8 ms·

Uff, that was a trip down the memory lane. That article strongly reminded me of what Linux was like - some 10-15 years ago. Nothing preconfigured, everything ha

by janoc 10y ago

Uff, that was a trip down the memory lane. That article strongly reminded me of what Linux was like - some 10-15 years ago. Nothing preconfigured, everything had to be set up by hand using config files, sometimes using magic incantations from the shell. I do get that some people prefer things this way (I used too when I was a student and had plenty of time to spend on tinkering - heck I have installed Slackware from floppies in 1995) and it certainly lets you understand what is going on your machine in minute detail, but a desktop machine is a tool for the most people - they need to get work done, and don't want to have to mess with the OS to get even basic stuff like networking or desktop running. I think I will stay with my Mageia on my machines ...

cel1ne 10y ago
That's why, after having used Redhat, SuSE, FreeBSD, Gentoo and Ubuntu over the course of 10 years, I switched to Mac/OSX. Everything just works.
floatboth 10y ago
If you don't want to touch any config files, you can get PC-BSD. Setting up FreeBSD is easier than, say, Arch Linux. The OS install is a menu based "next, next, next" process like in Debian. Installing a desktop environment… honestly I can't imagine how it CAN be difficult. `pacman -S xfce`, `pkg install xfce`, same thing everywhere.
- akerro 10y ago
  PCBSD is great, unfortunately it lacks better support for functional keyboards and screen brightness controls on laptops, but it's great anyway. I prefer it over ArchLinux.
- janoc 10y ago
  You have missed my point. Comparing with Arch and saying it is easier - well, gee, sure - not a particularly high bar to clear! The same about installing the desktop using a package manager. If you have to actually do any of that, you have lost already, at least as far as a productive desktop is concerned. My point is not that it is hard to do but that you shouldn't have to do it in the first place! Desktop OS should come with a working desktop out of the box - many desktop Linux distros actually give you a choice during the install and preconfigure one of the major ones for you. BSDs make excellent servers and there this simplicity and Unix-like approach to running things are a large benefit. Modern Linux distros tend to be way too complex and "black-box" like in this regard. However, having to go through all this to run a desktop is an unnecessary masochism for people who have way too much time on their hands, IMO.
  - floatboth 10y ago
    Well, everyone has different "productivity" needs. I'm productive when everything is customized for, uh, productivity. When my config files aren't overwritten by package managers and the settings aren't replaced at runtime by some-settings-daemon that I never wanted. You must be that mythical Hacker News commenter who's proud of using default settings everywhere and not customizing anything :D Anyway, setting up any BSD, or Arch, or even Gentoo doesn't really take "way too much time", come on.
    - karma_vaccum123 10y ago
      Agreed. And FreeBSD's installer has been "next, next, next" as you say, since the 90s. Our receptionist installed it herself on both her work and home computers in 1997. Next, next, next, done.
      - groovy2shoes 10y ago
        Arch used to have an installer like that, but they dumped it in favor of the current boot-into-heavily-customized-live-environment-that's-nothing-like-the-default-installation-and-install-pseudo-manually-by-running-these-shell-scripts-in-the-proper-order-and-hopefully-you-memorized-the-handbook “installer”. I can't prove it, but I suspect they did that sheerly out of elitism, to keep the newbs out.
  - JdeBP 10y ago
    > Desktop OS should come with a working desktop out of the box ... You are responding to a comment that explicitly mentioned PC-BSD by name. I strongly suggest looking up what PC-BSD is.
vasili111 10y ago
If you want preconfigured FreeBSD try PCBSD/TrueOS.
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
I use Arch because of this: Having been an Ubuntu user, and watched my system break every 6 months Because Reasons, I despise magic: I want to know what my system is doing, because when it breaks, I'm the guy that's got to fix it.
- Yhippa 10y ago
  I think this is what always turns me off from using Linux on the desktop as my main. With Arch do you feel you have a better sense of why things break when they do? Tempted to try it out because of things like what you said.
  - jjawssd 10y ago
    > With Arch do you feel you have a better sense of why things break when they do? Yes
    - qbrass 10y ago
      Because Arch makes you do everything, the answer to why it broke is always you. There was an unofficial motto to that effect at one time.
      - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        Nowadays, the reason why it broke is either you, or Systemd. But the reason why your system has systemd is that you didn't uninstall it. Your system might have also broken because you didn't read the RSS feed, which warns of potentially breaking changes. When in doubt, blame yourself. Or Alan.
      - cosarara97 10y ago
        Except when it's not, and the answer is the maintainers [1]. [1] https://bugs.archlinux.org/index.php?do=details&task_id=50512 https://bugs.archlinux.org/index.php?do=details&task_id=5051... (hit this myself a couple days ago)
  - 10y ago
johnchristopher 10y ago
I don't fully agree with this. I remember installing red hat from a bunch of floppies around 1997. Tinkering, etc. But it certainly didn't let me understand what was going on with the machine. I got a much better grasp of linux many years later when internet came around and well... started doing useful things with the machine instead of configure a VGA Xorg whatever file to display the desktop (and then what? play mp3 ?).
zzzcpan 10y ago
Don't be ridiculous, Linux [1] is not better at this. Maybe out of the box experience is a bit nicer, but it's not generally just usable after that. Want a properly working network? Guess what - network manager is the problem, you have to disable it and configure network interfaces manually with config files and everything. Or want vim as a default editor - good luck with config files, "update-alternatives" shell magic is the only way to change it. Want to disable avahi, mlocate and other annoying stuff? Dig deep into configs and .overrides and magic chmods (hud-service). Locales are of course incorrect by default too. And it's not even close to everything, far from it. That's why I have like a 500 line shell script to automate configuration after installation. The only way to make it better is to recognize the problem and make a new distribution with a decent well thought out package and configuration manager. [1] I'm talking about desktop Ubuntu of course.
- viraptor 10y ago
  I think you listed many things that require links to bugs or some specific descriptions. Otherwise the post just looks like FUD. Network manager works for usual configs. Update alternatives existed for years, but most apps respect setting $EDITOR. Most services can be simply disabled without overrides. Etc. Sure, there may be issues. But both the list and mentioned solutions seem extraordinary.
  - zzzcpan 10y ago
    You can google every single thing from my post and see for yourself how many people have these problems. Calling it FUD is just FUD.
    - viraptor 10y ago
      No, that's the point, I can't without more information. "Network manager not working" is not exactly a good query.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- 10y ago
badsock 10y ago
I would make the exact opposite argument. I set things up the way I want them many years ago, and because everything's a text file, my configs have followed me across many machines and OS installs by just copying some files. With more "magical" desktops like Gnome, developers like to change things every 6 months, and then I've got to mess around with the settings to try and not have it disrupt my workflow. And as soon as bring a new machine up I'm spending half a day mousing through menus and trying to remember all the things I set last time. I like FreeBSD with a minimal desktop precisely because I've got more important things to be doing than messing around with settings. Yeah, the work is front-loaded, but the payoff is that I spend years not even thinking about the desktop or the OS.
- zamalek 10y ago
  I hear this so often; it seems as though there should be a way to do this automatically.
  - michaelmrose 10y ago
    If I recall correctly although gnome uses a binary config file format not terribly unlike the windows registry there is a way to export and then import it. Even so I don't think this is 100% proof against things changing then again the same CAN be true of text configuration files.

