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I Miss BSD/Linux

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Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#31

Post by bachmeier »

hnlmorg wrote: post #19
sedatk wrote: post #9

(The page isn’t accessible from Turkey. I had to enable VPN to read the article) As I understand, the author’s main motive to try alternative operating systems is his frustration with mainstream operating systems, a lack of control and understanding so the speak. The fallacy of that is that instead of encountering a few significant problems with a mainstream OS, now the author has to experience a death by thousand cu…

Each year I spend close to zero hours dealing with edge case bugs and incompatibilities in Linux and BSD despite all of my personal devices running one form of FOSS OS or another. My personal laptop is ArchLinux and it definitely took longer to set up than macOS would have, but it’s been just as rock solid since. In fact, perhaps ironically, I’ve had more problems with my work MacBook Pro than I have with my personal…

I agree. I have a Windows 11 laptop for work. It's had a few issues, including wifi connection problems for a while, but the one that has been most horrible is that it may or may not detect an external display. It's infuriating to plug it in and nothing happens. A reboot always fixes it, but that's no fun.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#32

Post by cess11 »

sedatk wrote: post #9

(The page isn’t accessible from Turkey. I had to enable VPN to read the article) As I understand, the author’s main motive to try alternative operating systems is his frustration with mainstream operating systems, a lack of control and understanding so the speak. The fallacy of that is that instead of encountering a few significant problems with a mainstream OS, now the author has to experience a death by thousand cu…

I refuse to do work under Windows due to the bugs, inconsistencies, driver problems and shitty default UI.

For years I've just pushed in Debian with the unfree packages and let it do its hardware sensing stuff and it works, except at one job, where they had a lot of security installation and configuration in pre-made bash scripts for initial setup that were tested on Ubuntu so I used that. It was worse, mainly due to snapd being an annoying turd, but not as bad as Windows.

Multimonitor just works, automatic fan control just works, Bluetooth just works. It's been Toshibas and Lenovos and Samsungs.

From my point of view mainstream Linux distros have been solid for fifteen years or so.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#33

Post by fragmede »

TheRoque wrote: post #22
hnlmorg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each year I spend close to zero hours dealing with edge case bugs and incompatibilities in Linux and BSD despite all of my personal devices running one form of FOSS OS or another. My personal laptop is ArchLinux and it definitely took longer to set up than macOS would have, but it’s been just as rock solid since. In fact, perhaps ironically, I’ve had more problems with my work MacBook Pro than I have with my personal…

Sorry, but this is still true IMO. For example no good driver is available for the GTX 1080 which will result in a buggy experience. Not even talking about software availability and functionalities. I have had other issues, but anyways I don't want to list them all. I also find it misleading to claim that Arch Linux is "rock solid", just look at the news to see the amount of "manual intervention needed" listed. I lov…

> For example no good driver is available for the GTX 1080 which will result in a buggy experience.

If you have a GTX 1080. For everyone else that has moved on from an 8 year old graphics card, they won't run into that particular issue. Hence some people reporting a rock solid experience with Arch Linux.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#34

Post by worthless-trash »

TheRoque wrote: post #22
hnlmorg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each year I spend close to zero hours dealing with edge case bugs and incompatibilities in Linux and BSD despite all of my personal devices running one form of FOSS OS or another. My personal laptop is ArchLinux and it definitely took longer to set up than macOS would have, but it’s been just as rock solid since. In fact, perhaps ironically, I’ve had more problems with my work MacBook Pro than I have with my personal…

Sorry, but this is still true IMO. For example no good driver is available for the GTX 1080 which will result in a buggy experience. Not even talking about software availability and functionalities. I have had other issues, but anyways I don't want to list them all. I also find it misleading to claim that Arch Linux is "rock solid", just look at the news to see the amount of "manual intervention needed" listed. I lov…

Turns out you buy hardware that works for your OS. You do it for OSX, why not for Linux ?

