They are all good, and make decent workstations. Your comment includes a lot of misinformation tho. And I can't understand why "Linux" is nonsense.
I’ve been an Arch user for a few years now, but OpenBSD sounds really interesting. What would be the reasons for me to switch over? I’m assuming security would be the biggest factor?
I’ve been an Arch user for a few years now, but OpenBSD sounds really interesting. What would be the reasons for me to switch over? I’m assuming security would be the biggest factor?
Perceived security. Yes, the base is more secure, but you mostly use the same apps on Linux or BSD and they are not necessarily so just because they run on OpenBSD. If you are not running a...
Perceived security. Yes, the base is more secure, but you mostly use the same apps on Linux or BSD and they are not necessarily so just because they run on OpenBSD. If you are not running a server, there isn't much difference with regards to security.
Security is a by-product of the project's stated goals of code cleanliness and simplicity. Not having to deal with all of the nonsense of Linux is another big draw. It's hard to list things, as...
Security is a by-product of the project's stated goals of code cleanliness and simplicity. Not having to deal with all of the nonsense of Linux is another big draw. It's hard to list things, as there are so many, and some of them aren't as applicable to some Linux distros, but not having to install -dev packages (ironic that an operating system focused on open source by default tends to make it impossible to build things from source) and not having to deal with systemd are two big things for me. And the mindset is just different; Linux is grown, BSDs are designed.
You must not be paying attention then. Many things outlined in the linked article--things like no -dev packages, excellent manpages, etc.--all affect daily use.
BSDs don't really feel that different to Linux
You must not be paying attention then. Many things outlined in the linked article--things like no -dev packages, excellent manpages, etc.--all affect daily use.
"-dev packages" refers to things like header files and dynamic libraries that are required to build software. On just about every other kind of extant Unix (everything from BSDs and macOS to SunOS...
"-dev packages" refers to things like header files and dynamic libraries that are required to build software. On just about every other kind of extant Unix (everything from BSDs and macOS to SunOS and the various kinds of illumos; maybe AIX and HP-UX, too, but can't speak for them), packages are installed with these files; there's no separation between the two. So you don't need to think about "do I have the foo-dev package?" when you want to build software that uses the foo library. And you don't need to figure out which ones you need to build something from source.
Now, that said, that may not be part of what you need or want to do. It very much was something I did a lot, so I found it an immense annoyance when I did it on Linux. And also, I should be fair and say that Gentoo (and derivatives), and maybe other distros, don't deal with -dev packages. I ran a derivative for a while on a laptop and it was ... tolerable. No systemd, no -dev packages, no neutered wheel group, life was almost good.
I don't recall seeing them on Fedora, but it has been a while. Still, it is not the paradigm. And it is not that big of a problem. The separation comes in handy when you need to save space. There...
I don't recall seeing them on Fedora, but it has been a while. Still, it is not the paradigm. And it is not that big of a problem. The separation comes in handy when you need to save space. There probably is an apt config option that can make sure they are installed along with their respective packages.
Redhat does separate the two. For all of their packages there's a base and a dev package with 'dev' being the only difference in the name. They've been doing this for decades, almost since day one...
Redhat does separate the two. For all of their packages there's a base and a dev package with 'dev' being the only difference in the name. They've been doing this for decades, almost since day one of the company. The dev packages only need to be installed if you plan to do some compiling of your own, so it's possible to use Redhat and completely avoid ever touching a compiler.
If you do need to roll your own on Redhat, hunting up the right dev packages is a pain in the ass sometimes. Install one, it needs ten more, those need a couple each, on and on it goes. Their packaging tools have improved so it's not as bad as it once was.
Still, I'm not sure why so many shops prefer Redhat. I really only see it being used in situations where the bosses are fixated on expensive, meaningless support contracts so they have someone to yell at/sue when shit breaks (which it always does regardless of vendor/os).
I've also not used BSD (at least not extensively), but based on the other comment from @masochist I think they (and I by extension) were using the word dev packages to refer to all of the extra...
I've also not used BSD (at least not extensively), but based on the other comment from @masochist
not having to install -dev packages (ironic that an operating system focused on open source by default tends to make it impossible to build things from source)
I think they (and I by extension) were using the word dev packages to refer to all of the extra software you have to install to be able to build packages from source. For example, in Arch you have to install binutils and a few other packages, whereas if I understand correctly, all that functionality is baked in to BSD installs.
-dev packages as I'm referring to it are things like gstreamer0-dev (or whatever) which installs headers and things you need to build from source, not compiler toolchains--though BSD systems also...
