11 ms·

I Miss BSD/Linux

94 points by ingve 2y ago

da_chicken 2y ago
This is not identical to my experience, but I definitely have the same problem with hobby computing. My lack of time and energy as I get older is frustrating, but also just the fact that I don't want all the hassle. I want a computer to do work in applications, not because I want to meticulously maintain and configure the operating system for a couple hours every week.
- exe34 2y ago
  I use nixos - if an application isn't in the repos, I don't even bother anymore. really simplified system admin for me.
  - jokethrowaway 2y ago
    That's why I moved back to Arch. Sometimes you do need that app and I'd rather use AUR vs writing Nix.
    - exe34 2y ago
      I've never used arch, but I do love how nixos never breaks, so I can't really let go of that anymore. i do use docker/conda when something is only available that way.
- deleted 2y ago
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- Woeps 2y ago
  It's the same reason why I never buy the latest hardware but always something that came out a year-ish before. Eventough I had issues with Windows not finding any drivers on my Lenovo. While OpenSuse had no problems at all ... which was a nice surprise for a change.
erk__ 2y ago
A bit offtopic despite the title, there is a BSD/Linux distro: https://chimera-linux.org/about/ https://chimera-linux.org/about/
- alexey-salmin 2y ago
  There also was an inverse project of GNU/kFreeBSD stopped in 2023 https://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/index.en.html https://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/index.en.html
deleted 2y ago
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bozey07 2y ago
> Why doesn’t a great MacBook alternative exist? I really don't get this either. Every laptop I've looked at has some wart somewhere - battery life, webcam, structural integrity, display, CPU, temperatures, speakers, IO, repairability (not that Macbooks are good here either). Some of these things aren't even hard to get right. It's like laptop manufacturers just don't care.
- littlecranky67 2y ago
  macbook like touchpads is what amazed me most, Apple showed their great touchpads around 2006 with the Macbooks (not pro), and to this date no one seems to be able to clone them and deliver the same quality and smoothness.
  - throwaway1105q 2y ago
    Does any other manufacturer produce their own? I think the major issue is that other companies are integrators of cheapest bids for components, not computer companies.
    - Kon-Peki 2y ago
      Apple isn't producing all of the components in their laptops either. It's a bigger picture thing. Apple has some vision for what a good laptop is like, and has been iterating for decades to achieve that. Each new generation brings some amount of change (including some real failures like the Touch Bar and butterfly keyboard). Absolutely any other manufacturer could achieve that if they were willing to focus on it, iterate, and not give up. It would take some time, but it would happen.
      - throwaway1105q 2y ago
        Not all, but many and especially these where existing parts can't match the UX. Lenovo or Dell doesn't care, they just buy from the lowest bidder.
  - guenthert 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
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sedatk 2y ago
(The page isn’t accessible from Turkey. I had to enable VPN to read the article) As I understand, the author’s main motive to try alternative operating systems is his frustration with mainstream operating systems, a lack of control and understanding so the speak. The fallacy of that is that instead of encountering a few significant problems with a mainstream OS, now the author has to experience a death by thousand cuts: hundreds of small issues, a missing driver there, a DPI incompatibility here, and now they spend more time fixing these issues than they spend time charging their laptop two more minutes because a weather widget decided to make a web request. I’m not saying those issues are negligible, I already said “significant”, but our perception of an open and hackable OS saves us time might as well be a myth. If you like hacking, more power to you. But, if you want to get things done, focus on those scenarios. See how well you can do your job and how much you are hindered on each OS. Not a MacOS fan myself, but I find this kind of hiraeth (missing a place that doesn’t exist[1]) a sign of being distracted. [1] https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/hiraeth https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/hiraeth
- arghwhat 2y ago
  There are frustrations on Linux, but there's also a lot of development where its Windows or macOS that gives "death by a thousand cuts" so there are definitely reasons for you to pick that over Windows or macOS - even with WSL2. Having to forward hardware over HyperV can give a lot of headaches. Windows machines infected by corporate also have crippling I/O speeds. I have a fun example at a customer where even running a Linux VM on the same machine will give 10x compile speed, and something like 100x git operation speeds than the same operations on the host... If you need it in a corporate setting, Lenovo ships both Fedora and Ubuntu on their thinkpads, with certified hardware support. Someone running Gentoo or Arch Linux are sure to burn many hours on the machine itself which they may or may not enjoy, but you don't have to go that route. It's not too hard to be on well-supported hardware either - people pick from a handful of laptops to run macOS, so it doesn't seem to unreasonable to also pick the machine for Linux. Think of it as being somewhere in between macOS "runs here only" and Windows "well it came with it" when it comes to having to select your machine.
  - int_19h 2y ago
SpecialistK 2y ago
I suspect my next laptop will be a Framework, and although I wish they came with touchscreens, that is a blessing in disguise because it means I don't have to worry about touch support in a DE and can play with more BSDs or esoteric Linuxes. I have been tempted by the MacBooks, especially when on sale, but the closed nature and lack of repairability keeps me in check each time.
- 79a6ed87 2y ago
  Hello! Framework + FreeBSD user here. It works great, although I had to replace the network card I originally bought with it for an older one. Someone wrote a blog post about it too. Maybe I should also edit the Framework entry in the FreeBSD Wiki.
- tracker1 2y ago
  Yeah, I'm out after my M1 dies or I pass it to my daughter. Next one will be a Framework 13" AMD with PopOS, likely after the new Cosmic DE launches.
  - ziml77 2y ago
    I have an M1 Macbook and can't bring myself to switch to the Framework I recently bought. The trackpad is awful compared to the Macbook's. I keep zooming things that I'm trying to scroll. And the click is the kind where it's hinged at the top so you have to click at the bottom rather than anywhere. I tried switching to taps but those are far too sensitive and have no tactile feedback. And when I boot into Linux it's even worse, failing to interpret two finger scroll actions at all unless my fingers are perfectly aligned. The screen is also... off. I was able to calibrate it with a colorimeter to look close to my Macbook, but it's still not quite right. It seems like the bright parts are a bit too bright for some reason which ends up being distracting.
    - tracker1 2y ago
