Interesting thread, haven't read all of it yet but I see people discussing the recent happenings in Linux/Linus-land so I thought I'd chime in.
What drove me back to FreeBSD after being away for many decades was the same things as many people here: The abomination that is PID1 in most linux distros now and several related changes in userland. I spent the last decade+ hacking around those in Gentoo but in the last 2-3 years it became so unbearable that I (and many others) have been more or less forced out. If you go to mailing lists and IRC channels for Gentoo now you'll find a massive change there compared to 10 years ago as far as attitude and level of experience is concerned. The grey beards are gone (most banned for speaking out over the years) and they've been replaced by...well I don't want to call them idiots but they've certainly swallowed the propaganda to say the least. In the 90s-2010s the GPL community was filled with folks that had high distrust of Microsoft, Google (after they got burned), Oracle, the NSA and the other usual suspects. Now they celebrate the "contribution" of these types. EEE is in full swing and the current users don't seem to care one bit. They are too ignorant or dumb to see what's happening right in front of them.
For example; On one hand they'll praise something like Rust because it'll provide "security" while on the other they'll praise massive security issue like systemd for being a "living standard". If you dare to point out the situation happening with modern CPUs and other hardware (the built-in backdoors) they'll just hand wave you off as being "crazy" or "paranoid". Or they'll admit it's a problem but say something like "well you're not important enough to be watched anyway". Sure, I'm not important. That's why every device I interact with on a daily basis is collecting as much meta data about me as possible and sending it to some server. Even my remote control for my TV has two microphones embedded in it listening at all times. The box it talks to boots itself around 3am every morning and sends packets back to the company that really owns it. I know because it sometimes wakes me up in the middle of the night and I can clearly see it attempting to transmit data over my LAN no matter how it's configured. I have good reason to be paranoid. This is a massive problem. The grey beards of old wouldn't have stood for it. But sadly it seems most of them have sold out or died.
If you look around there isn't really anywhere to go as such. You can make some compromises on one or two issues (security, control) and get some benefits maybe (ability to play games, ability to use "modern web", ability to run application that's really just a web browser). But at the end of the day it's all crap. I know the FDE on my laptop isn't real. I know I can't really "buy" any software and expect it to not spy on me or respect my rights to do with it as I please. I know a license like the GPL is just pipe dream where the code will be stolen anyway and the nature of it forces these large companies to come in and take over the project through political means. Which is exactly what happened to Gentoo. All one has to do is look at the mailing list archives to see the endless list of employees for companies like Google dictating policy, calling for users to be banned, deleting entire mailing lists and forums because they don't agree with the speech happening in them (after they banned such speech from the on-topic technical forum where it belongs to stop the "flame wars" and "haters" aka don't point out the horrible decisions we're getting paid to make).
The current landscape in computing is bleak and will likely be forgotten in just a few more decades. x86 being an open standard was a mistake IBM and friends will never repeat. We were never intended to have computing freedom and the little window we got is closing fast. The future is architectures where no binary is allowed to run unless it's signed by some authority to ensure it's "safe". Your cute little open source compiler doesn't matter when you can't run the binaries it produces. $100+ subscription fee to get the right to sign your own bins (already a reality in Apple land). Which aren't allowed full access to the hardware anyway. Want hardware acceleration? Cough up another $100. Want to share it on the internet? That'll be another $100 a year so it isn't flagged and deleted the moment an end user attempts to download it.
Maybe you can play with your little hobby RISC-V or ARM chip. Too bad nothing you write for it will run on whatever phone or dumb terminal we're selling this month. I digress but you get my point. Even AMD64 machines are quickly becoming walled gardens with the likes of TPM and Secure boot. Impossible to audit. Impossible to use with any peace of mind that it isn't spying on everything you're doing and sending your encryption keys and passwords to some server somewhere in the world.
FreeBSD is probably the current best middle ground but it isn't perfect and it can't be perfect on modern hardware. We have an entire OS running outside of our control on modern CPUs at all times. We have blackbox GPUs and storage devices. Where we're forced to just trust the vendor and eat their blobs. Some people are making do with older hardware but soon it won't be useful for much but talking to other people doing the same thing. In the near future access to the web and probably the entire internet is going to become very restricted. For "safety" of course. We need to make sure everyone is "safe" so we're going to start requiring IDs to play. IDs tied to the unique IDs within the devices we "own".
Frankly, most people do not care. Even the so-called modern "hackers" do not care. They were never taught real ethics. The younger generation that came up after my time (80s-90s) don't remember what it was like in the before times. They pine for the days of 2012 web and think that was the wild west. They have no idea. Just like I can't relate to the UNIX hackers and BBS guys that came before me. I caught the tail end of their days but I wasn't old enough to really experience and be molded by it. Thankfully, there were enough of them still around when I did finally get access around Eternal September that the attitude they had rubbed off on me. This new generation isn't experiencing that now. We're all "old men" to them that need to "get with the times" and "move on" and any criticism of the software they use/write is "ranting at clouds" or a "skill issue". Most of these kids have never even read a man page because google IS their manual. They do not understand the value in a standard because everything is a "living standard" now.
I don't understand why people can't see what Rust really is for. All you have to do is look at who promotes it and sits on all the committees and foundation boards to know what it's about. You can't have a discussion about it without no fewer than 10 people showing up to defend it for being "safer". Rust is a virus. Through Rust you can take something that used to compile in seconds on a 386-era computer and make it unusable on anything produced pre-2010 or so. For any serious application built with it you might as well need a server farm to produce binaries. It provides no benefits. It prevents no errors. It pulls random code from all over the internet at compile time that no one is auditing, it encourages bad habits (I don't need to audit my code the borrow checker will do it for me!) and it's impossible to talk about its problems because the people that claim it's great will just regurgitate the propaganda talking points on repeat.