by janoc 10y ago

cel1ne 10y ago

That's why, after having used Redhat, SuSE, FreeBSD, Gentoo and Ubuntu over the course of 10 years, I switched to Mac/OSX. Everything just works.

floatboth 10y ago

If you don't want to touch any config files, you can get PC-BSD. Setting up FreeBSD is easier than, say, Arch Linux. The OS install is a menu based "next, next, next" process like in Debian. Installing a desktop environment… honestly I can't imagine how it CAN be difficult. `pacman -S xfce`, `pkg install xfce`, same thing everywhere.

akerro 10y ago
PCBSD is great, unfortunately it lacks better support for functional keyboards and screen brightness controls on laptops, but it's great anyway. I prefer it over ArchLinux.
janoc 10y ago
You have missed my point. Comparing with Arch and saying it is easier - well, gee, sure - not a particularly high bar to clear! The same about installing the desktop using a package manager. If you have to actually do any of that, you have lost already, at least as far as a productive desktop is concerned. My point is not that it is hard to do but that you shouldn't have to do it in the first place! Desktop OS should come with a working desktop out of the box - many desktop Linux distros actually give you a choice during the install and preconfigure one of the major ones for you. BSDs make excellent servers and there this simplicity and Unix-like approach to running things are a large benefit. Modern Linux distros tend to be way too complex and "black-box" like in this regard. However, having to go through all this to run a desktop is an unnecessary masochism for people who have way too much time on their hands, IMO.
- floatboth 10y ago
  Well, everyone has different "productivity" needs. I'm productive when everything is customized for, uh, productivity. When my config files aren't overwritten by package managers and the settings aren't replaced at runtime by some-settings-daemon that I never wanted. You must be that mythical Hacker News commenter who's proud of using default settings everywhere and not customizing anything :D Anyway, setting up any BSD, or Arch, or even Gentoo doesn't really take "way too much time", come on.
  - karma_vaccum123 10y ago
    Agreed. And FreeBSD's installer has been "next, next, next" as you say, since the 90s. Our receptionist installed it herself on both her work and home computers in 1997. Next, next, next, done.
    - groovy2shoes 10y ago
      Arch used to have an installer like that, but they dumped it in favor of the current boot-into-heavily-customized-live-environment-that's-nothing-like-the-default-installation-and-install-pseudo-manually-by-running-these-shell-scripts-in-the-proper-order-and-hopefully-you-memorized-the-handbook “installer”. I can't prove it, but I suspect they did that sheerly out of elitism, to keep the newbs out.
- JdeBP 10y ago
  > Desktop OS should come with a working desktop out of the box ... You are responding to a comment that explicitly mentioned PC-BSD by name. I strongly suggest looking up what PC-BSD is.

