6 ms·

The BSD's best feature that Linux won't rival is how boring they are (in a good way).

by thijsvandien 6y ago

Koshkin 6y ago
Slackware is comparably boring.
- tramtrist 6y ago
  Next stable version is right around the corner. Latest plasma, xfce, and kernel should be in all while staying true to those 'boring' principals
elric 6y ago
Linux's decentralization is both its major strength and its major weakness. The differences between distros can be so large that you might as well be talking about two entirely different operating system. There is little consistency in design of tools. Many tools used to follow the UNIX Philosophy ("do one thing well"), but that no longer seems to be the case. We (as in Linux users) used to make fun of Windows for how stupid everything was. You need a GUI for configuration because many options are hidden away in some kind of cryptic registry, deploying services is a PITA etc. Now we have somehow (d)evolved to that same mess. For instance, SystemD and SELinux are such a pain to work with (each for different reasons) that it feels like I have to fight my OS. Wanting an OS that works for me, instead of against me, was one of the major reasons why I switched from Windows to BSD and then Linux back in the 90s. There's definitely something to be said for *BSD's boring, predictable simplicity. But perhaps there's some kind of force that automatically drives operating systems to bewildering compelxity as their user base grows?
- lordgroff 6y ago
  I don't understand the hate systemd gets honestly, except around some very corner concerns. I remember the old init systems and don't want to go back. Piles of shell scripts with absolutely no standardization, each doing its own thing with zero consistency. Systemd has massively cleaned up that mess and yes it's more complex, but also more sane. I don't find the FreeBSD init an improvement. Nobody is forcing SELinux on you, you can turn it off and that's that. If you're on a Red Hat based system most of policy is there out of the box, providing you with pretty nice additional protection without too much tinkering.
  - throw0101a 6y ago
    > I don't understand the hate systemd gets honestly, except around some very corner concerns. I remember the old init systems and don't want to go back. systemd-as-init is/was not the problem. systemd-as-kitchen-sink is where people started getting annoyed. It needs journald (which can't ship logs off-host like rsyslog, so you needed to run rsyslog anyway), it pulled in udevd, it's doing DNS, it's doing time syncing, it's doing DHCP/IP and VXLAN(!), it has a boot manager (formerly gummiboot), it's tracking user logins, it's ….
    - MisterTea 6y ago
      > it's …. Too. Damn. Big.
      - Koshkin 6y ago
        Well, it is the system (daemon) after all. (Something that you add on top of a kernel to make an OS proper.)
        throw0101a 6y ago
        If I wanted giant, tightly-coupled binary blobs for system services I'd just run Windows.
        justin66 6y ago
        It's like Linux wasn't even an operating system until we had systemd!
    - iam-TJ 6y ago
      systemd-journal-upload, systemd-journal-remote and systemd-journal-gatewayd provide remote logging services natively. See: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-journal-upload.service.html https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-jou...
      - throw0101a 6y ago
- MisterTea 6y ago
  Boring? Come over to plan 9. We have cake, 9p and Doom. You are not alone in your disdain for what has happened to Linux. I even mentioned this the other day to a degree: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25570712 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25570712 The big problem is simple interfaces require more effort on the users part which will never happen for a majority of users. And lets face it, people like me, you and most others here are the extreme minority in computing. We aren't afraid of $ vi /etc/config or echo killuser >/n/pcturret/ctl. But writing documentation is boring and "hard" so it never gets done. People start complaining about docs and someone comes up with the bright idea to automate vi /etc/config by replacing it with a poorly thought out contraption that needs binaries and bolted on protocols. That's exactly what dbus is and is best described as duck tape engineering.
  - Gualdrapo 6y ago
    > And lets face it, people like me, you and most others here are the extreme minority in computing. Yesterday one of KDE devs posted an article mentioning this sort of phenomenon and linked to an article depicting it in full[1]. And now that you mention Plan 9 it makes me think, because I always dreamt about Plan9 taking over the world and becoming big and everyone using it, but Plan9 is so great because it has never left the 'geek' circle, while others like Linux (and arguably the BSDs, to a lesser extent) already had. [1] https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths
    - MisterTea 6y ago
      It's all ego stroking and github stars. The psychopaths write code for the sake of building an ego instead of better software. The only people they are helping is themselves. This is why the 9front/cat-v crowd is cantankerous and the humour as dark and cringy as possible. No likes. No stars. No instagram accounts full of pictures some jerk took in the middle of the sahara to show how shallow they are. We only want well thought out code. Otherwise go away.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    I prefer Inferno, which is Plan 9 done right.
- scns 6y ago
  Void linux may be to your liking
sandworm101 6y ago
Boring is a feature. For an OS it is THE feature. An OS is a necessary evil. It doesn't actually complete any user tasks, much like a car's engine doesn't do the actual driving. An OS should take the low-level tasks assigned to it, complete them without issue, not do anything unexpected, and generally stay out of the user's way. A car engine's job is to start and stop when asked, not to organize the driver's inbox. BSD has remained true to this while Linux has moved away in recent years. On the flip side it windows. That OS doesn't hide in the background, rather it screams for attention 24/7, inserting itself in every little task even when specifically told to back off.

