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I'd LOVE for BSD to be a good alternative for daily use to Linux. But it's simply not. There's more and more stuff that is Linux only nowadays (wayland, gnome,

I'd LOVE for BSD to be a good alternative for daily use to Linux. But it's simply not. There's more and more stuff that is Linux only nowadays (wayland, gnome, several drivers, power management, wifi, Steam and proton... to name a few, very important ones)

eatonphil 5y ago
What do you mean by "BSD"? As I'm sure you know they are not distributions of the same underlying operating system. FreeBSD has supported Gnome for years for example. Wifi drivers are not Linux-only either AFAIK they just take time to get ported from Linux (or sometimes NetBSD) to FreeBSD. While it's true that FreeBSD isn't as easy a desktop system as Ubuntu is, it sounds like some (but definitely not all) of your reasons are a few years out of date. FreeBSD's main focus is servers also to be fair.
- grahamjperrin 5y ago
  > … FreeBSD has supported Gnome for years for example. … Sadly, in relation to AMD GPUs: <https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=257810#c5 https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=257810#c5> >> … disable dri 3 in xorg.conf (use dri 2)
mnd999 5y ago
Wayland was working fine on FreeBSD last time I tried it. Gnome also had a port last time I looked. Even steam has worked in the past under linuxulator, not sure if it does currently. Edit: wayland not waylaid. That was genuinely autocorrect but it made me smile.
- grahamjperrin 5y ago
  > Wayland was working fine on FreeBSD last time I tried it. … From the quote at <https://forums.freebsd.org/posts/548305 https://forums.freebsd.org/posts/548305>: >> … KDE Plasma Wayland, which was working in September, is now broken. It’s not just my laptop, it’s on my workstation (AMDGPU), on the spare machine (Intel iGPU) and the laptop (Intel iGPU). I have chatted a bit with Plasma developers, but the debugging is on me, unfortunately. If you _do_ find Wayland working for KDE Plasma e.g. the option in SDDM, please join the discussion at <https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/kde-wayland.80167/ https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/kde-wayland.80167/> – thanks.
eternityforest 5y ago
I'm kinda glad it isn't, that would be more fragmentation and BSD has a very different philosophy. Probably best to not try to make BSD into modern Linux which is basically FreeWindows. I wouldn't want to use a BSD that BSD people like any more than they'd want to switch to Linux, it seems they are different for a reason.
- grahamjperrin 5y ago
  > … Probably best to not try to make BSD into modern Linux which is basically FreeWindows. … airyxOS, based on FreeBSD, aims to provide "… the finesse of macOS with the freedom of FreeBSD. …". <https://airyx.org/ https://airyx.org/> I wish well to projects such as this, however I rarely engage – testing and feedback – because the focus on Apple keyboards is too much for me. (I taught myself to use the keyboard in a very different way when I switched away from Apple after twenty-something years. I don't intend to un-learn that switch.)
tomc1985 5y ago
Yeah the best thing about BSD is that it hasn't had a bajillion different idea people come in and implement the same thing a billion different ways. Would prefer it stayed that way. Desktop BSD works. It's a pain to set up but you can get there.
fshee 5y ago
FWIW Steam, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, and Dota 2 all worked great for me on FreeBSD. The other things you listed are issues/have their own problems. No Docker is the showstopper for me. https://www.freshports.org/games/linux-steam-utils/ https://www.freshports.org/games/linux-steam-utils/
- hereforphone 5y ago
  No proton though
  - NexRebular 5y ago
    This? https://www.freshports.org/emulators/wine-proton/ https://www.freshports.org/emulators/wine-proton/
mrlemke 5y ago
Why do you want to run a BSD? I am not particularly interested in the above, except power management and wifi. I am trying GhostBSD as an alternative specifically because I am not interested in Gnome, Wayland, or Steam. I don't hate them, just don't care. I may go simpler and just use CTWM and cobble together a desktop environment. I am genuinely curious what running these things on a BSD gets you that you can't get with Linux. Using a mainstream distro (like Debian or Fedora) gets you this without hassle.
- NexRebular 5y ago
  Why BSD? Because I trust the competence of BSD developers a lot more than linux developers. Furthermore, I don't want to contribute to monoculturization of IT by stuffing the penguin into every single thing in sight. The question rather is... why would anyone want to run linux when *BSD (and illumos) are available?
  - mrlemke 5y ago
    "Why BSD?" wasn't the question. I have already read a lot of the arguments about that particular question. If I were to generalize my question to ladyanita22, it would be, "Why would you want to run a BSD for Gnome, Wayland, Steam/Proton, and other generally Linux software, instead of running it directly on Linux where it is supported best?" What does the user get out of running a BSD for Linux software that they can't get out of Linux? If you prefer BSD, then why not use software that is better tailored for BSD rather than software that requires porting and changing or removing all of the Linux specific bits?
    - NexRebular 5y ago
      The problem is that software used to be portable and worked well on !linux systems. Little by little majority of important FOSS development is heading towards linux-specific EEE, I feel, and that is setting a dangerous precedent...
      - tcmart14 5y ago
loudmax 5y ago
This entirely depends on your use case. For many gamers, Windows PCs can't be replaced by a Mac, let alone Linux. Hopefully Proton/Wine will bridge that gap and maybe even be ported to FreeBSD. There are lots of servers running Linux that could very well be switched to FreeBSD, and lots more that are locked into Linux due to the state of hardware drivers or the containers they're running. If all you're doing on Linux is browsing the web and opening terminals, you could probably switch to FreeBSD without too much disruption.
- flatiron 5y ago
  if your wifi and bluetooth are supported, battery life is a factor too, as well as sleep.
discardedrefuse 5y ago
If only the problem was just for desktop environments. Last week I decided to get into Jails and threw FreeBSD on my home lab server: an HP DL380 G7, which is enterprise level hardware from around 2011. Even with powerd and speedstep support enabled, the fans were spinning close to full speed at idle. It sounded like an airplane taking off. I searched around and found that maybe I needed to get specific software from HP that was behind a paywall. So I gave up. Instead I installed Alpine Linux (so tiny) on the server and its never been quieter; With zero extra config. I ended up playing with LXD instead of Jails.
retro64 5y ago
Been using FreeBSD as my primary workstation since 2006, with a secondary Linux box for games. I’ve found FreeBSD to be a very viable and reliable alternative, but of course that depends on your personal needs.

