Finally here...

Butterfly

Butterfly

Hey all,
Finally, after a while, I'm ready to "pour" FreeBSD on a laptop and see if it can be a daily driver as a desktop.
Reason is that I'm scared Systemd in Linux may end up doing/permitting age verification.
Now...I am 62 yrs young, so any "adult site" may (MAY, I'm not really sure) be accessible to me ;) so the whole debate is somewhat irrelevant to me, save for the very principle of it.
I live in the EU. I may be in trouble if my OS collected non-GPRS allowed data about me...
So...where does FreeBSD stand?
I use Manjaro now, but I'm scared they'll cave in to pressure...
Thanks
☮️ Melissa ☮️
Edit : I sniffed around (the *nix thing to do) and FreeBSD does NOT use systemd...well, goes to show you're never too old to learn some new things...
😁
 
It's kind of silent. I think they chose to wait on the Brasil solution that still has to happen.
Google is presenting Reddit as FreeBSD forums for the debate. Pathetic and already a red flag. That's no accident.

edit: they removed it. I shouldn't have said it, probably,
 
Easiest way to get into it is to just install it. It should work with most laptops. Most Linux programs you use will be available on FreeBSD, so if you, for example, use the openbox desktop, you can use it on FreeBSD. As far as I know, there is no age verification on FreeBSD, and if it does occur, I suspect it will be easy to work around (but I'm speaking from no knowledge of how one could work around it).

You may run into some other Linux habits you have that don't work or happen on FreeBSD. One big difference you might notice is that installed packages go in /usr/local/bin, rather than /usr/bin.

What Linux were you using.
As for age, to me, you're a mere child, so don't worry about it. My impression, based on no solid facts, is that members of this forum tend to skew older than the average Linux forum.

And, for my very idle curiosity, and feel free to ignore it, which EU country do you live in?
 
scottro said:
Easiest way to get into it is to just install it. It should work with most laptops. Most Linux programs you use will be available on FreeBSD, so if you, for example, use the openbox desktop, you can use it on FreeBSD. As far as I know, there is no age verification on FreeBSD, and if it does occur, I suspect it will be easy to work around (but I'm speaking from no knowledge of how one could work around it).

You may run into some other Linux habits you have that don't work or happen on FreeBSD. One big difference you might notice is that installed packages go in /usr/local/bin, rather than /usr/bin.

What Linux were you using.
As for age, to me, you're a mere child, so don't worry about it. My impression, based on no solid facts, is that members of this forum tend to skew older than the average Linux forum.

And, for my very idle curiosity, and feel free to ignore it, which EU country do you live in?
Click to expand...
Laptop next to me, installing the 15. The point is that I really want to learn, but also want control. I get very reactive with some "reporting"...
I use Manjaro as main driver, just because of the control.
And...I hatched somewhere in Belgium
😉
 
Butterfly said:
Laptop next to me, installing the 15. The point is that I really want to learn, but also want control. I get very reactive with some "reporting"...
I use Manjaro as main driver, just because of the control.
And...I hatched somewhere in Belgium
😉
Click to expand...
A little challenge is to boot the installer memstick and install FreeBSD to another memstiick. At the start it will be slow because all system software is on USB storage but you can steal a piece of the existing OS partition and move a lot to it to reduce as much USB storage operation as possible.
I did this with Windows 10, btw. Not sure if Mandriva supports changing partition sizes to create free space for something else.
 
Butterfly said:
Laptop next to me, installing the 15. The point is that I really want to learn, but also want control. I get very reactive with some "reporting"...
Click to expand...
Take notes somewhere! I have a wiki and when starting out with 14.1 I copied an older Linux set-up's notes and changed it as I went. Kept doing it for later FreeBSD 14 releases, 15, even CURRENT, and adapted the desktop notes for server; learning's fun with a good note-taking spot :D
 
Butterfly said:
So...where does FreeBSD stand?
Click to expand...
Where can I find the fund's official position on age verification using BSD systems? Is there such an official management position?
Users have expressed their opinions, but what about the official management?
https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/will-freebsd-be-available-in-california-in-2027.101846/
https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/california-brazil-uk-issue-my-2-cents.101935/
https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/practical-suggestions-for-resolving-the-brazilian-problem.101913/
 
Butterfly said:
Hey all,
Finally, after a while, I'm ready to "pour" FreeBSD on a laptop and see if it can be a daily driver as a desktop.
Reason is that I'm scared Systemd in Linux may end up doing/permitting age verification.
Now...I am 62 yrs young, so any "adult site" may (MAY, I'm not really sure) be accessible to me ;) so the whole debate is somewhat irrelevant to me, save for the very principle of it.
I live in the EU. I may be in trouble if my OS collected non-GPRS allowed data about me...
So...where does FreeBSD stand?
I use Manjaro now, but I'm scared they'll cave in to pressure...
Thanks
☮️ Melissa ☮️
Edit : I sniffed around (the *nix thing to do) and FreeBSD does NOT use systemd...well, goes to show you're never too old to learn some new things...
😁
Click to expand...
It's just a birthdate field and no one is stopping you from putting whatever age you want to put in there
 
In terms of the systemd saga, this is one of the most clarifying things I viewed that really puts it into perspective.