-dev packages as I'm referring to it are things like gstreamer0-dev (or whatever) which installs headers and things you need to build from source, not compiler toolchains--though BSD systems also ship with things like compiler toolchains by default, whereas Linux distros tend to make you do that too.
I find the BSDs interesting, but as a desktop user I feel like using Linux is the right balance between freedom, desired features, and support from hardware vendors and developers. I don't know if I have the guts and the energy to become even more of an edge case.
Edge case? Please. True OS hipsters use Plan 9 From Bell Labs, augmented with some suckless.org software.
I'm sorry? Plan 9 is mainstream by now, real hipsters boot straight into Emacs.
There's also Inferno OS, which is modeled after Plan 9.
Somehow it has never occurred to me that
/libcould be for plain text documents. You know, like a library.SysV (and thus Linux, deriving from SysV) tends to interpret the filesystem hierarchy rather... creatively. If your system has it,
/var/libtends to be, um, something of a hodgepodge.Plan 9 from Bell Labs? Is that real or just a reference to the Ed Wood movie Plan 9 From Outer Space ?
Both!
perfection
I bought a used Thinkpad x220 from eBay for about 250 USD and it supports everything out of the box. Wifi, suspend, even hibernate. All I needed to do was install firmware for the wifi. I hate fiddling with things these days (which is why I'm all-Apple otherwise), and this machine was truly a treat to set up. It's got an SSD and a reasonable amount of memory, so even building things from source is mostly reasonable. Works really well as a coding / LaTeX / Maxima workstation.
I used to be like that. Then my interests changed. I had a Funtoo (Gentoo fork) laptop that was incredibly customized, focusing on power management. I could get 24h of continuous use from it without plugging in. But I decided that I was spending too much time optimizing the system and not enough time using it.
Like I always say: "Customization is like meth; Im always happiest while tweaking"
Really? Which wifi chipset?
My x220 wouldn't work with Linux without the intel firmware, and at least FreeBSD (the only BSD I have experience with).
dmesg lists it as "Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6205". The driver is
iwn(4). I don't think it works without the firmware, but that was really the only thing I needed to do to get everything to work.That’s nice, but everything I read about BSD tells me that’s the exception. And I don’t think my Lenovo is very FOSS friendly.
I also require oficial support for stuff, because I don’t have the time or the knowledge to maintain neither the system nor my my own software.
I always wanted to try *BSD, but not having Netflix is a downside for me while in a relationship hahahaha
Void Linux is a good middle ground.
Sounds like someone is not employing the Unix philosophy: small [devices] that do one thing well. Instead of making your BSD machine do Netflix, use a different device. Maybe even something cheap like an rPi.
Nah, i prefer my frugal philosophy. My pc is 7+ years old and running fine, why buy another thing just to watch netflix?
Well maybe a good middle ground is to install an external harddrive or another partition on your computer just to mess around with *BSD. Guessing from it being 7+ years old, it might be a bit of an issue to run a VM on.
It can run a VM fine. A 7 year old computer is still powerful. It's an i5 ivy bridge with 8gb ram and a ssd.
Not everyone has the money for that. Or the time to bother manage multiple machines.
And Unix philosophy is a dogma about software. It does not apply to hardware. I can not copy my laptop or apt-get a thinkpad.
The license part is a bit misleading as it seems to imply you cannot do business with a GPL license. This is demonstrably not true considering examples such as Canonical, SUSE, Redhat etc.
A number of really nice things here, several of them why I chose OpenBSD for the Thinkpad I have (though the primary reason was better hardware support than FreeBSD, where wifi support is still nascent, suspend is iffy, and forget about hibernate). The interesting items on the list for me are
reallocarray(3)andfreezero(3). I'd not heard of them until now, and they'll definitely be useful for a hobby project I work on every now and then.A few of these aren't OpenBSD-specific, rather "just not the nonsense that is Linux", like kernel and userland, license, no -dev packages (I miss this every time I suffer through using Linux), base system concept, pf (yes, it's developed first as part of OpenBSD, but ports to other systems e.g. FreeBSD generally aren't meaningfully behind except for niche usecases these days).
Still missing the cool features from
Solaris (RIP)illumos like ZFS and DTrace.In the "just not the nonsense that is Linux" spirit, though, it should absolutely list "no systemd".
edit: a tyop or two and a little more detail about FreeBSD's poor laptop support
If it was not for GPL and GNU, all BSDs would have been as esoteric as AmigaOS at this point; it is only thanks to the Free Software movement that we can use FOSS desktops.
