FreeBSD derivatives

[LucNix]

I am optimistic. Full story:

Like I said, I tried FreeBSD a very long time ago and didn't like it. I didn't like the community either. I stayed with Linux until today. But I have certain very specific issues with Linux so I leer at the neighbor's lawn occasionally.

So I read a recent article. Someone singing very high (and detailed) praise of FreeBSD. I was like, "Really?" The FreeBSD he described was a lot better than what I knew. So I thought it was time to give it another try. What I found is uncannily similar to what Linux was circa 2005: still a lot more adequate to servers than desktops and diehard neckbeards fiercely defending that state of things, but at the same time, with very visible improvements towards the mundane desktop use and people (falsely IMO) claiming that Linux was more than ready for the desktop. It wasn't 100% then but it was maturing. The FreeBSD I tested this week is remarkably better in the desktop turf than what I had seen before. So I believe it's inching towards the right direction like Linux was in the mid oughts. It just needs more time. It will get there. I am confident and pleased. Linux in 2005 also had people saying "We prefer something else," or "don't ruin what we have," or "just go back to Windows" etc. Credit where it's due, Ubuntu was a major force in the change that ensued. And other distros decided to catch up. Most distros decided to improve because of Ubuntu. Android also helped a smidgen. Will something like that happen to FreeBSD? I hope so. The more the merrier.

KISS is something that I despise. "Keep it simple" is a weasily way of saying "keep it crude so it's less work for us," and the "stupid" part is a weasily way of conveying that anyone who disagrees is automatically stupid, i.e. a dirty trick to discourage different opinions. Make no mistake, I'm saying that the wording in "KISS" is deliberately dishonest. Manipulative. Patrick Volkerding used that word when I used Slackware and I didn't like it, and I abandoned the otherwise awesome Slackware because I was absolutely sick of satisfying dependencies manually. Bloody hell. If you don't want to build it, don't. You don't owe us anything. But please choose your words more wisely.

And "a billion flies can't be wrong" is rude.

I don't understand how "an installer automating a desktop installation would be tightly coupled to ports/packages." I am talking about scripts that would automate what the user currently has to do in a terminal, specifically for people who don't have a clue of what needs to be punched into the terminal. No need to touch ports or packages. Just robots that will run whatever needs to be typed and run.

I didn't know there was a port named 'desktop-installer.' Maybe I should have read more, but please understand that the friendly Handbook is remarkably long. 99% of newcomers will just chuckle and say "What, I'm never going to read all that!" I did. I will have to look into that port. What I did as a Linux user was to install all LXDE* packages. On Debian, that alone installs a very ready Openbox/LXDE environment AND... it installs and configures a graphical login manager in case there isn't any. Yes, it does that. I had to install the login manager myself on FreeBSD and did a poor job. Whatever I installed is quite ugly and LXDE would start with two annoying additional windows that I had no clue about how to remove. Thankfully, the forum helped me with that. But a script could have done that and done it correctly.

"One should learn about the tool" makes sense and I do that, but I want to learn about the things I will actually use, including every day shell commands and scripting. I have zero interest in learning how to install and configure a login manager, something that I do once or twice every 10 years (when grim circumstances force me to upgrade, something that I really hate).

While I'm at this, I'd like to point out that the three words I hate the most in this kind of conversation are "all I need." Oh, have I seem them a hundred times. "All I need is a browser and an expense tracker" or "All I need is a music player and a photo album manager." Good for you. What do I need? Seriously, no lies, cross my heart:

- I write a lot, for work and for fun (just look at the size of this post). My clients use MS Office documents. I have to support those.
- I entertain clients on instant messengers, the messengers that my clients choose. I don't get to choose them. (Skype and Whatsapp)
- I may have to read and edit PDF files.
- I translate -- for work.
- I write code, including database use -- for fun.
- I trade FOREX and write robots in search of the Holy Grail. Wine takes care of that.
- I browse the Internet.
- I watch videos.
- I translate videos, and I need Widevine because my clients use DRM.
- I watch my door on the security camera.
- I listen to music.
- I make music. Really. Original compositions in a DAW.
- I make and edit photography.
- I occasionally edit videos.

