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I have very little experience with the other BSD flavors, but FreeBSD will be different than Linux, for sure. I used to use Slackware and I would say FreeBSD i
by retro64 6y ago
I have very little experience with the other BSD flavors, but FreeBSD will be different than Linux, for sure. I used to use Slackware and I would say FreeBSD is fairly comparable from a “clean slate” perspective (although now it’s gotten much more full featured). On the surface you will get the usual support for Firefox, your choice of windows manager (I use xfce) and so on, but expect to do some tweaking. Using xfce as an example, the basic install is very different and fundamental than what you might find on something like Linux Mint, but if you see something you like, once you know you can do it, it’s typically not too time consuming to figure out how. More of this will be on your shoulders though. Sometimes you’ll find small things like right clicking on an archive to trigger an unpack won’t work out of the box, you’ll need to add that yourself. But once you get things dialed in, they stay.
After some reflection, I think the number one reason I’ve stayed with FreeBSD all this time is it’s so dang stable and it just works. Historically speaking, I can’t think of anything radical ever happening since I’ve been using it. When it comes time to upgrade it’s been fairly painless which boils down to making a backup and running a couple commands (crossing your fingers is optional, but I think it helps).
TrueOS may be tempting but my experience with it was not very good. In fairness maybe it’s better now. I just use the vanilla release and chug along and won’t deviate again. No point.
But for you – not sure. I write code for my bread and butter and am steeped in technology – I most certainly have blinders regarding the complexity involved, but again, if you’ve been using Linux for 10 years this may not be an issue for you.
*Edited for ramble.
- valarauko 6y ago>TrueOS may be tempting but my experience with it was not very good. In fairness maybe it’s better now. TrueOS development has been discontinued as of May (?) 2020. Xfce is more than sufficient for my needs - I've been experimenting with TWMs, i3 most recently. As a long term linux user, I'm well accustomed to spending exponentially more time working on the system rather than actually using it. As biologists, our computational skills tend to be middling, so dogfooding linux as my daily driver was a means to learn. If a BSD daily driver takes my learning up a notch, worth it. The top level comments reference to "elegance" and "well designed" is what struck me - these are not things I'd associate with any of the linux distros I've used.