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BSDs are very interesting, I highly recommend checking some of them out. I think the most compelling case for them is the very tightly integrated kernel & OS wh
by yabones 5y ago
BSDs are very interesting, I highly recommend checking some of them out. I think the most compelling case for them is the very tightly integrated kernel & OS which is largely decoupled from the user-space packages. I have completely hosed my Linux installs to the point of being unbootable a few times (to be clear, it was my fault every time!) by making mistakes with the package manager, but this isn't really possible with BSDs since the core operating system uses a completely separate method of updating and patching.
The other thing to keep in mind is that the systems are brutally minimalist. As in, Bash is considered a "fun bonus" rather than the core part of the system that is installed in /usr/local. That can be a substantial turn-off for some who see it as archaic or old-fashioned, but there's something to be said for the "stability" not deprecating such an old piece of software :)
Something you will probably appreciate is the consistency and documentation, even with little things like manpages. Every detail is ironed-out and perfected in a way that we're not really used to as Linux users.
There are some good guides out there for installing & configuring OpenBSD on an old laptop, and it's absolutely worth a try. It's without a doubt simpler and lighter than any mainstream Linux distro, and frankly just really fun to play with!
- tharne 5y agoOpenBSD makes for a fantastic desktop OS. The major issue you'll run into is the availability of software (e.g. no electron apps).
- jcadam 5y agoMy file server is running FreeBSD. The biggest sticking point for using it on my dev machine is lack of docker support on BSD. These days, my dev box is running Arch.
- LeFantome 5y agoDo you know that, on Windows and Mac, Docker runs Linux in a VM? It uses Hyper-V on Windows and HyperKit on Mac. The Linux “distribution” is created with LinuxKit. It is this VM Linux kernel that gets shared across containers. I mention this as lots of devs happily use Mac and Windows as Docker dev boxes. Running something like Alpine or RancherOS on bhyve ( FreeBSD hypervisor ) and running Docker on top of that is pretty much the same as using Docker on a Mac. No real reason to avoid FreeBSD as a dev platform just because you want to run Docker.
- a9h74j 5y agoGiven the divide you describe under BSDs, I just did a search for "nix on bsd". There doesn't seem to be very much of a nix/bsd story out there, based on my search. In principle it sounds like an interesting combination.