4 ms·

For years I lived in FreeBSD world - servers and laptops. I was fighting the good fight and rationalised that having to only remember one location for network

For years I lived in FreeBSD world - servers and laptops. I was fighting the good fight and rationalised that having to only remember one location for network services was a win. Then I took a second look. I realised that I was spending waaayy too much time getting the laptop usable (usually wifi) and not going enough using it I bailed for ubuntu and I cannot remember where the network confit is and hate the GUI but I have stopped caring and I just do my work Sometimes I feel dirty.

loxs 7y ago
Did the same, but for me the transition was from Linux (various flavours) to Mac OS. Feel even dirtier :(
h1d 7y ago
What's so dirty bypassing that isn't productive for you?
- z3phyr 7y ago
  What does productive mean? The thing that get you satisfaction or money?
  - munmaek 7y ago
    Being able to Just Do Things without mucking around in config files, building a, b, c things from source and dealing with random missing dependencies d, e, f. Then having to search online to fix Random Obscure Errors g, h i, etc, and so on. Or in the case of bsd-likes, maybe needing to write ports and adapt makefiles, etc. I've gone Arch -> FreeBSD -> OpenBSD -> Debian for my main pc, and osx for my laptop. I used to like manually tweaking and configuring everything but these days I just want to turn on the computer and get into a workflow with as few headaches as possible.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
gbmor 7y ago
I switched from Linux to OpenBSD, then to FreeBSD as my primary OS on my laptop, which involved a bit more set-up time than I was accustomed to with Linux, previously. Eventually I grew tired of the manual setup for so many things and bailed for Debian Sid. It feels like a nice middle-ground. Most things work out of the box, but I still get to tinker and scratch that itch.
- munmaek 7y ago
  I went the same route. Arch -> Void -> FreeBSD -> OpenBSD -> Debian Stretch (no desktop, just xorg + i3). I love it. No more random updates breaking things like in Arch. I can install things relatively smoothly and get them running quickly. If I really do need the latest version of something I can still install from source. Etc. I just want to work on things, not configure things endlessly and deal with random bugs :-)
  - gbmor 7y ago
    That is exactly how I feel.
brokenkebab 7y ago
And what really stopped you from having your laptop finally configured?
- lifeisstillgood 7y ago
  Frankly there was just too much to learn - I remember being totally chuffed I had found a slimline xdm replacement with no dependency on Gnome / KDE and yeah it is good and it is lightweight and I knew where the source code was but ... even if I found a slim lightweight version of every thing on a modern desktop - well I could not even list all the components. There is a some unix replacement project trying to rewrite major parts "simply". But in the end you just don't understand 90% of what is going on or you have a tiny tiny server. It's like everything these days is npm - install one thing and suddenly you find there are 900 packages installed including left-pad-0.3.4
commandersaki 7y ago
You know what shits me? Restarting networking remotely and realising you also need to restart the routing to install your routes. Whoops, many many many times over.
fulafel 7y ago
You can use the server cli/conffile driven networking tools, ifupdown (pre-18) / netplan (18.04+) even if you are on a laptop and running GUI. Just uninstall NetworkManager.
rthomas6 7y ago
Arch Linux is calling you

loxs 7y ago

Did the same, but for me the transition was from Linux (various flavours) to Mac OS. Feel even dirtier :(

h1d 7y ago

What's so dirty bypassing that isn't productive for you?

z3phyr 7y ago
What does productive mean? The thing that get you satisfaction or money?
- munmaek 7y ago
  Being able to Just Do Things without mucking around in config files, building a, b, c things from source and dealing with random missing dependencies d, e, f. Then having to search online to fix Random Obscure Errors g, h i, etc, and so on. Or in the case of bsd-likes, maybe needing to write ports and adapt makefiles, etc. I've gone Arch -> FreeBSD -> OpenBSD -> Debian for my main pc, and osx for my laptop. I used to like manually tweaking and configuring everything but these days I just want to turn on the computer and get into a workflow with as few headaches as possible.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

gbmor 7y ago

I switched from Linux to OpenBSD, then to FreeBSD as my primary OS on my laptop, which involved a bit more set-up time than I was accustomed to with Linux, previously. Eventually I grew tired of the manual setup for so many things and bailed for Debian Sid. It feels like a nice middle-ground. Most things work out of the box, but I still get to tinker and scratch that itch.

munmaek 7y ago
I went the same route. Arch -> Void -> FreeBSD -> OpenBSD -> Debian Stretch (no desktop, just xorg + i3). I love it. No more random updates breaking things like in Arch. I can install things relatively smoothly and get them running quickly. If I really do need the latest version of something I can still install from source. Etc. I just want to work on things, not configure things endlessly and deal with random bugs :-)
- gbmor 7y ago
  That is exactly how I feel.

brokenkebab 7y ago

And what really stopped you from having your laptop finally configured?

lifeisstillgood 7y ago
Frankly there was just too much to learn - I remember being totally chuffed I had found a slimline xdm replacement with no dependency on Gnome / KDE and yeah it is good and it is lightweight and I knew where the source code was but ... even if I found a slim lightweight version of every thing on a modern desktop - well I could not even list all the components. There is a some unix replacement project trying to rewrite major parts "simply". But in the end you just don't understand 90% of what is going on or you have a tiny tiny server. It's like everything these days is npm - install one thing and suddenly you find there are 900 packages installed including left-pad-0.3.4

commandersaki 7y ago

You know what shits me? Restarting networking remotely and realising you also need to restart the routing to install your routes. Whoops, many many many times over.

fulafel 7y ago

You can use the server cli/conffile driven networking tools, ifupdown (pre-18) / netplan (18.04+) even if you are on a laptop and running GUI. Just uninstall NetworkManager.

rthomas6 7y ago

Arch Linux is calling you