View: https://youtu.be/8bAN4Jam974​


Bitchute if you prefer:
www.bitchute.com

I Spoke To The Dev Behind The Systemd Birth Date Change

Today I spoke with the developer who introduced the PR to Systemd which added in a birth date field to userdb which spawned a massive drama and much worse as he describes in what has happened to him following that. ==========Support The Channel========== ► Patreon...
www.bitchute.com www.bitchute.com

 
USerID said:
https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/24/foss_age_verification/?td=rt-3a
The direction of travel for systemd could be good news for systemd-free Arch variant Artix Linux, and indeed for other systemd-free distros from Adélie to Alpine to antiX. ®
Click to expand...
I've been interested in trying Void for musl: https://voidlinux.org/ although Alpine might be interesting too (it's the base for postmarketOS and I could run the same OS desktop, server, and phone :cool:)

Is there a concise reason why systemd added some kind of verification? They aren't an OS nor an app store, and I wouldn't be surprised if distros still have higher-level separate verification systems.
 
Butterfly said:
Hey all,
Finally, after a while, I'm ready to "pour" FreeBSD on a laptop and see if it can be a daily driver as a desktop.
Reason is that I'm scared Systemd in Linux may end up doing/permitting age verification.
Now...I am 62 yrs young, so any "adult site" may (MAY, I'm not really sure) be accessible to me
Click to expand...
You're so young. ;)

Butterfly said:
;) so the whole debate is somewhat irrelevant to me, save for the very principle of it.
I live in the EU. I may be in trouble if my OS collected non-GPRS allowed data about me...
So...where does FreeBSD stand?
I use Manjaro now, but I'm scared they'll cave in to pressure...
Thanks
☮️ Melissa ☮️
Edit : I sniffed around (the *nix thing to do) and FreeBSD does NOT use systemd...well, goes to show you're never too old to learn some new things...
😁
Click to expand...
In the beginning there was init. Berkeley (BSD) tweaked it a little while AT&T created SYSV's init. Sun came out with an init that worked with their SMF (services) daemon. But init was still there and could be used in SYSV mode.

The Linux community created upstart among other things which finally led to systemd. Apple came out with launchd while NetBSD re-engineered rc scripts to add SYSV-like functionality (minus the run levels) to work with the BSD init. FreeBSD imported that, called rcng.

Init is not new. It's the granddaddy of them all.

Regarding systemd on Linux, it's more than init. It replaces many logging functions through its journald. It has its fingers in filesystems and fstab. Systemd is something line 47 different daemons. It has its fingers in everything. Some Linux kernel functions were/are removed, being moved to systemd.

IMO the most elegant approach was Sun's SMF. The simplest approach is the BSD rcng. Working with it professionally -- yes I'm still working -- I think systemd is a dog's breakfast.

And don't get me started on podman (the current cgroups and namespaces implementation), the mess that it is. Jails are a much more direct solution to the problem.
 
A, by, the way...I feel quite welcomed, here.I think I'll stick around....
BSD runs now, though there is quite a bit to learn ( 🥳 yay🥳 )...let's explore.
I'm reading the thread...lotsa new stuff, love it....
 
Depending what you do on Linux, it may be a relatively small adjustment. Many of the programs are the same, to state the standard cliche ones, there's firefox, thunderbird, various terminals and they all pretty much run the same on Linux and FreeBSD. There's top, uptime, vmstat, etc., etc., and many of those are the same too, others have small differences, which usually pretty simple to find. (That is, find the differences in say, FreeBSD's sed and Linux's sed)
 
scottro said:
Depending what you do on Linux, it may be a relatively small adjustment. Many of the programs are the same, to state the standard cliche ones, there's firefox, thunderbird, various terminals and they all pretty much run the same on Linux and FreeBSD. There's top, uptime, vmstat, etc., etc., and many of those are the same too, others have small differences, which usually pretty simple to find. (That is, find the differences in say, FreeBSD's sed and Linux's sed)
Click to expand...
IMV the major difference is /dev/sda1 v /dev/ada1 or /dev/da1 for naming devices which must take some getting used to for a seasoned Linux user.

The great advantage FreeBSD has over Linux is its package management system, ie pkg v pacman, apt get or on of the thousand other commands you need learn in order to install anything. In fact, it may com as a shock to a Linux user that so many apps are already available once you have FreeBSD installed.
 
Espionage724 said:
although Alpine might be interesting too
Click to expand...
I had to switch to Alpine Linux on the desktop. Alpine Linux Desktop today reminds me a lot of Ubuntu's heyday—that was Ubuntu 6! For me, there are only two Linux systems left today: void and Alpine (lxqt). But I don't like rolling releases (void)...
I'm skipping version 15. I don't plan on going back to version 14. Version 15 is really overly... experimental.
 
balanga said:
I see lots of OS/2 software, so I think he used to log on to my FidoNet BBS and download all the OS/2 messages every day.
Click to expand...
Aaah, OS/2, the time when win 3.11 (their FINEST, by the way...) was around. I lost my job over OS/2 once...it was a lousy job anyway...but...it's in general not a hot idea to ardently suggest OS/2 to a microsoft solutions provider...🤣🤣🤣
 
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