What is the BSD equivalent of Arch Linux

rcbsdpge

rcbsdpge

This gentleman is inquiring about BSD. I am not sure how to answer this
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My very first thought was: This is a stupid question. But I also learned: There are no stupid question - well, also not quite true :cool: - but questions should be answered respectfully anyway, because often it's just the question was asked wrong, or to be more correct: worded unlucky, often because the asker knows too little of a topic to formulate the question better to be answered more precisely.

So, all what come to me are questions to ask back, to encircle the true point of what this asker actually wants to find out:
What does he understands with 'fame' of an operating system, and why he cares?
If he simply wants to know which BSD has more users I would say FreeBSD.
But every BSD user knows what also the majority of Linux users know:
The only OS chosen by its popularity is Windows 😁
Anything else you chose by what suit your needs best, and not how popular it is.
And since no OS fulfil all needs a lot many run several OSs parallel, not only one.
What's stopping him to do so either?

Which brings us to question to ask more detailed:
What's about Arch what other Linuxes lack, so he compares one Linux distro with all BSDs... :-/
Maybe he simply feels unsatisfied with Arch, or Linux at all for whatever reasons, but at the same time cannot point it out, still lacks of definitions what he actually misses, and is looking for.
Or maybe he still doesn't know yet BSD are not Linux at all.
 
Maturin said:
What's about Arch what other Linuxes lack, so he compares one Linux distro with all BSDs... :-/
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arch is famous for being (traditionally) manually installed and there's also the meme of people saying "i use arch btw", i guess he meant that or close

tho' i think all the major BSDs have their installer instead of an environment for the user to read the installation manual, so the only thing that's left is the latter, which's really not something i've seen on the BSD community
 
ruby R53 said:
i guess he meant that
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Sounds convincing. But his questions is asked that vague, one can only guess.

Maybe It's best to link him to FreeBSD FAQs, the handbook, OpenBSD's site to find out some things for himself, and then recommend this forums to answer single questions he has left more precisely.
 
hm, actually, re-reading the post just gave me a better understanding of it
the answer would be FreeBSD, because what he meant by "Arch level fame/infamy" is really just the popularity, now that Arch is being discussed about more than Ubuntu and related
 
To rcbsdpge I would say that firstly, you should avoid large graphics when possible, a link to it might have been better, or putting your question in text. As for Arch level fame/infamy, my own first response would be OpenBSD as Arch is sometimes known for its somewhat harsh reaction to people who know nothing, and OpenBSD also (at times) has that reputation, though https://daemonforums.org which is mostly about OpenBSD, has a large group of helpful people. As for the fame part, I'd have to say FreeBSD is the most popular, has the most packages, and is most likely to work with what application you're looking to use.

As for FreeBSD being the least scary, it's probably the easiest, as well as having a few desktop oriented versions, e.g., GhostBSD. I'm going to say, that judging by what I see here, and having little experience with NetBSD mailing lists or other communications, that both these forums, and daemonforums have a large amount of very knowledgeable people who are happy to help the newcomer.
 
OpenBSD has better hardware support. For example, i currently cant use FreeBSD because my AMD RDNA4 video card is not supported. Recently released OpenBSD version 7.8 has their drm module updated to 6.12.50, which means my card is fully supported.
 
IMO, Arch Linux is the most "some assembly required" of the Linux distros. I would put FreeBSD in this category up until the last few years. I spent a decade trying to get FreeBSD with a desktop (other than TWM) working, and there was always some error that came up that I didn't know how to fix. Now I can set up FreeBSD with xfce4 in about half an hour. Part of this is me getting smarter, but a lot is due to improvements in FreeBSD.

The biggest problem I have these days is working with small, fanless computers. They frequently have odd quirks, like telling FreeBSD that they have a UART, and then hanging when FreeBSD tries to initialize it. I haven't used Linux in a while, but I suspect it might have the same problems, since the devices are tested with Windows.
 
lgrant said:
IMO, Arch Linux is the most "some assembly required" of the Linux distros. I would put FreeBSD in this category up until the last few years. I spent a decade trying to get FreeBSD with a desktop (other than TWM) working, and there was always some error that came up that I didn't know how to fix. Now I can set up FreeBSD with xfce4 in about half an hour. Part of this is me getting smarter, but a lot is due to improvements in FreeBSD.
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i've had a similar experience with it in this regard, i'm glad they're improving their desktop support but i also had to get smarter too to be able to figure some stuff out
 
lgrant said:
IMO, Arch Linux is the most "some assembly required" of the Linux distros. I would put FreeBSD in this category up until the last few years. I spent a decade trying to get FreeBSD with a desktop (other than TWM) working, and there was always some error that came up that I didn't know how to fix. Now I can set up FreeBSD with xfce4 in about half an hour. Part of this is me getting smarter, but a lot is due to improvements in FreeBSD.
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Arch is no longer what it used to be. It always has been assemble it yourself distro, but then they introduced the installer, and Arch become mainstream distro. Of course, no one is stopping you to install it the Arch way, but its the principle behind it. Also, they are currently under ddos attack that started almost 6 months ago, and they still cant solve it. On top of it, malicious packages are getting uploaded to Arch user repository more frequently. Its a mess.
lgrant said:
The biggest problem I have these days is working with small, fanless computers. They frequently have odd quirks, like telling FreeBSD that they have a UART, and then hanging when FreeBSD tries to initialize it. I haven't used Linux in a while, but I suspect it might have the same problems, since the devices are tested with Windows.
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Havent used any UART capable devices, but as far as im aware, there are no issues with it on Linux.
 
MrBSD said:
Arch is no longer what it used to be. It always has been assemble it yourself distro, but then they introduced the installer, and Arch become mainstream distro. Of course, no one is stopping you to install it the Arch way, but its the principle behind it. Also, they are currently under ddos attack that started almost 6 months ago, and they still cant solve it. On top of it, malicious packages are getting uploaded to Arch user repository more frequently. Its a mess.
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agree with that, as much as i like the convenience of having an installer i also think it misses the whole point of the distro
and then, as you mentioned, it snowballed into becoming this··· thank god i quit arch long before all that mess
 
ruby R53 said:
agree with that, as much as i like the convenience of having an installer i also think it misses the whole point of the distro
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Exactly. I have nothing against the installer. I even used it myself several times in VM`s for testing purposes. It comes in really handy.
ruby R53 said:
and then, as you mentioned, it snowballed into becoming this··· thank god i quit arch long before all that mess
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After 15 years of using it, i gave up on it few months ago. I just regret spending all that time on it.
 
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