ILUXA wrote:
> and it is pretty sad IMO, because, I believe, FreeBSD may be much better desktop OS than
> GNU/Linux is, but, unfortunately, this isn't true for now.
I am not sure that FreeBSD or any of the BSDs, are a better desktop OS than Linux is (I don't
use the term "GNU" because I actually consider it to be a misnomer that RMS propagated).
When I refer to "Linux", I refer here to the whole of Linux. That includes the various distributions,
including those that are, as far as I am concerned, closer towards the BSD model (Gentoo,
VoidLinux etc...); but also oldschool variants (Slackware in particular) and last, but not the least
important, at the least to me: LFS/BLFS (Linux from Scratch / Beyond Linux from Scratch).
I think if you refer in particular to all of these, but LFS/BLFS most above all, then you have
a flexible philosophy that can be quite close to the BSD model.
For example, ports-based compiling is not so different from the LFS/BLFS model that you
can use. You could use a package manager on top of that too; or you could use versioned
AppDirs such as GoboLinux would do (and NixOS to some extent, although they use
those ugly hashes as part of the directory name; NixOS is quite advanced from a conceptual
point of view, though - I think it may be the only distribution that also focuses on a reproducible
system from the core).
Anyway, before I digress too much from the quote - I think if you include all these different
distributions too, and source-based installation models, then the differences between Linux
as a whole, and all the BSDs as a whole, aren't that different - since you can do almost the
same in either variant. Including compiling literally everything from source, which I do too
(excluding a few large programs that tend to be a bit annoying to compile, such as
libreoffice; here I usually just download the .deb from their website and use it on my slackware
system
).
But to conclude - I think at the end, one of the real big difference is what the kernels offer.
Hardware support in particular. To some extent also stability of a system too, of course.
I think that both Linux and the BSDs are quite stable so this point will not be a huge difference
but when it comes to hardware support, what I always read in general is that the BSDs may
lag behind here or there. Now IF this is the case - and mind you, I write IF - then it makes the
claim that BSD is better than Linux as the better desktop OS sort of mood, since it may well
be the only real difference that ultimately matters to an end user. I think most end users want
to get their hardware to work on the OS they are using. For Windows this is obviously quite
easy since there will be drivers written (as some hardware requires these drivers in order to
function).
So I think that whenever we compare which OS may be better, we also have to include an
objective "is this hardware supported on BSD and/or Linux" too.
- In the thread there was a reference to systemd and BSD not having a systemd variant (other
than perhaps a shim, such as we may have when it comes to pulseaudio, such as via
apulse
https://github.com/i-rinat/apulse).
I also know of threads where Linux people switch to BSD because they dislike systemd.
I do not like systemd at all but the good thing is - I do not use it. Neither do I need it but this
is another point. I can avoid systemd without a problem. The only thing that may not work
is ... GNOME, which is no surprise since Red Hat is the driving force behind systemd and
GNOME. But even for GNOME, a Gentoo dev wrote patches to patch out systemd from
GNOME and the gnome desktop works, according to him (I was too lazy to test it for
myself but I have no reason to not trust him; I mostly use KDE plasma or mate-desktop
or XFCE).
I think this should also be kept in mind. Just because some corporation is pushing its money
rain towards certain changes, does not mean that everyone will be following the "leader".
(LFS/BLFS "solved" this in a good way, in my opinion, by providing instructions for both
systemd and systemd-free paths. It's still unfortunate that Red Hat decided to split
the linux community but there is no need to follow what Red Hat or any other company
imposes onto a community downstream, even though I understand the problem of
paid corporate hackers versus hobby contributors).
- Patrick A Lima wrote that he may stay on Linux. I myself tried out various BSDs over the
years (I switched to Linux in 2003 as my main OS). Now I don't want to offend the FreeBSD
folks too much so I won't write too much that is controversial.
The biggest thing for me to not use any of the BSDs was actually that the advantages of
using BSD, as opposed to Linux, were too little. This may be my lack of knowledge but to
be honest .... after so many years on Linux, on the commandline just about daily,
literally compiling everything from source ... I think it may not "just" be me. It may be that
Linux is a really good OS; and in order for BSD to appeal to more people, if the BSD were
to have such a goal that is, it would have to offer more real incentives and advantages. And
I am not sure this is the case.
If, however had, there may be a single area where you, as the whole of BSD (so not just
FreeBSD but also the other BSDs), could probably improve the most, aside from smaller
usability improvements and so forth, then I think it would be hardware support. It would
be a HUGE thing if we could have a point where we could say that hardware works equally
well on both linux and the BSDs. That would be really really great - I think for everyone,
too, since nobody minds if more hardware is supported (if stability remains the same of
course). But that is all just my opinion - my real tinker days are gone. These days I am
mostly fine to just have an OS (any OS really) that works and allows me to "get things
done", which is usually very basic anyway (browsing, writing documents, doing a bit
of terminal work or write some code, mostly in ruby).