      Yeah, I think a lot of other touchpads are working around the Apple design patents on their touchpad. The software integration and gestures also tend to be better. Doesn't annoy me too much. Similar for the screen(s)... I mean, I have calibrated displays on my work and personal desks, and usually work docked, so my laptop use is generally casual content, email, forums, etc when traveling a few times a year. The touchpad and screen has pretty much been the main two reasons I have been on mac laptops since 2010 or so. I'm just tired of the Windows and Apple games regarding locking things down, and would just prefer to have a Linux environment everywhere. The few key binding differences on Mac throw me off to this day, and I'm kind of over it all.
jbm 2y ago
The look at his old desktop hit hard (https://brainbaking.com/post/2020/11/desktop-screenshots-of-olde/ https://brainbaking.com/post/2020/11/desktop-screenshots-of-...). I recently switched back to Ubuntu, but I was using Regolith with a similar look for a while and I loved it. Unfortunately, having a tiling WM when most apps don't expect it mean you run into all sorts of corner cases that the app developer didn't think of. No hope of resolution either.
- tracker1 2y ago
  The new Cosmos desktop from Pop/System75 looks very promising on that front.
unixhero 2y ago
Oh I am so unhappy because I can't have everything on my Mac. Get a general purpose computer, general brand like Lenovo or Dell, with an Intel or AMD chip. Boom done.
- throwaway1105q 2y ago
  "I can't have everything software-wise so let me torture myself hardware-wise so I can forget about it"
pjmlp 2y ago
Around Windows 7 timeframe, I came to peace with FOSS UNIX clones never going to be as mature as proprietary OSes on laptops. Sure, the situation has improved a lot, but they still require compromises of not having everything supported like on desktop PCs, even when buying from Linux OEMs, my experience hasn't been that great. For a brief period, netbooks seemed to be on track, but then they suffered multiple attacks that wiped their market segment. First it was Microsoft with their price change for Windows XP, followed by tablets, hybrid laptops. And now those same OEMs, would rather sell ChromeOS and Android devices, than a full blown GNU/Linux, **BSD experience. With ARM revolution going on PC devices, something that many might not be yet aware, is that Pluton is also part of the story, adding to UEFI, TPM, and pleotora of other integration issues. So I just run Linux on a VM, first it was Virtual Box, VMware, nowadays it is either WSL or Virtualization framework. Missing them, not really, for me it was always more as a cheap way to have UNIX, my favourite one was Solaris, followed by UNIXes with a soul, like Irix, NeXTSTEP, ...
- soraminazuki 2y ago
  I think the situation is a whole lot different since the days of Windows 7. The biggest change is that Windows just stopped caring. The UI is inconsistent and messy. It ceased to be an improvement over Linux a long time ago. Crapware is also another problem. Windows had this problem since the 90s, but it's now worse with Microsoft itself pushing for them. It's the only major desktop operating system to have this problem. Worst of all, it's a real pain to use. People avoiding it are no longer doing so out of abstract principles. It's just so bad that any person with self-respect wouldn't want to use it. From the constant resetting of user preferences to obnoxious banners and full screen nags, Microsoft is making it very clear that they have no respect at all for the users. With modern Windows, users are expected to work for Windows and not the other way around. Any data it touches also becomes the property of Microsoft. Or at least they act as if that's the case. Linux is slowly but steadily maturing. Also, end users are moving away from PCs, meaning those who still use one have a high likelihood of being a power user. I think FOSS desktops are more relevant than they were a decade ago.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
juliangmp 2y ago
He does make a good point: the arm laptops from apple are hard to ignore I'm eagerly awaiting the day I can buy a high performance arm or riscv laptop and run Linux on it...
- helpfulContrib 2y ago
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- fragmede 2y ago
  How supported does that Linux have to be? Does Asahi Linux on Apple Silicon ARM count?
  - e12e 2y ago
    Still waiting for support for external display :/
    - juliangmp 2y ago
      Honestly even if asahi linux ran perfectly, I'm not going to spend twice the money on hardware I can't ever repair.
      - fragmede 2y ago
        https://www.ifixit.com/Device/MacBook_Air_13%22_Late_2020 https://www.ifixit.com/Device/MacBook_Air_13%22_Late_2020 has guides to replace the battery, the speakers, the logic board, trackpad, screen, etc.
oldpersonintx 2y ago
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bitsandboots 2y ago
I feel the author's grief over lack of time, but it has lead me to very different solutions. All around the idea of the OS should not interrupt, should not change rapidly, and my interaction with programs should not be much different from OS to OS. At work, I opted for a mac due to how terrible the windows options were. But macos itself fought me all the way so the way to be happy at work was to replace finder, to replace the dock with a taskbar, and to rebind the keys, so that everything acted like linux/windows so that I can get my job done without falling in love with apple. To me that was simplicity - the simplicity of not having to relearn for no reason. At home, I no longer dual-boot because I vm. Now Linux and Windows cooperate. And the linux got less exotic. Debian: something I can trust, that gets out of my way, and changes slowly. But I'm also loving the truenas system I set up because it and freebsd take that simplicity to the next level. In both places, unix tools that go with me, so I am in my natural place everywhere. Basically, tmux, emacs, fzf, eza, and a bash/zsh config.
- DoingIsLearning 2y ago
  > Debian: something I can trust, that gets out of my way, and changes slowly. Wholeheartedly agree. Debian has won the distro wars in my opinion. Their massive effort in safety and not breaking things means I can use stable as a "it just works" tool and focus on my actual work/fun.
  - dmz73 2y ago
    Unfortunately, Debian is like Linux on desktop, always 80% there. You just cannot trust that plain Debian will get it right, even if it works that one time you install it. Two most recent issues that made me change to something else: 1) VLC in Debian is modified so it cannot play RTSP streams so you cannot watch video from your security camera. Windows VLC wroks. Flatpak VLC works. 2) Debian kernel update in point release broke NVIDIA driver so you cannot even see your desktop. Debian STABLE is just Linux kernel with old software. If it doesn't work now then it will definitely not work for next 2 years and if it does work now it can break at any time. All other Linux distros are not much better. Every update has 50% chance of breaking some software from distro repository but at least other distros fix their f-ups faster than Debian.
kdtsh 2y ago
It wouldn’t be up to scratch for my work anymore, but I’ve found the 2015 MacBook Pros to be a good compromise between quality hardware and being able to run a full blown free Unix-like without any trouble. (By ‘my work’ I mainly mean including Citrix and Microsoft 365, so this precludes most free Unix-like anyway.)
hnarn 2y ago
The title for this blog post should be "I Miss BSD/Linux for Apple devices". Unsurprisingly, if you buy hardware from one of the most FLOSS hostile hardware manufacturers in existence, your BSD/Linux experience will not be great. > Why doesn’t a great MacBook alternative exist? I really don't understand this question. Is the author seriously suggesting that MacBooks are objectively the best laptops for any use case and using something else just isn't an option? Am I taking crazy pills?
- Philpax 2y ago