What don't I do on the computer? I don't play games, that's all. I do everything else. The computer is designed for that and that's how I am going to use it.

So please don't give me the old "All I need" cop-out. I have more needs than you and I love every one of them.

Does Linux deliver on that entire laundry list? Yes. Yes, it does. Every day. Will FreeBSD deliver as much? I honestly don't know.

I tested the derivatives.

NomadBSD sounds bad. I see FreeBSD has a tendency to use that excrescence called pulseaudio. It's the first thing I remove whenever I install Linux, and ALSA works out of the box and sounds great. While pulseaudio is 100% absent from my Linux, pulseaudio can't be removed from FreeBSD because of dependencies that thank God are absent in Debian packages.

I think I have ALSA in my stock FreeBSD but I'm not really sure it's working. I don't understand the entrails. I know that my stock FreeBSD installation sounds better than NomadBSD, but Linux still sounds better than all of them. (Of course, Linux is on bare metal and accessing a real sound card, I'm aware of that.) Finding other people who hate pulseaudio is far from a challenge including here, in this community. I've checked.

GhostBSD is heeeeavy... Lots of eye candy. And the network won't work in Virtualbox. How hard or easy is it to get rid of all that Mate nonsense and install what I like? Without networking, I will never know. Oh look! GhostBSD has a Control Panel like Mint or Ubuntu. Is there something there to help me troubleshoot or configure the network? No. Forget about that. I tried bsdconfig and it didn't help at all.

You catch my drift.

I'm old enough to understand that the world doesn't owe me anything. If I can't have my cake and eat it too in FreeBSD, fine. Case closed. But please be more careful when you say that FreeBSD is super ready for the desktop. I suspect it isn't.

Does it want to be? I didn't want to drag this or any of my topics into that territory, but someone else did so here we are. Clearly, zirias@ doesn't want it to be. But well, you know, that's just like, your opinion, man. What does the community as a whole want? Can of worms.

You see, I have FOUR office suites installed to cater to my clients. Yes, four. (And multiple applications to make music or edit photography depending on the task at hand.) Each one has its strengths and weaknesses. MS Office 97 runs on a virtual machine but I hate using it, it's a last resort. I want to do everything in Linux (or in FreeBSD if possible one day). Professionally speaking, LibreOffice sucks. The other two options are better but they're not free software. Their respective makers provide them. I consider myself very lucky that they are available for Linux. How did that even happen??? Well, it happened because Linux is now indeed popular enough for that to happen. How cool would that be if they were available for FreeBSD too? THAT is a Certificate of Acceptance by the Outside World you can take seriously. Does FreeBSD want that?

It's not my place to answer that last question. But like I said, I've once seen Linux stand exactly where FreeBSD stands right now. Look at how far Linux has come. Commercial outfits are making native Linux binaries of office suites! That feels so... Windowsy! So I am optimistic. I will be watching you.

 

[zirias@]

KISS is something that I despise.

Then you're wrong here. FreeBSD is an engineered system, and KISS is one of the fundamental principles of software engineering.

You'd most likely also be wrong around any other *BSD.

And just btw, the rest of your long posting exhibits LOTS of misunderstandings and lack of knowledge about how things actually work. Not an issue per se for a beginner, but jumping to conclusions based on stuff you just "guess" and then requesting things to change is ridiculous.

You want to really test FreeBSD? Read the handbook. Install on metal. Ask questions. Try to really understand anything you do. Once you've learned enough (and only then), you'll be in a position to judge, especially whether this is a system you want to use.

Otherwise you can just move on to something else as well, it's not a big deal.

 

[mer]

Keep It Simple, Stupid

is not the same as:

Keep It Stupidly Simple

Enough of us have worked creating software long enough to realize:

Complexity kills.

Kills productivity, kills maintainability, kills debuggability, kills testability.

Complexity is sometimes needed, is sometimes correct, but don't choose a more complex solution simply because it's more complex.
Someone did a thread recently about web development and how poorly written software has become; to me it was a good example of applying overly complex solutions to the problem.