vasili111 10y ago

If you want preconfigured FreeBSD try PCBSD/TrueOS.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago

I use Arch because of this: Having been an Ubuntu user, and watched my system break every 6 months Because Reasons, I despise magic: I want to know what my system is doing, because when it breaks, I'm the guy that's got to fix it.

Yhippa 10y ago
I think this is what always turns me off from using Linux on the desktop as my main. With Arch do you feel you have a better sense of why things break when they do? Tempted to try it out because of things like what you said.
- jjawssd 10y ago
  > With Arch do you feel you have a better sense of why things break when they do? Yes
  - qbrass 10y ago
    Because Arch makes you do everything, the answer to why it broke is always you. There was an unofficial motto to that effect at one time.
    - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
      Nowadays, the reason why it broke is either you, or Systemd. But the reason why your system has systemd is that you didn't uninstall it. Your system might have also broken because you didn't read the RSS feed, which warns of potentially breaking changes. When in doubt, blame yourself. Or Alan.
    - cosarara97 10y ago
      Except when it's not, and the answer is the maintainers [1]. [1] https://bugs.archlinux.org/index.php?do=details&task_id=50512 https://bugs.archlinux.org/index.php?do=details&task_id=5051... (hit this myself a couple days ago)
- 10y ago

johnchristopher 10y ago

I don't fully agree with this. I remember installing red hat from a bunch of floppies around 1997. Tinkering, etc. But it certainly didn't let me understand what was going on with the machine. I got a much better grasp of linux many years later when internet came around and well... started doing useful things with the machine instead of configure a VGA Xorg whatever file to display the desktop (and then what? play mp3 ?).

zzzcpan 10y ago

Don't be ridiculous, Linux [1] is not better at this. Maybe out of the box experience is a bit nicer, but it's not generally just usable after that. Want a properly working network? Guess what - network manager is the problem, you have to disable it and configure network interfaces manually with config files and everything. Or want vim as a default editor - good luck with config files, "update-alternatives" shell magic is the only way to change it. Want to disable avahi, mlocate and other annoying stuff? Dig deep into configs and .overrides and magic chmods (hud-service). Locales are of course incorrect by default too. And it's not even close to everything, far from it. That's why I have like a 500 line shell script to automate configuration after installation. The only way to make it better is to recognize the problem and make a new distribution with a decent well thought out package and configuration manager. [1] I'm talking about desktop Ubuntu of course.

viraptor 10y ago
I think you listed many things that require links to bugs or some specific descriptions. Otherwise the post just looks like FUD. Network manager works for usual configs. Update alternatives existed for years, but most apps respect setting $EDITOR. Most services can be simply disabled without overrides. Etc. Sure, there may be issues. But both the list and mentioned solutions seem extraordinary.
- zzzcpan 10y ago
  You can google every single thing from my post and see for yourself how many people have these problems. Calling it FUD is just FUD.
  - viraptor 10y ago
    No, that's the point, I can't without more information. "Network manager not working" is not exactly a good query.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
10y ago

badsock 10y ago

I would make the exact opposite argument. I set things up the way I want them many years ago, and because everything's a text file, my configs have followed me across many machines and OS installs by just copying some files. With more "magical" desktops like Gnome, developers like to change things every 6 months, and then I've got to mess around with the settings to try and not have it disrupt my workflow. And as soon as bring a new machine up I'm spending half a day mousing through menus and trying to remember all the things I set last time. I like FreeBSD with a minimal desktop precisely because I've got more important things to be doing than messing around with settings. Yeah, the work is front-loaded, but the payoff is that I spend years not even thinking about the desktop or the OS.

zamalek 10y ago
I hear this so often; it seems as though there should be a way to do this automatically.
- michaelmrose 10y ago
  If I recall correctly although gnome uses a binary config file format not terribly unlike the windows registry there is a way to export and then import it. Even so I don't think this is 100% proof against things changing then again the same CAN be true of text configuration files.