  The Apple Silicon MacBooks are very, very good. They're efficient, fast, well-built, have great peripherals, don't power themselves back on when you close the lid, and are generally the best laptops I have ever used. The worst part of them is macOS, and I hope that either Asahi Linux can get all of the hardware working correctly or the other laptop manufacturers can get their act together. Unfortunately, I suspect the former is more likely than the latter...
  - sumuyuda 2y ago
    There’s still no USB-A support, so the dongle book was never truly fixed.
    - area51org 2y ago
      Given that the industry is trying to retire USB-A for good, this doesn't seem likely.
      - bsder 2y ago
        USB-A is, in fact, the thing that drove me off of Apple for good. There is a decent minority of people for whom USB-A eventually stops working and requires a reboot to restore. The dongle doesn't matter. The dock doesn't matter. The device doesn't matter. Software updates do not fix it. The thread on it is 40+ pages when Apple closes it and then another 40+ page thread on it reappaears. The problem is an OS problem. I can pinpoint precisely the OS update that caused it. Apple does not care and will not fix it. Fine, I get it. So I left for Linux and never looked back.
cies 2y ago
I use OpenSuSE Tumbleweed as my daily driver: * /home on it's own partition (having it as a subvolume of btrfs did not work out well with reinstalls) -- saves me a lot of time with reinstalls * docker works better (no need for an internal Linux VM, that is needed on macOS/windows) * installing tools that i used sparingly is so much easier: Inkscape/ GIMP/ LibreOffice/ Audacity/ cloc/ ripgrep/ tig/ iotop/ htop/ DbBeaver * i dont truly trust any big corp's binaries * Firefox and Chromium/Thorium are solid browser options * easy to install dev tool chains: package management and opensource secured supply chains are not an afterthought * I feel since PipeWire and Wayland we come to a point were A/V "just works" for all my usecases * being on a rolling distro now for some years, and it does sometimes mess up, but rarely (resinstalls are quick) -- i prefer it over OS version upgrades on macOS/windows * i dont need an Apple ID, or hotmail account for ANYTHING and that keeps my blood from cooking
thrownawayjests 2y ago
After running Linux (plain, crappy boring Ubuntu) as my daily driver for the last few years, I'm convinced that we're at the point where the only real barrier to wider adoption is software, and this is less and less of an issue the more we work in the browser. For your basic user, it's performant, simple, stable, and does everything a computer needs. Every time I boot up Windows it takes forever, I find that a new update that further fills my machine with crap requires a restart, I get super weird "news" and advertising thrown at me. I have no idea how normies put up with this.
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  > does everything a computer needs. This really comes down to this. If you can stabilize what you need, inevitably linux will catch up to where you are and you're set. If it's an always moving goalpost, the year of Linux on the desktop will always be next year, eternally.
- int_19h 2y ago
  Hardware support can be a problem as well. There are many combinations that "just work" - definitely more so than 20 or even 10 years ago - but you still need to be careful with network cards, for example. And graphics is still kind of a mess, enough so that all major browsers are still either using whitelists to enable hardware acceleration on supported hardware (like Firefox), or straight up disable it by default on Linux (like Chrome). Which translates to the other problem that is battery life on laptops. I did a fairly simple test recently that basically opens Reddit main page in Firefox & Chrome and then scrolls it slowly until battery dies. Running on the same exact hardware - Thinkpad T14s AMD gen4 - the battery life was reduced by 30% on Linux with default settings (= no hardware acceleration in either browser). Manually enabling it means that test cannot complete at all because both browsers randomly crash. And then you look at battery life vs an ARM MacBook, and it's not even funny.
  - mattpallissard 2y ago
    > reduced by 30% on Linux with default settings With the default settings being the key there. I had the exact same laptop and was able to get idle power down under 3W. But to your point, that's a fair amount of friction for someone that understands all the moving points. It's insurmountable for the average user.
wolvesechoes 2y ago
Ah yes, time. Not just time - 'free' time! It is so free people need to sacrifice their freedom in exchange for curated experience and long battery life to get it. What they are unable to sacrifice, though, is convenience and pleasure. And Touch ID. When freedom is at stake, some may sacrifice their lives on its altar, but worker bees will never sacrifice USB-C displays. Yes, I am a zealot.
petrolejboj 2y ago
So far the ideal "portable" setup is MacbookPro M3 Pro with: - UTM VM for ArchLinux arm64 for all the linux stuf - UTM VM for Windows for ARM (use it only for retro games) - Crossover for occasional modern not AAA gaming Zero issues so far and I have all the benefits of Apple hardware
wwalexander 2y ago
Desktop customization is largely the reason I learned Linux and programming. Over time I’ve come to abhor knobs and arbitrary decisions I must make as a user. I find macOS’s opinionated, largely very thoughtful design a relief at this point.
p0w3n3d 2y ago
It seems that there is now a HUGE problem with PDF support under Linux. Since Adobe stopped shipping acrobat reader to Linux, to get official support one needs to run Acrobat using Wine. That's horrible, and really discouraging to any person who works within a larger organisation that uses PDF. On the other side is the MacOS that has Preview which gives extensive possibilities to annotate and highlight PDF documents even if they are scans containing only jpgs inside.
- petepete 2y ago
  I annotate and higlight text all the time with GNOME's document viewer. It works so well I hadn't even considered people might find it problematic. https://apps.gnome.org/en-GB/Evince/ https://apps.gnome.org/en-GB/Evince/ I realise it probably doesn't support some 'fancy' PDF stuff like signatures, but I don't use them.
sys_64738 2y ago
The simplest way to run Linux on any computer nowadays is via WSL2. You can have your cake and eat it these days. Windows 11 is capable of replacing Linux efficiently.
a-dub 2y ago
thinkpads are still a pretty good bet for linux- although battery life is still lacking compared to aarch64 machines. the upcoming snapdragon elite t14s looks pretty promising on all fronts!
- tracker1 2y ago
  A few of the systems require a minor change in grub for the touchpad to work right. A few others require a USB to ethernet dongle to get wifi working.
  - a-dub 2y ago
    T,P,X models should be fine. check the arch wiki before purchasing. popular with kernel developers! daily driver has been a T, P or X series thinkpad running linux since ~2005/6. although, fair notice, kde 6 is hot off the presses and it will take some time to reach kde 5 levels of stability.
ginko 2y ago
I mainly use linux day to day for a good 20+ years now but also own a macbook air for a couple of years (and now have a work macbook. I have to say I just don't see how it's supposed to be so much better than linux. Working with it feels like having one arm bound behind my back. Most things work, but everything takes twice as many clicks and some things are just not configurable (There's no mouse follows focus at all for instance). Open source software has to be installed with separate package managers like homebrew that don't properly integrate into the overall system like a distro package manager does. (it also requires the xcode toolchain which is a >1GB update every month or so)