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#36

Post by bitsandboots »

I feel the author's grief over lack of time, but it has lead me to very different solutions. All around the idea of the OS should not interrupt, should not change rapidly, and my interaction with programs should not be much different from OS to OS.

At work, I opted for a mac due to how terrible the windows options were. But macos itself fought me all the way so the way to be happy at work was to replace finder, to replace the dock with a taskbar, and to rebind the keys, so that everything acted like linux/windows so that I can get my job done without falling in love with apple. To me that was simplicity - the simplicity of not having to relearn for no reason.

At home, I no longer dual-boot because I vm. Now Linux and Windows cooperate. And the linux got less exotic. Debian: something I can trust, that gets out of my way, and changes slowly.

But I'm also loving the truenas system I set up because it and freebsd take that simplicity to the next level.

In both places, unix tools that go with me, so I am in my natural place everywhere. Basically, tmux, emacs, fzf, eza, and a bash/zsh config.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#37

Post by sshine »

hnlmorg wrote: post #19
sedatk wrote: post #9

(The page isn’t accessible from Turkey. I had to enable VPN to read the article) As I understand, the author’s main motive to try alternative operating systems is his frustration with mainstream operating systems, a lack of control and understanding so the speak. The fallacy of that is that instead of encountering a few significant problems with a mainstream OS, now the author has to experience a death by thousand cu…

Each year I spend close to zero hours dealing with edge case bugs and incompatibilities in Linux and BSD despite all of my personal devices running one form of FOSS OS or another. My personal laptop is ArchLinux and it definitely took longer to set up than macOS would have, but it’s been just as rock solid since. In fact, perhaps ironically, I’ve had more problems with my work MacBook Pro than I have with my personal…

> Each year I spend close to zero hours

> My personal laptop is ArchLinux and it definitely took longer to set up

I think the honest way to calculate maintenance time is to amortise setup time over the years your laptop is in active duty.

That becomes like at least five hours per year for me. My Linux installations usually live for 2-3 years, and ArchLinux typically takes 1-2 evenings to set up:

Partly because I enjoy it and want to explore if I should switch file system, login manager, terminal emulator, window manager, etc.

Partly because I want to maintain my sysadmin katas.

Partly because this step isn’t automatic, so even if I want “same as before”, some hardware is different, and installing software is still manual (I’m choosing NixOS next time).

> those who want to tinker will generally gravitate towards a platform that lets them tinker

My Linux is always in some state of disassembly. My MacBook always has working audio and video.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#38

Post by kdtsh »

It wouldn’t be up to scratch for my work anymore, but I’ve found the 2015 MacBook Pros to be a good compromise between quality hardware and being able to run a full blown free Unix-like without any trouble. (By ‘my work’ I mainly mean including Citrix and Microsoft 365, so this precludes most free Unix-like anyway.)

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#39

Post by DoingIsLearning »

bitsandboots wrote: post #36

I feel the author's grief over lack of time, but it has lead me to very different solutions. All around the idea of the OS should not interrupt, should not change rapidly, and my interaction with programs should not be much different from OS to OS. At work, I opted for a mac due to how terrible the windows options were. But macos itself fought me all the way so the way to be happy at work was to replace finder, to re…

> Debian: something I can trust, that gets out of my way, and changes slowly.

Wholeheartedly agree. Debian has won the distro wars in my opinion. Their massive effort in safety and not breaking things means I can use stable as a "it just works" tool and focus on my actual work/fun.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#40

Post by hnarn »

The title for this blog post should be "I Miss BSD/Linux for Apple devices". Unsurprisingly, if you buy hardware from one of the most FLOSS hostile hardware manufacturers in existence, your BSD/Linux experience will not be great.

> Why doesn’t a great MacBook alternative exist?

I really don't understand this question. Is the author seriously suggesting that MacBooks are objectively the best laptops for any use case and using something else just isn't an option? Am I taking crazy pills?

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