eatonphil 5y ago

What do you mean by "BSD"? As I'm sure you know they are not distributions of the same underlying operating system. FreeBSD has supported Gnome for years for example. Wifi drivers are not Linux-only either AFAIK they just take time to get ported from Linux (or sometimes NetBSD) to FreeBSD. While it's true that FreeBSD isn't as easy a desktop system as Ubuntu is, it sounds like some (but definitely not all) of your reasons are a few years out of date. FreeBSD's main focus is servers also to be fair.

grahamjperrin 5y ago
> … FreeBSD has supported Gnome for years for example. … Sadly, in relation to AMD GPUs: <https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=257810#c5 https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=257810#c5> >> … disable dri 3 in xorg.conf (use dri 2)

mnd999 5y ago

Wayland was working fine on FreeBSD last time I tried it. Gnome also had a port last time I looked. Even steam has worked in the past under linuxulator, not sure if it does currently. Edit: wayland not waylaid. That was genuinely autocorrect but it made me smile.

grahamjperrin 5y ago
> Wayland was working fine on FreeBSD last time I tried it. … From the quote at <https://forums.freebsd.org/posts/548305 https://forums.freebsd.org/posts/548305>: >> … KDE Plasma Wayland, which was working in September, is now broken. It’s not just my laptop, it’s on my workstation (AMDGPU), on the spare machine (Intel iGPU) and the laptop (Intel iGPU). I have chatted a bit with Plasma developers, but the debugging is on me, unfortunately. If you _do_ find Wayland working for KDE Plasma e.g. the option in SDDM, please join the discussion at <https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/kde-wayland.80167/ https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/kde-wayland.80167/> – thanks.

eternityforest 5y ago

I'm kinda glad it isn't, that would be more fragmentation and BSD has a very different philosophy. Probably best to not try to make BSD into modern Linux which is basically FreeWindows. I wouldn't want to use a BSD that BSD people like any more than they'd want to switch to Linux, it seems they are different for a reason.