maximilianburke 2y ago
I hear this. I have Asahi sitting on a partition on my Mac and I'm itching to make it my primary. Once microphone support lands, I'll be able to move over. It's a real pain right now to have to reboot in order to join video calls, heh.
lycopodiopsida 2y ago
As an ex-Linux and BSD user I share the feeling. But if I am honest to myself, I have to admit that I do not miss them, but my youth, friends, lack of responsibility and time to mess around with such things. Messing around with a new fancy distro for a day or two? Why not! macOS is fine, I use it for 10 years, know it well enough and have no windows/linux muscle memory anymore anyway. And if I would switch back, I would still stare at the same Alacritty with tmux and neovim.
deleted 2y ago
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Lateraluz 2y ago
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jokethrowaway 2y ago
I started using Linux (nixos first, now back to Arch) more frequently one year ago and I have a nice boring KDE desktop. Everything works pretty well and the UX is way ahead of OS X. In the past I was a full time user of KDE3/4 but I've used plenty of OpenBox, i3, sway et similia. In the last 8 years I ended up mostly on Mac, albeit I've installed Arch Linux on a 2015 Macbook Pro (and it was glorious). Funnily enough, I realised I'm at that age where I'm working only on my desk, so I don't really need to waste lithium batteries for a device that's always plugged in. And I'm tired of the Macbook wasting CPU cycles and getting as hot as a volcano on proprietary crappy software I can't change. Apple really needs to start hiring some software engineers; the hardware is pretty good but the OS is terribly bloated. It's a shame we still don't have non-Apple decent laptops, I hope things will change thanks to the shift to Arm and cellphone makers (who did a pretty good job with the quality of some Android devices).
johnea 2y ago
I miss it too! It's been sad to watch the whole descent of the free software movement into just another avenue for corporate profit 8-( The original free software concept: that _users_ of s/w can develop and maintain s/w for their use (and all other user's use), thus implementing what users want/need, instead of what will makes the most money; has largely been displaced by the "open" model of getting other people to do part of your s/w dev/debug to reduce costs and increase profits. Like all powerful technologies, in the long run it's "success" is determined primarily by how much money it can make for the already outrageously wealthy...
stuaxo 2y ago
This makes sense. It could be worth dual booting, and seeing how it goes - it may swing back to Linux. I totally agree with not trying UTM, it really isn't ready yet - I made the mistake of trying to use it on a work laptop for work, and ate a lot of time with various freezes... maybe in a few years it will be fine - dual boot is probably a better option, even more so once USBC display and intermal mics work.
baq 2y ago
You can have Microsoft Linux in the form of WSL2 though and it’s a damn good piece of software; Microsoft’s saving grace on an otherwise - let’s be honest here - idiotic win 11. It’s almost worse than macOS. My ideal device would be a MacBook Air with a 100% functioning Linux - as in, audio, external displays, usb hubs, chargers etc just work. macOS is crapware and borderline a disgrace for the excellent hardware of the MacBook.
MathMonkeyMan 2y ago
Buy a ThinkPad. Install Ubuntu. Don't think about it again for 6-10 years.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  As long as one doesn't use bleeding edge technology like fingerprint scanners or webcam logins.
  - MathMonkeyMan 2y ago
    I finally found something that worked with my fingerprint scanner, only to learn that the scan can't unlock the keyring or something -- it's a password but not actually a password. So I'd unlock the desktop with the fingerprint scanner, and then an indeterminate number of seconds later something would pop up asking me to type a password for my keyring. So now, instead, I just type my password to begin with, and it's all gravy. I'd have to type it anyway.
- rpigab 2y ago
  I have a T480/Ubuntu-Gnome at work and a T480/Debian-KDE at home, both work fantastic, however for some reason the Lenovo Universal USB-C docks with 2 1080p external displays connected (1 HDMI and 1 DP) cause a lot of Gnome crashes when docking, and when it happens, I lose external displays and/or the usb keyboard, and have to spend 15 minutes fiddling around deactivating and reactivating in settings, or unplugging the dock PSU, and other desperate methods. Windows users don't have these issues for some reason, and other usb-c docks seem to work better most of the time, with exceptions. There's also specific issues unrelated to Thinkpads, like bluetooth headphones microphones, Bose QC 35 II can't be used with mic over bluetooth, maybe Pipewire will improve this, maybe not, IDK. Apart from Thinkpads, I also have a gaming desktop PC with an Nvidia RTX, I don't use Windows anymore, Steam, Proton, WINE, third-party launchers like Heroic work wonders for gaming, but I can't use Wayland at all, it's Xorg only (probably because of Nvidia drivers), otherwise it's flickering and crashes. And you can't screenshare whole screen easily in Wayland yet. We're getting there and right now, I think I'm better off on GNU/Linux even with all these issues than with the enshittified Windows, but there's still a long way to go, things are moving slowly, and somethings the whole Linux community relies on unpaid work from one dude that delayed good bluetooth audio support by years because someone insulted him in a PR comment.
somat 2y ago
It was just a throw away joke in the article, but every once in a while I think "boy I wish I could have the linux kernel with the openbsd userland" (not often, usually when I want to play a game). Not that the obsd userland is all that great but it is a lot simpler than the linux equivalent. There was a project to do the opposite, the freebsd kernel with a gnu userland(shudders, yuk, what an abomination). But that is not what I want at all. And deep in my heart I know even if you put the hard work to make the obsd userland work with a linux kernel, it would probably be a bit of a shitshow, just too many assumptions broken, the subtle cohesion that I enjoy would be gone.
Wowfunhappy 2y ago
> Why don’t [I] install the Fedora Asahi Remix on [my] ARM64 machine? Because it doesn’t support USB-C display nor the microphone or Touch ID. Yes, those are the few things left that still don't work. I bet they will in another year.
wkat4242 2y ago
I moved from macOS to FreeBSD because I couldn't handle the lock-in, opinionated design and the feeling of not being in control of my computer. Despite what Michal Sapka says, it was just the thing for me. In fact most of the drawbacks he mentions are advantages to me. Which is probably the point behind his article. I really like that my OS is not changing stuff with every update as even Linux vendors do now.
vermaden 2y ago
I had a ‘side’ journey to the Mac wonderland as I got opportunity to use Macbook Pro with Mac OS X Leopard for a year. That allowed me to get real ‘feel’ of the Mac ecosystem and their hardware (and philosophy) so I will not repeat same stereotypes over and over again like a lot of anti-apple people. But after I switched back to FreeBSD system at work it just felt better. I used Terminal.app on Mac a lot but the xterm(1) at FreeBSD just felt more natural. More here with details: https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2018/09/07/my-freebsd-story/ https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2018/09/07/my-freebsd-story/