The main push for Rust is purely political. It has nothing to do with training new programmers or preventing bugs. It has everything to do with licensing, control and making older hardware platforms obsolete. Never mind the fact that mixing languages in what is already a massively complicated and large code base is never a good idea.
If we need something like Rust why not go all of the way? Why not have proper GC language? Why are we not striving for something like Lisp machines now that we have the hardware to power them? Why does my 10Gbps internet connection, 8-core CPU, dedicated GPU and ultra fast storage devices crawl along booting and rendering webpages like my old K6 system with a VGA adapter and 32MB of RAM did in 1997? Is this really progress? There is no excuse for what's happened other than greed and a few people wanting to control what the majority of us want to do with our computers.
Perhaps the old UNIX haters were right. They said C and UNIX itself was a virus back in the day. Worse is better and all of that. We've seen so many nice OSs come and go over the years. In 2025 why are we still running a 1960s UNIX clone? Why is there no kernel with graphics built in? Why are the GPUs a black box? Why does my CPU come with Minix? Why does my NIC transmit data over my network even when it's "turned off"? Why is the web/http in such a sorry state? Why isn't there a proper protocol for interactive applications over the wire that my less technically inclined friends can use through a proper GUI? Why did we allow something like gtk2 to be taken over and become gtk4? Why are people going along with things like systemd and all the other horrible shit that's plagued GNU-land over the last 2 decades? Are people really this dumb and lazy? Or is it that they just don't care?
I'll be the first to admit I'm suffering from apathy after living through the last 4 decades on this planet. I remember when I was young and naive. I thought this web thing was going to be a net win for humanity. Information was suddenly free. They could learn anything they wanted. They could improve themselves and their lives with the free access to knowledge. No more having to beg for access to the good books and access to the good toys. No more being unable to participate because you weren't born in the right place and time or didn't have the means to participate. No more not being able to share because copies were limited. No more excuses.
But instead of seeking out knowledge, learning, improving, creating and sharing people went off the rails. Instead of reading books they watch porn. Instead of creating they consume. Instead of sharing they hoard. Instead of helping each other they turn their backs on each other. Instead of embracing knowledge they not only willfully remain ignorant they're proud of their ignorance and dog pile on anyone that calls them out on it. Perhaps I was expecting too much from my fellow man.
I think there is a lot of truth to the "Linux is the new Windows" thing I've seen parroted around lately in several places. It has certainly attracted the same type of users and the people in charge are the same ones that were running Microsoft back in the 80s and 90s. They certainly have the same attitude and goals. I'm sure people like Linus and Stallman were told to get in-line with the program or suffer the fate many others have over the years. It'd be a shame if you vanished and all that. If you've been around long enough it's impossible not to notice the shift in attitude and opinion they've had over the years. If you wave enough paper in front of most people they'll do and say anything you want them to.
Those of us that care about the things that actually matter will most likely continue to be eternal refugees. I expect things to continue to get worse with each passing year until I'm no longer able to contribute anywhere anymore. It has basically already happened. It's hard to contribute anonymously anywhere anymore. People are no longer judged based on their merits. I weld no political power and it's welded against me almost daily at this point. Say the wrong thing and you can expect a ban hammer swung in your general direction in short order.
No such thing as open dialog these days every minor disagreement is construed into some kind of violation of the rules. No one argues in good faith. No one can take a joke. Way too many people getting paid money for doing basically nothing of value with legions of dumb people giving them money, fame and praise for reasons I'll never understand. Be mindful you don't let them find out your Government name otherwise expect your income and maybe your life to be placed in jeopardy or your family harassed. All the old fun places are over run with spam, bots, idiots and usually all three. Or they've just been de-platformed all together. The last 5 years or so have been particularly awful.
I for one will continue to lurk around and maybe send some packets to the few interesting places left now and again. But I do not expect to be able to do it for much longer and I do not have any faith that things will get better or improve. In fact, I've seriously been considering checking out of the digital side of life for several years now. If you think things aren't as bad as I'm saying I encourage you to attempt to live 2 weeks without a cell phone. Pretty much impossible in modern life now. I can't even interact with 90+% of the internet anymore because I'm not "verified". Aside from places that have been around since the before times. There are a handful of mailing lists and other places like IRC where I can still interact but mostly only because I registered accounts on such places before they started asking for a SIM card (or doing "verification" through a 3rd party that requires such things).
I do seriously wonder what people 200 years in the future will learn about this time period of computing in their history archives. I do not expect the nitty gritty of the details from the 1920s-2010s or so to be in them. I think once they lock everything down nice and tight they won't want to tell anyone that it used to be different. We've taken the greatest invention of mankind and turned it into a nightmare. I want to wake up from it.
All that to say: I continue to run FreeBSD so I can play the few games I still play through the Linux compatibility layer and wine since Linux proper became unbearable and maintaining offline Windows system(s) became too much trouble. I continue to use OpenBSD to interact with the internet/web and do misc. programming tasks (I live in emacs). I find myself using both of them less and less with each passing year because there really isn't anything interesting happening on the internet anymore for me personally. The internet now mainly just serves as an archive of information and I'm downloading all of it and storing it in my personal archives while I still can. Mainly old applications, doujin works, books, audio files and some video. I also produce music and video with FreeBSD too. I got that workstation converted over from Gentoo finally a few months back. Although I find myself having less and less time to partake in such hobbies. Even when I do find the time it's very hard to share it with anyone these days (same issue in the FOSS community is happening in all the other ones where I share art/content).
I really miss my Amiga and genlocks...
(I'm still mostly interested in FreeBSD over other operating systems)
).