You run across a bug, do you patch the symptom or do you root cause it, fix the root cause and then test to prove the fix?
If the software is too complex people often fix the symptom instead of root causing which winds up shifting the problem elsewhere. "But I closed the bug assigned to me so I don't care"

Despise it all you want, but make sure you really understand it first.

 

[LucNix]

KISS has double meaning: what it pretends to be and what it really is.

Back in the day, Volkerding never said "Let's make a simple package manager." He said, "Let's NOT make a package manager." And let users struggle with dependencies.

If the movie industry followed the KISS logic, subtitles and dubbing wouldn't exist. "Let those barbarians learn English if they want to see our flicks," they would say.

 

[BaronBS]

"Let's NOT make a package manager."

Wrong. Slackware have a package manager called slackpkg. It doesn't deal with dependencies for simplicity sake and because every package in the repository is already in the iso file and the sysadmin should have install everything if he/she doens't know how to install latter.

And the Slackware community already made some programs that deal with dependencies. I particularly like sbotools, because it is similar to a port system.

Edit.: I could argue that Slackware have two package managers. A low level one called pkgtool and the high level one called slackpkg.

 

[LucNix]

Wrong. Slackware have a package manager called slackpkg. It doesn't deal with dependencies for simplicity sake and because every package in the repository is already in the iso file and the sysadmin should have install everything if he/she doens't know how to install latter.

And the Slackware community already made some programs that deal with dependencies. I particularly like sbotools, because it is similar to a port system.

Edit.: I could argue that Slackware have two package managers. A low level one called pkgtool and the high level one called slackpkg.

Maybe I wrote too much and you fell asleep while reading or, more likely, did a TLDR. I understand.

Everything I wrote about Slackware in my long post and the short one refers to two decades ago. There was no package manager for Slackware THEN. Debian, RedHat (Fedora was just coming into existence), Mandrake, SuSE and Gentoo all had package managers. Even BSDs did. Slackware was the notoriously different kid and proud of it, unfortunately.

 

[astyle]

KISS is something that I despise. "Keep it simple" is a weasily way of saying "keep it crude so it's less work for us," and the "stupid" part is a weasily way of conveying that anyone who disagrees is automatically stupid, i.e. a dirty trick to discourage different opinions. Make no mistake, I'm saying that the wording in "KISS" is deliberately dishonest. Manipulative. Patrick Volkerding used that word when I used Slackware and I didn't like it, and I abandoned the otherwise awesome Slackware because I was absolutely sick of satisfying dependencies manually. Bloody hell. If you don't want to build it, don't. You don't owe us anything. But please choose your words more wisely.

Just that paragraph alone is gonna prompt a big debate... No, it's not a dirty trick to discourage different opinions. It's a gentle reminder to stay on topic. Sometimes, it helps to frame the topic in a different way. Like with dependency hell that is present in both Linux and BSD: Have you ever heard of Directed Acyclic Graph? If you can connect the dots between that and any Open Source package manager, that goes a LONG way towards being able to troubleshoot your way out of lots of errors.

Nobody expects you to read the entire Handbook... just pick the chapters relevant to your issue, and study them, and try to replicate the steps exactly as described. Yeah, it takes some effort to make yourself actually follow the manual, esp. when you get errors along the way. The Handbook, however, is a common point of reference that allows you to get help easier.

And the network won't work in Virtualbox.

Yes, it does, you just set it up wrong, but wouldn't do research on the settings that actually work. Sometimes, the default doesn't work on your system, that's OK

I have more needs than you

No, you don't.

Editing videos and music requires you to learn specific workflows and to have a handle on what comes first, second, what shouldn't be skipped or done out of order if you want decent results. You spend time and effort learning that. Exactly the same ideas apply to FreeBSD - if you have no wish to spend time and effort learning (after all the pointers everyone gave you), then yeah, FreeBSD is too much computer for you. Just don't lash out at the product when you're the one not using it properly, especially when you didn't pay money for it. In the world of Windows/Mac, tools that combine the workflow into one neat package - those cost a LOT of money, BTW. Adobe products are a prime example.

If the movie industry followed the KISS logic, subtitles and dubbing wouldn't exist. "Let those barbarians learn English if they want to see our flicks," they would say.