94 points by ingve 2y ago

This is not identical to my experience, but I definitely have the same problem with hobby computing. My lack of time and energy as I get older is frustrating, but also just the fact that I don't want all the hassle. I want a computer to do work in applications, not because I want to meticulously maintain and configure the operating system for a couple hours every week.

exe34 2y ago
I use nixos - if an application isn't in the repos, I don't even bother anymore. really simplified system admin for me.
- jokethrowaway 2y ago
  That's why I moved back to Arch. Sometimes you do need that app and I'd rather use AUR vs writing Nix.
  - exe34 2y ago
    I've never used arch, but I do love how nixos never breaks, so I can't really let go of that anymore. i do use docker/conda when something is only available that way.
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Woeps 2y ago
It's the same reason why I never buy the latest hardware but always something that came out a year-ish before. Eventough I had issues with Windows not finding any drivers on my Lenovo. While OpenSuse had no problems at all ... which was a nice surprise for a change.

erk__ 2y ago

A bit offtopic despite the title, there is a BSD/Linux distro: https://chimera-linux.org/about/ https://chimera-linux.org/about/

alexey-salmin 2y ago
There also was an inverse project of GNU/kFreeBSD stopped in 2023 https://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/index.en.html https://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/index.en.html

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bozey07 2y ago

> Why doesn’t a great MacBook alternative exist? I really don't get this either. Every laptop I've looked at has some wart somewhere - battery life, webcam, structural integrity, display, CPU, temperatures, speakers, IO, repairability (not that Macbooks are good here either). Some of these things aren't even hard to get right. It's like laptop manufacturers just don't care.

littlecranky67 2y ago
macbook like touchpads is what amazed me most, Apple showed their great touchpads around 2006 with the Macbooks (not pro), and to this date no one seems to be able to clone them and deliver the same quality and smoothness.
- throwaway1105q 2y ago
  Does any other manufacturer produce their own? I think the major issue is that other companies are integrators of cheapest bids for components, not computer companies.
  - Kon-Peki 2y ago
    Apple isn't producing all of the components in their laptops either. It's a bigger picture thing. Apple has some vision for what a good laptop is like, and has been iterating for decades to achieve that. Each new generation brings some amount of change (including some real failures like the Touch Bar and butterfly keyboard). Absolutely any other manufacturer could achieve that if they were willing to focus on it, iterate, and not give up. It would take some time, but it would happen.
    - throwaway1105q 2y ago
      Not all, but many and especially these where existing parts can't match the UX. Lenovo or Dell doesn't care, they just buy from the lowest bidder.
- guenthert 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

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sedatk 2y ago

(The page isn’t accessible from Turkey. I had to enable VPN to read the article) As I understand, the author’s main motive to try alternative operating systems is his frustration with mainstream operating systems, a lack of control and understanding so the speak. The fallacy of that is that instead of encountering a few significant problems with a mainstream OS, now the author has to experience a death by thousand cuts: hundreds of small issues, a missing driver there, a DPI incompatibility here, and now they spend more time fixing these issues than they spend time charging their laptop two more minutes because a weather widget decided to make a web request. I’m not saying those issues are negligible, I already said “significant”, but our perception of an open and hackable OS saves us time might as well be a myth. If you like hacking, more power to you. But, if you want to get things done, focus on those scenarios. See how well you can do your job and how much you are hindered on each OS. Not a MacOS fan myself, but I find this kind of hiraeth (missing a place that doesn’t exist[1]) a sign of being distracted. [1] https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/hiraeth https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/hiraeth

arghwhat 2y ago
There are frustrations on Linux, but there's also a lot of development where its Windows or macOS that gives "death by a thousand cuts" so there are definitely reasons for you to pick that over Windows or macOS - even with WSL2. Having to forward hardware over HyperV can give a lot of headaches. Windows machines infected by corporate also have crippling I/O speeds. I have a fun example at a customer where even running a Linux VM on the same machine will give 10x compile speed, and something like 100x git operation speeds than the same operations on the host... If you need it in a corporate setting, Lenovo ships both Fedora and Ubuntu on their thinkpads, with certified hardware support. Someone running Gentoo or Arch Linux are sure to burn many hours on the machine itself which they may or may not enjoy, but you don't have to go that route. It's not too hard to be on well-supported hardware either - people pick from a handful of laptops to run macOS, so it doesn't seem to unreasonable to also pick the machine for Linux. Think of it as being somewhere in between macOS "runs here only" and Windows "well it came with it" when it comes to having to select your machine.
- int_19h 2y ago

SpecialistK 2y ago

I suspect my next laptop will be a Framework, and although I wish they came with touchscreens, that is a blessing in disguise because it means I don't have to worry about touch support in a DE and can play with more BSDs or esoteric Linuxes. I have been tempted by the MacBooks, especially when on sale, but the closed nature and lack of repairability keeps me in check each time.

79a6ed87 2y ago
Hello! Framework + FreeBSD user here. It works great, although I had to replace the network card I originally bought with it for an older one. Someone wrote a blog post about it too. Maybe I should also edit the Framework entry in the FreeBSD Wiki.
tracker1 2y ago
Yeah, I'm out after my M1 dies or I pass it to my daughter. Next one will be a Framework 13" AMD with PopOS, likely after the new Cosmic DE launches.
- ziml77 2y ago
  I have an M1 Macbook and can't bring myself to switch to the Framework I recently bought. The trackpad is awful compared to the Macbook's. I keep zooming things that I'm trying to scroll. And the click is the kind where it's hinged at the top so you have to click at the bottom rather than anywhere. I tried switching to taps but those are far too sensitive and have no tactile feedback. And when I boot into Linux it's even worse, failing to interpret two finger scroll actions at all unless my fingers are perfectly aligned. The screen is also... off. I was able to calibrate it with a colorimeter to look close to my Macbook, but it's still not quite right. It seems like the bright parts are a bit too bright for some reason which ends up being distracting.
  - tracker1 2y ago
    Yeah, I think a lot of other touchpads are working around the Apple design patents on their touchpad. The software integration and gestures also tend to be better. Doesn't annoy me too much. Similar for the screen(s)... I mean, I have calibrated displays on my work and personal desks, and usually work docked, so my laptop use is generally casual content, email, forums, etc when traveling a few times a year. The touchpad and screen has pretty much been the main two reasons I have been on mac laptops since 2010 or so. I'm just tired of the Windows and Apple games regarding locking things down, and would just prefer to have a Linux environment everywhere. The few key binding differences on Mac throw me off to this day, and I'm kind of over it all.

