I already considered trying a BSD, but the GNU parts are the things I have no problem with and confound myself. So BSD might not be the answer, when it's the non-GNU parts of my GNU/Linux install that annoy me.
The GNU parts of GNU/Linux were written the way they were so the FSF wouldn't get sued by AT&T. Come to the dark side and see what software can be when written for programmers instead of lawyers.
I like *BSD, I have like 4 machines in my home running Free or Open, but no, this is not why GNU has the personality it does.
I feel a lot of it is the way it is because in the pre-linux era, it was common to run GNU tools on commercial Unix, and so it absorbed many options, flags, syntaxes etc. from those various systems that it needed to be drop in replacements for. In the old school Unix wars of SysV vs BSD, it wound up with more of a SysV personality.
I currently like Debian, because of the stability and them removing unwanted features and integrating software with the OS. I mostly run a 10years+ laptop.
These days FreeBSD is my go-to. I find it faster whenever I've done do comparisons. ZFS is really interesting.
OpenBSD is way more opinionated. Stuff might randomly break or get removed release to release. Sometimes that's justifiable. But it's possible to get tired of tracking all those changes.
I got into OpenBSD purely for the politics. It has the most unapologetic hacker ethos from the 90s. It is also the most toxic of the BSDs and the least likely to suffer from a hostile takeover.
I used to use OpenBSD, but license wise I'm more pro-GNU. Hyperbola will rebase their OS from GNU/Linux to Hyperbola BSD. The thing is:
- wifi blobs under OpenBSD = easy kernel panics. Atheros ath9k drivers were many times easier to debug
- Ditto with nasty Radeon blobs. The more blobs you have, the less stuff you can understand. Again, these are a good source of kernel panics.
- Blobs from sound SOCs are no better and they look sketchy as hell.
Thus, my daily OS it's a netbook with 9front and I regret nothing.
From GNU, these would be more interesting if they turn into Scheme at full drive, using Coreutils/Findutils and the like just as legacy interop with Unix and they used for instance some weird Lisp based shell as Emacs does with eshell with can do crazy stuff much easier than with SH, which can be crazy difficult to achieve some tasks.
No wonder the Unix folks ran way from it (and from X11) and embraced rc from some Unix v8 at day 1, among rio instead of the X11 disaster. A much easier syntax, no sockets, no bullshit. You know Go's simplicity with dial()? Literal the same there, forget getting crazy with POSIX.
I would love the same from GNU. No Gnome, no Systemd, a Guile based desktop environment, fully integrated with Shepherd, config.scm and the rest of Scheme written tools.
A second Lisp Machine? Maybe, but faster and without 40 minutes long reboots.
How so "inferior"? It's a proven techonology widely adopted by major linux distros that has been practical for everyone wanting to manage their system.
Give me your alternative of "superior" technology.
“Inferior technology stack”. Didn’t I just read a few days ago about pf queues just now breaking 4Gbps? Look me up, I’ve written a lot about high speed networking.
How are those containers working out for you? Have you heard about these things called VMs? Which I moved on from like 8 years ago?
Not to mention ole Theo likes to alienate you folks at every possible opportunity, even when it doesn’t matter to the core philosophy of openbsd.
I mean, you do you, but at least demonstrate an ounce of intellectual integrity about it.
Containers are a joke compared to Plan9 namespaces, and docker just solves a GNU/Linux problem with itself and the zillions of incompatible distros.
FreeBSD has jails and Docker it's something laugable because with FBSD you just install the compatNx libraries and everything from version 4 and up will run as is.
And in any case you set a jail with these libraries and everything would run in a much secure way than docker defaults.
Seriously, can't even you see that Docker it's a problem written as a solution to another problem?
Kinda like NPM+Yarn+$package-package-manager of the day to solve the problems the whole ecosystem and the so-called solutions creates twice. Wake up.
Not GP, but I'm running OpenBSD on a laptop, not in a datacenter. I have a small Alpine VM that I often forget about. I also have Debian 12 on a Mac Mini and while it's systemd, it could be OpenRC for all that I care about it.
I can see a case for systemd on a server, but have never seen the point on user-facing distro.
Seeing Linux drama at this point is just entertainment.
The inferior technology stack pushed by big tech and defended by people who know better has been something else.
You'll take my software freedom from my cold dead hands.