Now THAT is something I feel really compelled to reply to. KISS is exactly the logic followed by the anime studios. "Let those barbarians learn Japanese if they want to see our flicks". And look what happened - there are unofficial subtitling groups right and left, in many languages, and even big places like Sony and Netflix getting in on the game, licensing the animes and providing dubs. And yes, it all started with nondescript offices following the KISS principles.

 

[bsduck]

Slackware was the notoriously different kid and proud of it, unfortunately.

That's unfortunate, for sure. They should have gone the same way as everyone and lost any kind of relevance by the way. Because they didn't, they're still there annoying you by their existence today. You really dislike people making different choices, don't you?

 

[LucNix]

Yes, it does, you just set it up wrong, but wouldn't do research on the settings that actually work. Sometimes, the default doesn't work on your system, that's OK

1. I followed this: https://wiki.ghostbsd.org/index.php/VirtualBox_Configuration
2. There isn't much to follow in that page in relation to networking anyway.
3. I probably tried all possible options and combinations in VirtualBox. Spent one hour on that and to no benefit.
4. Networking works out of the box in stock FreeBSD and NomadBSD.
5. GhostBSD is a live ISO. I didn't "set it up wrong." I didn't set it up at all.

But blame the user for something he never conceived, wrote or altered. I suppose that makes sense to you.

 

[astyle]

That's unfortunate, for sure. They should have gone the same way as everyone and lost any kind of relevance by the way. Because they didn't, they're still there annoying you by their existence today. You really dislike people making different choices, don't you?

After my initial FreeBSD experiments back in 2003, I actually considered Slackware, but after reading installation instructions (and getting lost in what comes first, second, etc. after booting the install CD), I decided that yeah, Slackware is not something I wanna mess with, I better find something else. I did see that some people have no trouble with Slackware (like BobSlacker here), and even like it.

So?

So there's no point in blasting a product and people's choice to use it. It's not even comparable to DDT (Banned in US since 1972) or tobacco. Hell, even the Great US Prohibition was a result of blasting a product and people's choice to use it. And look where things are now - why exactly? Food for thought, LucNix ...

 

[LucNix]

That's unfortunate, for sure. They should have gone the same way as everyone and lost any kind of relevance by the way. Because they didn't, they're still there annoying you by their existence today. You really dislike people making different choices, don't you?

Stopping a huge annoyance and making life easier for users? Yes, I think they should have.

The only Linux distro I consider relevant today is Debian. And derivatives.

Is it just me? Hardly. What kind of people feeds Github with content, with code, with free software? Not common civillians. They are programmers. Spend some time there browsing the "releases" sections and see how much you can find beyond source, .deb packages, AppImages and Windows binaries. In that order. Even .rpm packages are rare. Finding any other package format there would be a good challenge for an FM radio competition giving away concert tickets. Programmers will sooner deliver an AppImage than any package format that is not Debian.

I didn't create that situation.

 

[LucNix]

So there's no point in blasting a product and people's choice to use it. It's not even comparable to DDT (Banned in US since 1972) or tobacco. Hell, even the Great US Prohibition was a result of blasting a product and people's choice to use it. And look where things are now - why exactly? Food for thought, LucNix ...

There's no point in "blasting" my opinions in a forum (of all places) and my choice to have them.

 

[Jose]

Why are we still engaging the trolls? This is just another one of these threads:

Why is FreeBSD not (more) like ....

As of today, FreeBSD Forums staff will actively close down (and eventually remove) topics that serve no other purpose than to complain that "FreeBSD is not (like) Linux" (or Windows, or MacOS, or any other operating system), or that "FreeBSD does not use systemd", or that "FreeBSD has no default...

forums.FreeBSD.org

 

[mer]

Stopping a huge annoyance and making life easier for users? Yes, I think they should have.

Not all users want the same experience. One man's annoyance is another's learning experience.
That is pretty much what everyone has been trying to point out:
What "you" (generic you, not "you" specifically) think is better, would make life easier, others may disagree.

And with that, I think Jose is right.

 

[LucNix]

17 years ago, people demanded that topics comparing Linux to Windows be closed.

Today, people demand that topics comparing FreeBSD to Linux be closed.