jbm 2y ago

The look at his old desktop hit hard (https://brainbaking.com/post/2020/11/desktop-screenshots-of-olde/ https://brainbaking.com/post/2020/11/desktop-screenshots-of-...). I recently switched back to Ubuntu, but I was using Regolith with a similar look for a while and I loved it. Unfortunately, having a tiling WM when most apps don't expect it mean you run into all sorts of corner cases that the app developer didn't think of. No hope of resolution either.

tracker1 2y ago
The new Cosmos desktop from Pop/System75 looks very promising on that front.

unixhero 2y ago

Oh I am so unhappy because I can't have everything on my Mac. Get a general purpose computer, general brand like Lenovo or Dell, with an Intel or AMD chip. Boom done.

throwaway1105q 2y ago
"I can't have everything software-wise so let me torture myself hardware-wise so I can forget about it"

pjmlp 2y ago

Around Windows 7 timeframe, I came to peace with FOSS UNIX clones never going to be as mature as proprietary OSes on laptops. Sure, the situation has improved a lot, but they still require compromises of not having everything supported like on desktop PCs, even when buying from Linux OEMs, my experience hasn't been that great. For a brief period, netbooks seemed to be on track, but then they suffered multiple attacks that wiped their market segment. First it was Microsoft with their price change for Windows XP, followed by tablets, hybrid laptops. And now those same OEMs, would rather sell ChromeOS and Android devices, than a full blown GNU/Linux, **BSD experience. With ARM revolution going on PC devices, something that many might not be yet aware, is that Pluton is also part of the story, adding to UEFI, TPM, and pleotora of other integration issues. So I just run Linux on a VM, first it was Virtual Box, VMware, nowadays it is either WSL or Virtualization framework. Missing them, not really, for me it was always more as a cheap way to have UNIX, my favourite one was Solaris, followed by UNIXes with a soul, like Irix, NeXTSTEP, ...

soraminazuki 2y ago
I think the situation is a whole lot different since the days of Windows 7. The biggest change is that Windows just stopped caring. The UI is inconsistent and messy. It ceased to be an improvement over Linux a long time ago. Crapware is also another problem. Windows had this problem since the 90s, but it's now worse with Microsoft itself pushing for them. It's the only major desktop operating system to have this problem. Worst of all, it's a real pain to use. People avoiding it are no longer doing so out of abstract principles. It's just so bad that any person with self-respect wouldn't want to use it. From the constant resetting of user preferences to obnoxious banners and full screen nags, Microsoft is making it very clear that they have no respect at all for the users. With modern Windows, users are expected to work for Windows and not the other way around. Any data it touches also becomes the property of Microsoft. Or at least they act as if that's the case. Linux is slowly but steadily maturing. Also, end users are moving away from PCs, meaning those who still use one have a high likelihood of being a power user. I think FOSS desktops are more relevant than they were a decade ago.
- pjmlp 2y ago

juliangmp 2y ago

He does make a good point: the arm laptops from apple are hard to ignore I'm eagerly awaiting the day I can buy a high performance arm or riscv laptop and run Linux on it...

helpfulContrib 2y ago
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fragmede 2y ago
How supported does that Linux have to be? Does Asahi Linux on Apple Silicon ARM count?
- e12e 2y ago
  Still waiting for support for external display :/
  - juliangmp 2y ago
    Honestly even if asahi linux ran perfectly, I'm not going to spend twice the money on hardware I can't ever repair.
    - fragmede 2y ago
      https://www.ifixit.com/Device/MacBook_Air_13%22_Late_2020 https://www.ifixit.com/Device/MacBook_Air_13%22_Late_2020 has guides to replace the battery, the speakers, the logic board, trackpad, screen, etc.

oldpersonintx 2y ago

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bitsandboots 2y ago

I feel the author's grief over lack of time, but it has lead me to very different solutions. All around the idea of the OS should not interrupt, should not change rapidly, and my interaction with programs should not be much different from OS to OS. At work, I opted for a mac due to how terrible the windows options were. But macos itself fought me all the way so the way to be happy at work was to replace finder, to replace the dock with a taskbar, and to rebind the keys, so that everything acted like linux/windows so that I can get my job done without falling in love with apple. To me that was simplicity - the simplicity of not having to relearn for no reason. At home, I no longer dual-boot because I vm. Now Linux and Windows cooperate. And the linux got less exotic. Debian: something I can trust, that gets out of my way, and changes slowly. But I'm also loving the truenas system I set up because it and freebsd take that simplicity to the next level. In both places, unix tools that go with me, so I am in my natural place everywhere. Basically, tmux, emacs, fzf, eza, and a bash/zsh config.

DoingIsLearning 2y ago
> Debian: something I can trust, that gets out of my way, and changes slowly. Wholeheartedly agree. Debian has won the distro wars in my opinion. Their massive effort in safety and not breaking things means I can use stable as a "it just works" tool and focus on my actual work/fun.
- dmz73 2y ago
  Unfortunately, Debian is like Linux on desktop, always 80% there. You just cannot trust that plain Debian will get it right, even if it works that one time you install it. Two most recent issues that made me change to something else: 1) VLC in Debian is modified so it cannot play RTSP streams so you cannot watch video from your security camera. Windows VLC wroks. Flatpak VLC works. 2) Debian kernel update in point release broke NVIDIA driver so you cannot even see your desktop. Debian STABLE is just Linux kernel with old software. If it doesn't work now then it will definitely not work for next 2 years and if it does work now it can break at any time. All other Linux distros are not much better. Every update has 50% chance of breaking some software from distro repository but at least other distros fix their f-ups faster than Debian.

kdtsh 2y ago

It wouldn’t be up to scratch for my work anymore, but I’ve found the 2015 MacBook Pros to be a good compromise between quality hardware and being able to run a full blown free Unix-like without any trouble. (By ‘my work’ I mainly mean including Citrix and Microsoft 365, so this precludes most free Unix-like anyway.)

hnarn 2y ago

The title for this blog post should be "I Miss BSD/Linux for Apple devices". Unsurprisingly, if you buy hardware from one of the most FLOSS hostile hardware manufacturers in existence, your BSD/Linux experience will not be great. > Why doesn’t a great MacBook alternative exist? I really don't understand this question. Is the author seriously suggesting that MacBooks are objectively the best laptops for any use case and using something else just isn't an option? Am I taking crazy pills?