The BSD's best feature that Linux won't rival is how boring they are (in a good way).

Koshkin 6y ago

Slackware is comparably boring.

tramtrist 6y ago
Next stable version is right around the corner. Latest plasma, xfce, and kernel should be in all while staying true to those 'boring' principals

elric 6y ago

Linux's decentralization is both its major strength and its major weakness. The differences between distros can be so large that you might as well be talking about two entirely different operating system. There is little consistency in design of tools. Many tools used to follow the UNIX Philosophy ("do one thing well"), but that no longer seems to be the case. We (as in Linux users) used to make fun of Windows for how stupid everything was. You need a GUI for configuration because many options are hidden away in some kind of cryptic registry, deploying services is a PITA etc. Now we have somehow (d)evolved to that same mess. For instance, SystemD and SELinux are such a pain to work with (each for different reasons) that it feels like I have to fight my OS. Wanting an OS that works for me, instead of against me, was one of the major reasons why I switched from Windows to BSD and then Linux back in the 90s. There's definitely something to be said for *BSD's boring, predictable simplicity. But perhaps there's some kind of force that automatically drives operating systems to bewildering compelxity as their user base grows?

lordgroff 6y ago
I don't understand the hate systemd gets honestly, except around some very corner concerns. I remember the old init systems and don't want to go back. Piles of shell scripts with absolutely no standardization, each doing its own thing with zero consistency. Systemd has massively cleaned up that mess and yes it's more complex, but also more sane. I don't find the FreeBSD init an improvement. Nobody is forcing SELinux on you, you can turn it off and that's that. If you're on a Red Hat based system most of policy is there out of the box, providing you with pretty nice additional protection without too much tinkering.
- throw0101a 6y ago
  > I don't understand the hate systemd gets honestly, except around some very corner concerns. I remember the old init systems and don't want to go back. systemd-as-init is/was not the problem. systemd-as-kitchen-sink is where people started getting annoyed. It needs journald (which can't ship logs off-host like rsyslog, so you needed to run rsyslog anyway), it pulled in udevd, it's doing DNS, it's doing time syncing, it's doing DHCP/IP and VXLAN(!), it has a boot manager (formerly gummiboot), it's tracking user logins, it's ….
  - MisterTea 6y ago
    > it's …. Too. Damn. Big.
    - Koshkin 6y ago
      Well, it is the system (daemon) after all. (Something that you add on top of a kernel to make an OS proper.)
      - throw0101a 6y ago
        If I wanted giant, tightly-coupled binary blobs for system services I'd just run Windows.
      - justin66 6y ago
        It's like Linux wasn't even an operating system until we had systemd!
  - iam-TJ 6y ago
    systemd-journal-upload, systemd-journal-remote and systemd-journal-gatewayd provide remote logging services natively. See: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-journal-upload.service.html https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-jou...
    - throw0101a 6y ago
MisterTea 6y ago
Boring? Come over to plan 9. We have cake, 9p and Doom. You are not alone in your disdain for what has happened to Linux. I even mentioned this the other day to a degree: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25570712 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25570712 The big problem is simple interfaces require more effort on the users part which will never happen for a majority of users. And lets face it, people like me, you and most others here are the extreme minority in computing. We aren't afraid of $ vi /etc/config or echo killuser >/n/pcturret/ctl. But writing documentation is boring and "hard" so it never gets done. People start complaining about docs and someone comes up with the bright idea to automate vi /etc/config by replacing it with a poorly thought out contraption that needs binaries and bolted on protocols. That's exactly what dbus is and is best described as duck tape engineering.
- Gualdrapo 6y ago
  > And lets face it, people like me, you and most others here are the extreme minority in computing. Yesterday one of KDE devs posted an article mentioning this sort of phenomenon and linked to an article depicting it in full[1]. And now that you mention Plan 9 it makes me think, because I always dreamt about Plan9 taking over the world and becoming big and everyone using it, but Plan9 is so great because it has never left the 'geek' circle, while others like Linux (and arguably the BSDs, to a lesser extent) already had. [1] https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths
  - MisterTea 6y ago
    It's all ego stroking and github stars. The psychopaths write code for the sake of building an ego instead of better software. The only people they are helping is themselves. This is why the 9front/cat-v crowd is cantankerous and the humour as dark and cringy as possible. No likes. No stars. No instagram accounts full of pictures some jerk took in the middle of the sahara to show how shallow they are. We only want well thought out code. Otherwise go away.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  I prefer Inferno, which is Plan 9 done right.
scns 6y ago
Void linux may be to your liking

sandworm101 6y ago

Boring is a feature. For an OS it is THE feature. An OS is a necessary evil. It doesn't actually complete any user tasks, much like a car's engine doesn't do the actual driving. An OS should take the low-level tasks assigned to it, complete them without issue, not do anything unexpected, and generally stay out of the user's way. A car engine's job is to start and stop when asked, not to organize the driver's inbox. BSD has remained true to this while Linux has moved away in recent years. On the flip side it windows. That OS doesn't hide in the background, rather it screams for attention 24/7, inserting itself in every little task even when specifically told to back off.