Yes, this is going in the right direction. I am optimistic.

Sorry for disturbing your safe space.

 

[astyle]

1. I followed this: https://wiki.ghostbsd.org/index.php/VirtualBox_Configuration
2. There isn't much to follow in that page in relation to networking anyway.
3. I probably tried all possible options and combinations in VirtualBox. Spent one hour on that and to no benefit.
4. Networking works out of the box in stock FreeBSD and NomadBSD.
5. GhostBSD is a live ISO. I didn't "set it up wrong." I didn't set it up at all.

But blame the user for something he never conceived, wrote or altered. I suppose that makes sense to you.

Did it never occur to you to look at VirtualBox's own documentation? https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch06.html

I found my answers on how to make networking work correctly using Google and Stack Overflow.

There's no point in "blasting" my opinions in a forum (of all places) and my choice to have them.

Ever hear of this little thing called "Netiquette"? It goes way beyond not typing in all caps and trolling. There are real people reading your comments.

What kind of people feeds Github with content, with code, with free software? Not common civillians. They are programmers. Spend some time there browsing the "releases" sections and see how much you can find beyond source, .deb packages, AppImages and Windows binaries. In that order. Even .rpm packages are rare. Finding any other package format there would be a good challenge for an FM radio competition giving away concert tickets. Programmers will sooner deliver an AppImage than any package format that is not Debian.

Github is good for some things, but not others. Why bring a snowboard to a beach in Hawaii?

 

[SirDice]

Gentle reminder that this exists: Why is FreeBSD not (more) like ....

 

[ralphbsz]

I don't understand how "an installer automating a desktop installation would be tightly coupled to ports/packages."

You need to understand the basic design and architecture of FreeBSD to use if effectively, and to pass judgement about its design decisions. In this case, the distinction between the base system and the ports/packages. The default installer is part of the base system, so it can not rely on packages. An installer that can automate setting up a GUI or DE will, by construction, be parts of the package system.

Maybe I should have read more, but please understand that the friendly Handbook is remarkably long. 99% of newcomers will just chuckle and say "What, I'm never going to read all that!"

"One should learn about the tool" makes sense and I do that, but I want to learn about the things I will actually use, including every day shell commands and scripting. I have zero interest in learning how to install and configure ...

One of the great strength of FreeBSD is the excellent documentation: man pages, handbook etc. One effect of that is that much of the user surface of the system is designed around the assumption that the documentation will actually be used. If you are unwilling to become a knowledgeable user, you will not be a happy user. And if FreeBSD doesn't make you happy, perhaps you shouldn't use it.

You will be installing, configuring and upgrading the system. The regular FreeBSD project is not designed to be a "one touch" operating system with GUI/DE. You might wish that it was, but that's not the reality we live in.

... something that I do once or twice every 10 years (when grim circumstances force me to upgrade, something that I really hate).

Another thing about FreeBSD is that the upgrade process it designed to be quick, painless and efficient, with minimal disruption, as long as you do regular upgrades, and are knowledgeable about how to use it. FreeBSD will not be a happy system if you only upgrade it once every 10 years. I tried that for 3-4 years, and it was painfull. With other OSes, that's a reasonable usage pattern; with FreeBSD, it's asking for trouble.

I see FreeBSD has a tendency to use that excrescence called pulseaudio. It's the first thing I remove whenever I install Linux, ...

None of my FreeBSD machines have pulseaudio. They also don't have a GUI.

The only Linux distro I consider relevant today is Debian. And derivatives.

Interesting assertion. Last I checked, among desktop/laptop users, Ubuntu had a higher market share than Debian. Among commercially used servers with support contracts, RedHat and SUSE dominate by a huge margin. Where Debian shines is cloud machines (the backends that normal users never get to see or touch), developers, and the Raspberry Pi.

I think what this demonstrates: There's no point arguing over taste.

 

[zirias@]

Last I checked, among desktop/laptop users, Ubuntu had a higher market share than Debian.

To be fair, this is one of the Debian derivatives. But apart from that, fully agreed with your post.