Philpax 2y ago
The Apple Silicon MacBooks are very, very good. They're efficient, fast, well-built, have great peripherals, don't power themselves back on when you close the lid, and are generally the best laptops I have ever used. The worst part of them is macOS, and I hope that either Asahi Linux can get all of the hardware working correctly or the other laptop manufacturers can get their act together. Unfortunately, I suspect the former is more likely than the latter...
- sumuyuda 2y ago
  There’s still no USB-A support, so the dongle book was never truly fixed.
  - area51org 2y ago
    Given that the industry is trying to retire USB-A for good, this doesn't seem likely.
    - bsder 2y ago
      USB-A is, in fact, the thing that drove me off of Apple for good. There is a decent minority of people for whom USB-A eventually stops working and requires a reboot to restore. The dongle doesn't matter. The dock doesn't matter. The device doesn't matter. Software updates do not fix it. The thread on it is 40+ pages when Apple closes it and then another 40+ page thread on it reappaears. The problem is an OS problem. I can pinpoint precisely the OS update that caused it. Apple does not care and will not fix it. Fine, I get it. So I left for Linux and never looked back.

cies 2y ago

I use OpenSuSE Tumbleweed as my daily driver: * /home on it's own partition (having it as a subvolume of btrfs did not work out well with reinstalls) -- saves me a lot of time with reinstalls * docker works better (no need for an internal Linux VM, that is needed on macOS/windows) * installing tools that i used sparingly is so much easier: Inkscape/ GIMP/ LibreOffice/ Audacity/ cloc/ ripgrep/ tig/ iotop/ htop/ DbBeaver * i dont truly trust any big corp's binaries * Firefox and Chromium/Thorium are solid browser options * easy to install dev tool chains: package management and opensource secured supply chains are not an afterthought * I feel since PipeWire and Wayland we come to a point were A/V "just works" for all my usecases * being on a rolling distro now for some years, and it does sometimes mess up, but rarely (resinstalls are quick) -- i prefer it over OS version upgrades on macOS/windows * i dont need an Apple ID, or hotmail account for ANYTHING and that keeps my blood from cooking

thrownawayjests 2y ago

After running Linux (plain, crappy boring Ubuntu) as my daily driver for the last few years, I'm convinced that we're at the point where the only real barrier to wider adoption is software, and this is less and less of an issue the more we work in the browser. For your basic user, it's performant, simple, stable, and does everything a computer needs. Every time I boot up Windows it takes forever, I find that a new update that further fills my machine with crap requires a restart, I get super weird "news" and advertising thrown at me. I have no idea how normies put up with this.

makeitdouble 2y ago
> does everything a computer needs. This really comes down to this. If you can stabilize what you need, inevitably linux will catch up to where you are and you're set. If it's an always moving goalpost, the year of Linux on the desktop will always be next year, eternally.
int_19h 2y ago
Hardware support can be a problem as well. There are many combinations that "just work" - definitely more so than 20 or even 10 years ago - but you still need to be careful with network cards, for example. And graphics is still kind of a mess, enough so that all major browsers are still either using whitelists to enable hardware acceleration on supported hardware (like Firefox), or straight up disable it by default on Linux (like Chrome). Which translates to the other problem that is battery life on laptops. I did a fairly simple test recently that basically opens Reddit main page in Firefox & Chrome and then scrolls it slowly until battery dies. Running on the same exact hardware - Thinkpad T14s AMD gen4 - the battery life was reduced by 30% on Linux with default settings (= no hardware acceleration in either browser). Manually enabling it means that test cannot complete at all because both browsers randomly crash. And then you look at battery life vs an ARM MacBook, and it's not even funny.
- mattpallissard 2y ago
  > reduced by 30% on Linux with default settings With the default settings being the key there. I had the exact same laptop and was able to get idle power down under 3W. But to your point, that's a fair amount of friction for someone that understands all the moving points. It's insurmountable for the average user.

wolvesechoes 2y ago

Ah yes, time. Not just time - 'free' time! It is so free people need to sacrifice their freedom in exchange for curated experience and long battery life to get it. What they are unable to sacrifice, though, is convenience and pleasure. And Touch ID. When freedom is at stake, some may sacrifice their lives on its altar, but worker bees will never sacrifice USB-C displays. Yes, I am a zealot.

petrolejboj 2y ago

So far the ideal "portable" setup is MacbookPro M3 Pro with: - UTM VM for ArchLinux arm64 for all the linux stuf - UTM VM for Windows for ARM (use it only for retro games) - Crossover for occasional modern not AAA gaming Zero issues so far and I have all the benefits of Apple hardware

wwalexander 2y ago

Desktop customization is largely the reason I learned Linux and programming. Over time I’ve come to abhor knobs and arbitrary decisions I must make as a user. I find macOS’s opinionated, largely very thoughtful design a relief at this point.

p0w3n3d 2y ago

It seems that there is now a HUGE problem with PDF support under Linux. Since Adobe stopped shipping acrobat reader to Linux, to get official support one needs to run Acrobat using Wine. That's horrible, and really discouraging to any person who works within a larger organisation that uses PDF. On the other side is the MacOS that has Preview which gives extensive possibilities to annotate and highlight PDF documents even if they are scans containing only jpgs inside.

petepete 2y ago
I annotate and higlight text all the time with GNOME's document viewer. It works so well I hadn't even considered people might find it problematic. https://apps.gnome.org/en-GB/Evince/ https://apps.gnome.org/en-GB/Evince/ I realise it probably doesn't support some 'fancy' PDF stuff like signatures, but I don't use them.

sys_64738 2y ago

The simplest way to run Linux on any computer nowadays is via WSL2. You can have your cake and eat it these days. Windows 11 is capable of replacing Linux efficiently.

a-dub 2y ago

thinkpads are still a pretty good bet for linux- although battery life is still lacking compared to aarch64 machines. the upcoming snapdragon elite t14s looks pretty promising on all fronts!

tracker1 2y ago
A few of the systems require a minor change in grub for the touchpad to work right. A few others require a USB to ethernet dongle to get wifi working.
- a-dub 2y ago
  T,P,X models should be fine. check the arch wiki before purchasing. popular with kernel developers! daily driver has been a T, P or X series thinkpad running linux since ~2005/6. although, fair notice, kde 6 is hot off the presses and it will take some time to reach kde 5 levels of stability.

ginko 2y ago

I mainly use linux day to day for a good 20+ years now but also own a macbook air for a couple of years (and now have a work macbook. I have to say I just don't see how it's supposed to be so much better than linux. Working with it feels like having one arm bound behind my back. Most things work, but everything takes twice as many clicks and some things are just not configurable (There's no mouse follows focus at all for instance). Open source software has to be installed with separate package managers like homebrew that don't properly integrate into the overall system like a distro package manager does. (it also requires the xcode toolchain which is a >1GB update every month or so)

maximilianburke 2y ago

I hear this. I have Asahi sitting on a partition on my Mac and I'm itching to make it my primary. Once microphone support lands, I'll be able to move over. It's a real pain right now to have to reboot in order to join video calls, heh.

