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> I think that Debian is the last step in the Linux user lifecycle, and that once a user comes to it at the right time, and for the right reasons, it will be t

> I think that Debian is the last step in the Linux user lifecycle, and that once a user comes to it at the right time, and for the right reasons, it will be their Linux home thereafter. No that's FreeBSD. RPM hell drove me from RH to FreeBSD in 1999 and I only go back when forced. If it hadn't been for all the copyright nonsense there would never have been a need for Linux. Debian is fine if Linux is the only option but better in a bhyve VM or linuxemu jail.

makeworlds 2y ago
I guess I use Debian Qubes AppVMs on my framework laptop also
29athrowaway 2y ago
And as you may know, FreeBSD is not a Linux distro.
- makeworlds 2y ago
  Sure but I think the underlying point about it being an evolutionary step still stands
  - makeworlds 2y ago
    Also https://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/ https://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/ which I had not looked at in years but now looks to be inactive
    - lmm 2y ago
      Yeah, the ftpmasters broke their own processes to delay it for a few crucial months so that the Debian powers-that-be could force through adoption of systemd and kill it. A real shame, since it had the potential to be the best of all worlds.
    - chungy 2y ago
      Never really had any users, despite being an official port for two releases (Debian 6 and 7). It was a bit of a neat experiment, but that's about all it was. FreeBSD is a tightly-developed operating system on its own, and separating out the kernel to be its own thing in a GNU operating system just ends up with a worst of both worlds. On FreeBSD itself, GNU software (including bash, coreutils, emacs, etc) are readily available via packages and ports. You can have the cake and eat it too.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
        I think the better option would be for Debian/FreeBSD (I spelled it without the k on purpose) to be most if not all of the FreeBSD base system with GNU layered on top - something like /bin as the FreeBSD binaries and /usr/bin from Debian and PATH=/usr/bin:/bin or so, and everything using the FreeBSD libc, again with glibc available but calling into the FreeBSD libc for actual syscalls (actually that might be how glibc does work on BSDs; I'm not familiar with that part of things). Basically, minimize the overhead and take as much of the FreeBSD base system as possible instead of trying to take just the kernel, which IMHO was always going to be excessively hard to maintain.
        chungy 2y ago
        At that point, you may as well just have Debian in a jail or chroot using the Linux ABI compatibility layer built into FreeBSD. :)
        yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
        I considered that, but I think in my arrangement you can still manage it like a Debian box, including having the base OS in .debs that apt installs and upgrades.
  - 29athrowaway 2y ago
    The ultimate evolutionary step is TempleOS.
WantonQuantum 2y ago
RPM hell drove me from RH to Debian around the same time and it was such bliss that I stayed with it for many many years. These days I tend to use Ubuntu or Arch when I feel like I have the time to spare.
wruza 2y ago
Hello, BSD fellow! I have fond memories of it from 4.11 to 7 eras. Sadly desktop never really happened to unixlikes to the extent I could be satisfied with, and vps options were limited to ubuntu and few others, so I had to move on. But FreeBSD was a greater experience nonetheless.
- makeworlds 2y ago
  Very fond memories of those days for sure. In my job back then I was a C developer working on IRIX day to day. I had heard about FreeBSD so bought a walnut creek book with a FreeBSD 3.4 CD and started from there. I still have the book but the CD is long gone. The FreeBSD aesthetic, documentation, code base, are so clean and well written, and most important -- the adherence to the principle of least surprise, particularly across releases. This is a complaint I have with many Linux distros.
dangus 2y ago
The one piece missing for a FreeBSD user is how this article points out that Debian can easily run commercial software distributed with .deb files. FreeBSD has the major disadvantage of being even more niche than Linux. Debian doesn’t have that problem because it’s so similar to the most mainstream flavors of open source operating systems.
tadfisher 2y ago
> If it hadn't been for all the copyright nonsense there would never have been a need for Linux. Well, that and if 386BSD shipped about a year earlier...

makeworlds 2y ago

I guess I use Debian Qubes AppVMs on my framework laptop also

29athrowaway 2y ago

And as you may know, FreeBSD is not a Linux distro.

makeworlds 2y ago
Sure but I think the underlying point about it being an evolutionary step still stands
- makeworlds 2y ago
  Also https://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/ https://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/ which I had not looked at in years but now looks to be inactive
  - lmm 2y ago
    Yeah, the ftpmasters broke their own processes to delay it for a few crucial months so that the Debian powers-that-be could force through adoption of systemd and kill it. A real shame, since it had the potential to be the best of all worlds.
  - chungy 2y ago
    Never really had any users, despite being an official port for two releases (Debian 6 and 7). It was a bit of a neat experiment, but that's about all it was. FreeBSD is a tightly-developed operating system on its own, and separating out the kernel to be its own thing in a GNU operating system just ends up with a worst of both worlds. On FreeBSD itself, GNU software (including bash, coreutils, emacs, etc) are readily available via packages and ports. You can have the cake and eat it too.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
      I think the better option would be for Debian/FreeBSD (I spelled it without the k on purpose) to be most if not all of the FreeBSD base system with GNU layered on top - something like /bin as the FreeBSD binaries and /usr/bin from Debian and PATH=/usr/bin:/bin or so, and everything using the FreeBSD libc, again with glibc available but calling into the FreeBSD libc for actual syscalls (actually that might be how glibc does work on BSDs; I'm not familiar with that part of things). Basically, minimize the overhead and take as much of the FreeBSD base system as possible instead of trying to take just the kernel, which IMHO was always going to be excessively hard to maintain.
      - chungy 2y ago
        At that point, you may as well just have Debian in a jail or chroot using the Linux ABI compatibility layer built into FreeBSD. :)
        yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
        I considered that, but I think in my arrangement you can still manage it like a Debian box, including having the base OS in .debs that apt installs and upgrades.
- 29athrowaway 2y ago
  The ultimate evolutionary step is TempleOS.

WantonQuantum 2y ago

RPM hell drove me from RH to Debian around the same time and it was such bliss that I stayed with it for many many years. These days I tend to use Ubuntu or Arch when I feel like I have the time to spare.

wruza 2y ago

Hello, BSD fellow! I have fond memories of it from 4.11 to 7 eras. Sadly desktop never really happened to unixlikes to the extent I could be satisfied with, and vps options were limited to ubuntu and few others, so I had to move on. But FreeBSD was a greater experience nonetheless.

makeworlds 2y ago
Very fond memories of those days for sure. In my job back then I was a C developer working on IRIX day to day. I had heard about FreeBSD so bought a walnut creek book with a FreeBSD 3.4 CD and started from there. I still have the book but the CD is long gone. The FreeBSD aesthetic, documentation, code base, are so clean and well written, and most important -- the adherence to the principle of least surprise, particularly across releases. This is a complaint I have with many Linux distros.

dangus 2y ago

The one piece missing for a FreeBSD user is how this article points out that Debian can easily run commercial software distributed with .deb files. FreeBSD has the major disadvantage of being even more niche than Linux. Debian doesn’t have that problem because it’s so similar to the most mainstream flavors of open source operating systems.

tadfisher 2y ago

> If it hadn't been for all the copyright nonsense there would never have been a need for Linux. Well, that and if 386BSD shipped about a year earlier...