 

[LucNix]

FreeBSD will not be a happy system if you only upgrade it once every 10 years. I tried that for 3-4 years, and it was painfull. With other OSes, that's a reasonable usage pattern; with FreeBSD, it's asking for trouble.

But do you have to reinstall all the applications when you upgrade FreeBSD? Do they cease to work?

If an already installed application is no longer maintained and updated for a few years, does it cease to work?

 

[astyle]

But do you have to reinstall all the applications when you upgrade FreeBSD? Do they cease to work?

If an already installed application is no longer maintained and updated for a few years, does it cease to work?

Linux has exact same headaches, no matter the distro.

As for your second question, the answer is applicable to both Linux and BSD world, and in short, is "NO".

Normally, in Open Source world, even if a project is abandoned by original author, nothing prevents someone else from picking up the code, compiling it, and running it. Case in point, Gnu's LASH and Aegisub (a subtitle editor). Neither is under development right now, but both are still in ports, and can be made to run. But if runtime dependencies break, as in, disappear from installed base on hard disk for some reason, then those two will break, as well, and refuse to run.

 

[Tieks]

Why is FreeBSD not (more) like ....

You can always give it a try. That's why I mailed Elon Musk saying I would buy a Tesla if (and only if) he would first:

- remove the self-driving crap and install a proper 6-speed manual gearbox
- leave out the batteries & electrics and fit in a 6-cylinder diesel instead
- hire an Italian designer to make his rolling doghouses look somewhat decent.

One week later he bought Twitter.

 

[drhowarddrfine]

For the last 20 years, I buy new hardware every 7 years or so and that's when I need to reinstall FreeBSD. I can put together anything with ease in a quick and efficient manner cause FreeBSD does everything I need and I never have issues with that. Again, I only mess with configuring the base install about once every 7 years.

So, with all these other pre-configured FreeBSD systems....I don't care and neither should you. Whatever they do, you can do also, but you only have to install maybe once every 7 years like me. I don't care what Linux does either cause I don't need or use Linux. Systemd means nothing to me (referring to another thread today).

 

[ralphbsz]

But do you have to reinstall all the applications when you upgrade FreeBSD? Do they cease to work?

You need to understand how FreeBSD works. There is a split between base system, and ports/packages.

The base system is upgraded by commands such as freebsd-update and freebsd-version. Typically, one runs those every few days (some people run them from cron every night, I run it pretty much every weekend). Every few weeks it performs a minor upgrade, such as 12.4-P3 to 12.4-P4. Sometimes those require a reboot (if the kernel has been changed), sometimes not. Users can schedule them according to their preferences and needs. With a fast network (one of my FreeBSD machines is in the cloud), most upgrades take 2-3 minutes, some take 10 minutes. They typically require no interaction, but if one has edited the system configuration, occasionally merging updates with the configuration is needed, which is done by a human hand-editing config files. Major version upgrades (like 12.x to 13.x) tend to run much longer, and I'll only do them when I have an hour of spare time and I know nobody else will be needing the system for a little while.

Ports and packages are upgraded separately; I do "pkg {upgrade,update}" regularly from the command line, others use different techniques. The version of packages is mostly independent from the base version (with some interlocks, like a FreeBSD-13 specific version will not be upgraded to when still running version 12). I again do this every week or two; others do this automatically or more rarely. You do not need to update packages when upgrading the base system, but for the most part, it would be dumb not to upgrade them.

They don't cease to work if you don't upgrade them.

If an already installed application is no longer maintained and updated for a few years, does it cease to work?

No direct experience. I know that some of the packages I have installed are now unmaintained, and I get warning messages about that when doing updates, but so far they all have continued working for me. If you read along here in the forum, you will hear stories of somethat that has become broken.

 

[ProphetOfDoom]

WRT to the "elite" interpretation of "keep it simple, stupid", I like this quote:

“Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.” - Albert Einstein

Slackware's package manager is an example of an application that's been made "more simple than is possible".
And yet you'll probably be able to find some 14 year old Linux user who swears that hunting down the dependencies manually improves his workflow. These people really exist.
I've not used the "suckless" tools either but I've heard enough about them to know i dont want to. Apparently a small C program with a dozen mutually incompatible patches is the ideal way to distribute software. Except that it isn't.