lycopodiopsida 2y ago

As an ex-Linux and BSD user I share the feeling. But if I am honest to myself, I have to admit that I do not miss them, but my youth, friends, lack of responsibility and time to mess around with such things. Messing around with a new fancy distro for a day or two? Why not! macOS is fine, I use it for 10 years, know it well enough and have no windows/linux muscle memory anymore anyway. And if I would switch back, I would still stare at the same Alacritty with tmux and neovim.

deleted 2y ago

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Lateraluz 2y ago

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jokethrowaway 2y ago

I started using Linux (nixos first, now back to Arch) more frequently one year ago and I have a nice boring KDE desktop. Everything works pretty well and the UX is way ahead of OS X. In the past I was a full time user of KDE3/4 but I've used plenty of OpenBox, i3, sway et similia. In the last 8 years I ended up mostly on Mac, albeit I've installed Arch Linux on a 2015 Macbook Pro (and it was glorious). Funnily enough, I realised I'm at that age where I'm working only on my desk, so I don't really need to waste lithium batteries for a device that's always plugged in. And I'm tired of the Macbook wasting CPU cycles and getting as hot as a volcano on proprietary crappy software I can't change. Apple really needs to start hiring some software engineers; the hardware is pretty good but the OS is terribly bloated. It's a shame we still don't have non-Apple decent laptops, I hope things will change thanks to the shift to Arm and cellphone makers (who did a pretty good job with the quality of some Android devices).

johnea 2y ago

I miss it too! It's been sad to watch the whole descent of the free software movement into just another avenue for corporate profit 8-( The original free software concept: that _users_ of s/w can develop and maintain s/w for their use (and all other user's use), thus implementing what users want/need, instead of what will makes the most money; has largely been displaced by the "open" model of getting other people to do part of your s/w dev/debug to reduce costs and increase profits. Like all powerful technologies, in the long run it's "success" is determined primarily by how much money it can make for the already outrageously wealthy...

stuaxo 2y ago

This makes sense. It could be worth dual booting, and seeing how it goes - it may swing back to Linux. I totally agree with not trying UTM, it really isn't ready yet - I made the mistake of trying to use it on a work laptop for work, and ate a lot of time with various freezes... maybe in a few years it will be fine - dual boot is probably a better option, even more so once USBC display and intermal mics work.

baq 2y ago

You can have Microsoft Linux in the form of WSL2 though and it’s a damn good piece of software; Microsoft’s saving grace on an otherwise - let’s be honest here - idiotic win 11. It’s almost worse than macOS. My ideal device would be a MacBook Air with a 100% functioning Linux - as in, audio, external displays, usb hubs, chargers etc just work. macOS is crapware and borderline a disgrace for the excellent hardware of the MacBook.

MathMonkeyMan 2y ago

Buy a ThinkPad. Install Ubuntu. Don't think about it again for 6-10 years.

pjmlp 2y ago
As long as one doesn't use bleeding edge technology like fingerprint scanners or webcam logins.
- MathMonkeyMan 2y ago
  I finally found something that worked with my fingerprint scanner, only to learn that the scan can't unlock the keyring or something -- it's a password but not actually a password. So I'd unlock the desktop with the fingerprint scanner, and then an indeterminate number of seconds later something would pop up asking me to type a password for my keyring. So now, instead, I just type my password to begin with, and it's all gravy. I'd have to type it anyway.
rpigab 2y ago
I have a T480/Ubuntu-Gnome at work and a T480/Debian-KDE at home, both work fantastic, however for some reason the Lenovo Universal USB-C docks with 2 1080p external displays connected (1 HDMI and 1 DP) cause a lot of Gnome crashes when docking, and when it happens, I lose external displays and/or the usb keyboard, and have to spend 15 minutes fiddling around deactivating and reactivating in settings, or unplugging the dock PSU, and other desperate methods. Windows users don't have these issues for some reason, and other usb-c docks seem to work better most of the time, with exceptions. There's also specific issues unrelated to Thinkpads, like bluetooth headphones microphones, Bose QC 35 II can't be used with mic over bluetooth, maybe Pipewire will improve this, maybe not, IDK. Apart from Thinkpads, I also have a gaming desktop PC with an Nvidia RTX, I don't use Windows anymore, Steam, Proton, WINE, third-party launchers like Heroic work wonders for gaming, but I can't use Wayland at all, it's Xorg only (probably because of Nvidia drivers), otherwise it's flickering and crashes. And you can't screenshare whole screen easily in Wayland yet. We're getting there and right now, I think I'm better off on GNU/Linux even with all these issues than with the enshittified Windows, but there's still a long way to go, things are moving slowly, and somethings the whole Linux community relies on unpaid work from one dude that delayed good bluetooth audio support by years because someone insulted him in a PR comment.

somat 2y ago

It was just a throw away joke in the article, but every once in a while I think "boy I wish I could have the linux kernel with the openbsd userland" (not often, usually when I want to play a game). Not that the obsd userland is all that great but it is a lot simpler than the linux equivalent. There was a project to do the opposite, the freebsd kernel with a gnu userland(shudders, yuk, what an abomination). But that is not what I want at all. And deep in my heart I know even if you put the hard work to make the obsd userland work with a linux kernel, it would probably be a bit of a shitshow, just too many assumptions broken, the subtle cohesion that I enjoy would be gone.

Wowfunhappy 2y ago

> Why don’t [I] install the Fedora Asahi Remix on [my] ARM64 machine? Because it doesn’t support USB-C display nor the microphone or Touch ID. Yes, those are the few things left that still don't work. I bet they will in another year.

wkat4242 2y ago

I moved from macOS to FreeBSD because I couldn't handle the lock-in, opinionated design and the feeling of not being in control of my computer. Despite what Michal Sapka says, it was just the thing for me. In fact most of the drawbacks he mentions are advantages to me. Which is probably the point behind his article. I really like that my OS is not changing stuff with every update as even Linux vendors do now.

vermaden 2y ago

I had a ‘side’ journey to the Mac wonderland as I got opportunity to use Macbook Pro with Mac OS X Leopard for a year. That allowed me to get real ‘feel’ of the Mac ecosystem and their hardware (and philosophy) so I will not repeat same stereotypes over and over again like a lot of anti-apple people. But after I switched back to FreeBSD system at work it just felt better. I used Terminal.app on Mac a lot but the xterm(1) at FreeBSD just felt more natural. More here with details: https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2018/09/07/my-freebsd-story/ https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2018/09/07/my-freebsd-story/