-dev/-doc pakages and systemd are distro specific. Few of the most prolific distros don't separate dev and docs packages (Arch and derivatives, RedHat/Fedora and derivatives), and there are quite good distros that don't use systemd. Plus, systemd is not the devil people make it into. Especially on workstations.
ZFS and Dtrace work with Linux.
FreeBSD supports wifi better, tho suspend/resume is tricky (I never got it working). OpenBSD is the only OS that I had driver issues with recently. FreeBSD supports more hardware in general, OpenBSD only supports a few configurations good.
Linux is a different approach, and works just as good. Plus, GNU coreutils et al are just better than any BSD equivalents.
I like GNU/Linux, FreeBSD and OpenBSD almost equally. They are all good, and make decent workstations. Your comment includes a lot of misinformation tho. And I can't understand why "Linux" is nonsense.
A bunch of these things exist on linux. It would be nice to see a list of things that make bsd rock that we don't already have.
I’ve been an Arch user for a few years now, but OpenBSD sounds really interesting. What would be the reasons for me to switch over? I’m assuming security would be the biggest factor?
Perceived security. Yes, the base is more secure, but you mostly use the same apps on Linux or BSD and they are not necessarily so just because they run on OpenBSD. If you are not running a server, there isn't much difference with regards to security.
Security is a by-product of the project's stated goals of code cleanliness and simplicity. Not having to deal with all of the nonsense of Linux is another big draw. It's hard to list things, as there are so many, and some of them aren't as applicable to some Linux distros, but not having to install -dev packages (ironic that an operating system focused on open source by default tends to make it impossible to build things from source) and not having to deal with systemd are two big things for me. And the mindset is just different; Linux is grown, BSDs are designed.
You must not be paying attention then. Many things outlined in the linked article--things like no -dev packages, excellent manpages, etc.--all affect daily use.
Arch certainly requires the installation of dev packages before you can compile software from source.
No. Arch packages include development related files like headers and library archives.
"-dev packages" refers to things like header files and dynamic libraries that are required to build software. On just about every other kind of extant Unix (everything from BSDs and macOS to SunOS and the various kinds of illumos; maybe AIX and HP-UX, too, but can't speak for them), packages are installed with these files; there's no separation between the two. So you don't need to think about "do I have the foo-dev package?" when you want to build software that uses the foo library. And you don't need to figure out which ones you need to build something from source.
Now, that said, that may not be part of what you need or want to do. It very much was something I did a lot, so I found it an immense annoyance when I did it on Linux. And also, I should be fair and say that Gentoo (and derivatives), and maybe other distros, don't deal with -dev packages. I ran a derivative for a while on a laptop and it was ... tolerable. No systemd, no -dev packages, no neutered
wheelgroup, life was almost good.This is Debian specific. You are spreading misinformation.
If you're referring to the -dev packages, it absolutely is not; RedHat does something similar.
I don't recall seeing them on Fedora, but it has been a while. Still, it is not the paradigm. And it is not that big of a problem. The separation comes in handy when you need to save space. There probably is an apt config option that can make sure they are installed along with their respective packages.
Redhat does separate the two. For all of their packages there's a base and a dev package with 'dev' being the only difference in the name. They've been doing this for decades, almost since day one of the company. The dev packages only need to be installed if you plan to do some compiling of your own, so it's possible to use Redhat and completely avoid ever touching a compiler.
If you do need to roll your own on Redhat, hunting up the right dev packages is a pain in the ass sometimes. Install one, it needs ten more, those need a couple each, on and on it goes. Their packaging tools have improved so it's not as bad as it once was.
Still, I'm not sure why so many shops prefer Redhat. I really only see it being used in situations where the bosses are fixated on expensive, meaningless support contracts so they have someone to yell at/sue when shit breaks (which it always does regardless of vendor/os).
I've also not used BSD (at least not extensively), but based on the other comment from @masochist
I think they (and I by extension) were using the word dev packages to refer to all of the extra software you have to install to be able to build packages from source. For example, in Arch you have to install binutils and a few other packages, whereas if I understand correctly, all that functionality is baked in to BSD installs.
-dev packages as I'm referring to it are things like
gstreamer0-dev(or whatever) which installs headers and things you need to build from source, not compiler toolchains--though BSD systems also ship with things like compiler toolchains by default, whereas Linux distros tend to make you do that too.This should mention the different desktop environments OpenBSD has, for example Lumina.
agreed! i've really taken a liking to them.