grahamjperrin 5y ago
> … Probably best to not try to make BSD into modern Linux which is basically FreeWindows. … airyxOS, based on FreeBSD, aims to provide "… the finesse of macOS with the freedom of FreeBSD. …". <https://airyx.org/ https://airyx.org/> I wish well to projects such as this, however I rarely engage – testing and feedback – because the focus on Apple keyboards is too much for me. (I taught myself to use the keyboard in a very different way when I switched away from Apple after twenty-something years. I don't intend to un-learn that switch.)

tomc1985 5y ago

Yeah the best thing about BSD is that it hasn't had a bajillion different idea people come in and implement the same thing a billion different ways. Would prefer it stayed that way. Desktop BSD works. It's a pain to set up but you can get there.

fshee 5y ago

FWIW Steam, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, and Dota 2 all worked great for me on FreeBSD. The other things you listed are issues/have their own problems. No Docker is the showstopper for me. https://www.freshports.org/games/linux-steam-utils/ https://www.freshports.org/games/linux-steam-utils/

hereforphone 5y ago
No proton though
- NexRebular 5y ago
  This? https://www.freshports.org/emulators/wine-proton/ https://www.freshports.org/emulators/wine-proton/

mrlemke 5y ago

Why do you want to run a BSD? I am not particularly interested in the above, except power management and wifi. I am trying GhostBSD as an alternative specifically because I am not interested in Gnome, Wayland, or Steam. I don't hate them, just don't care. I may go simpler and just use CTWM and cobble together a desktop environment. I am genuinely curious what running these things on a BSD gets you that you can't get with Linux. Using a mainstream distro (like Debian or Fedora) gets you this without hassle.

NexRebular 5y ago
Why BSD? Because I trust the competence of BSD developers a lot more than linux developers. Furthermore, I don't want to contribute to monoculturization of IT by stuffing the penguin into every single thing in sight. The question rather is... why would anyone want to run linux when *BSD (and illumos) are available?
- mrlemke 5y ago
  "Why BSD?" wasn't the question. I have already read a lot of the arguments about that particular question. If I were to generalize my question to ladyanita22, it would be, "Why would you want to run a BSD for Gnome, Wayland, Steam/Proton, and other generally Linux software, instead of running it directly on Linux where it is supported best?" What does the user get out of running a BSD for Linux software that they can't get out of Linux? If you prefer BSD, then why not use software that is better tailored for BSD rather than software that requires porting and changing or removing all of the Linux specific bits?
  - NexRebular 5y ago
    The problem is that software used to be portable and worked well on !linux systems. Little by little majority of important FOSS development is heading towards linux-specific EEE, I feel, and that is setting a dangerous precedent...
    - tcmart14 5y ago

loudmax 5y ago

This entirely depends on your use case. For many gamers, Windows PCs can't be replaced by a Mac, let alone Linux. Hopefully Proton/Wine will bridge that gap and maybe even be ported to FreeBSD. There are lots of servers running Linux that could very well be switched to FreeBSD, and lots more that are locked into Linux due to the state of hardware drivers or the containers they're running. If all you're doing on Linux is browsing the web and opening terminals, you could probably switch to FreeBSD without too much disruption.

flatiron 5y ago
if your wifi and bluetooth are supported, battery life is a factor too, as well as sleep.

discardedrefuse 5y ago

If only the problem was just for desktop environments. Last week I decided to get into Jails and threw FreeBSD on my home lab server: an HP DL380 G7, which is enterprise level hardware from around 2011. Even with powerd and speedstep support enabled, the fans were spinning close to full speed at idle. It sounded like an airplane taking off. I searched around and found that maybe I needed to get specific software from HP that was behind a paywall. So I gave up. Instead I installed Alpine Linux (so tiny) on the server and its never been quieter; With zero extra config. I ended up playing with LXD instead of Jails.

retro64 5y ago

Been using FreeBSD as my primary workstation since 2006, with a secondary Linux box for games. I’ve found FreeBSD to be a very viable and reliable alternative, but of course that depends on your personal needs.