Post
Having answered the question a number of times, I decided to finally document¹ why/how I ended up using BSDs instead of Linux, taking a page from @vermaden's playbook².
tl;dr: a bit of push from Linux, a bit of pull from the BSDs.
RE: https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@gumnos/115551343732704834
This is a great post.
It's not "against" something - it just explains why Tim prefers to use the BSDs.
@stefano This is indeed a great post. Refreshing to read - the author didn't distro-bash but instead highlighted how needs were met.
I have been leaning toward #FreeBSD after 20 years on #Debian, which has a special place in my heart. However, FreeBSD's *consistency*, elegant design, and better documentation are driving factors and I just can't look away.
Over these two decades, Linux has definitely changed. It's no longer what it once was: a #Unix clone. It's evolved into its own thing. Software does that and that's OK. But a lot of the changes or "improvements" have been needlessly reinventing the wheel with a worsening user experience and convoluted results. The audio subsystems (ALSA -> PulseAudio -> Pipewire and of course the mess that is/was JACK) and #SystemD are two big examples.
On SystemD, I don't disagree that Linux needed a modern init system. SystemD is faster, but from a human perspective it's worse. I am now typing *more* characters to manage services. Is there a reason why it couldn't be designed to manage services like:
> $SERVICE start/stop/restart
Instead, we are left with:
> systemctl $SERVICE start/stop/restart
But I digress.
#TBT I fell in love with FreeBSD when I first started my Linux journey in the mid-2000s, but only dabbled in it as it was never in any production environment I managed.
I have a FreeBSD VM sitting in my lab somewhere but due to other factors rarely do I get to it. I'm thinking it's time I grab a spare laptop, load it up, and use it as a daily driver to really force myself to learn it.
systemd front, one of the craptop iterations ran Void for at least a year, and though now powered down it's still installed on my Raspberry Pi. It has a very *BSD feel, something with "one foot in two canoes" for better or worse. But that re-exposure both there and here watching OpenBSD discussions has me using cwm on a daily basis, and I still miss runit from Void, especially for my userspace background scripts:bash is still my shell of choice 😂).A space for Bonfire maintainers and contributors to communicate