FreeBSD on the Framework Laptop • Hacker News Board

Re: FreeBSD on the Framework Laptop

#161

Post by nortonham » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 4:43 AM UTC

xupybd wrote: post #47

I want to try BSD one day but these sorts of articles put me off. I used to enjoy trying to get things working but I just don't have that sort of time anymore. I understand that the community only has so many resources to support the various hardware around. I suspect one BSDs strengths is that the smaller community is able to follow a more cohesive vision. But for me this means I'm probably not going learn it until…

Try it in a VM first. It's actually helpful to try it that way first, so you can used to how it works. If you can afford it, get a used thinkpad....a t430 or t420 should be pretty cheap, and will run free/net/open without problem. If those machines are too old for your liking, ask around here on the subreddits of each OS, and users will have hardware recommendations for you. oh and the x1 carbon family seems to be popular among the freebsd crowd iirc.

Re: FreeBSD on the Framework Laptop

#162

Post by horsawlarway » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 5:41 PM UTC

johnklos wrote: post #153

horsawlarway wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I certainly understand some of the frustration around churn, and I get that on hardware selected to run BSD, this probably doesn't matter nearly as much But... This article describes (at least in my opinion) an unusable and unstable machine. Basic HDMI out and Ethernet aren't "optional" on machines I run. Frankly - I'd rather lose wifi/bluetooth than HDMI and Ethernet (not that bluetooth is working here either...)…

Perhaps you're talking about a different kind of "churn". I'm not talking about adding drivers and things to make hardware work better - I'm talking about changing commonly used commands and changing how things work from one version of a distro to the next. For instance, does "ifconfig" need to be replaced by "ip" in order to support new ethernet chips? Do you need all sorts of new invocations to systemd because a ne…

> Perhaps you're talking about a different kind of "churn".

I don't really think I am.

I'm going to pick on your exact example: ip is replacing ifconfig because linux distros are moving to netlink as a replacement for ioctl. Why are they doing that? Hardware support - Particularly WNICs.

So did ifconfig need to be replaced? Strictly speaking, no - but if you want better hardware support - yes...

ifconfig could have been updated, but the problem is that you're adding complexity to the system somewhere, either by expanding the old interface, or by replacing it with a new one.

You can argue expansion would have been preferable to replacement, but I'm not totally convinced - they both have tradeoffs. Someone is paying the piper either way.

The only way to avoid that cost (churn in the existing tool, or churn in the introduction of a new tool) is by not supporting that hardware. Which is what BSD is doing...

Re: FreeBSD on the Framework Laptop

#163

Post by johnklos » Sat, Aug 27, 2022, 6:44 PM UTC

horsawlarway wrote: post #162

johnklos wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you're talking about a different kind of "churn". I'm not talking about adding drivers and things to make hardware work better - I'm talking about changing commonly used commands and changing how things work from one version of a distro to the next. For instance, does "ifconfig" need to be replaced by "ip" in order to support new ethernet chips? Do you need all sorts of new invocations to systemd because a ne…

> Perhaps you're talking about a different kind of "churn". I don't really think I am. I'm going to pick on your exact example: ip is replacing ifconfig because linux distros are moving to netlink as a replacement for ioctl. Why are they doing that? Hardware support - Particularly WNICs. So did ifconfig need to be replaced? Strictly speaking, no - but if you want better hardware support - yes... ifconfig could have b…

Sigh. I hear you, but your example is bad.

ip replaced ifconfig NOT because of new hardware support. For one, ifconfig could, and has been, extended. Second, that wouldn't explain removing ifconfig. Third, other OSes, like the BSDs, have alternatives for additional functionality like wiconfig.

ip could exist alongside of ifconfig, if ifconfig were really a subset of ip. It's political. And if you're going to echo that, "oh, someone needs to sit around and spend all sorts of energy keeping ifconfig up to date", then remember that they clearly don't if you contend that ip is all about supporting new stuff.

In other words, there's nothing in what you're saying at all that would explain the need to remove ifconfig and break decades of common usage. That's unnecessary churn, in my opinion.