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The GNU parts of GNU/Linux were written the way they were so the FSF wouldn't get sued by AT&T. Come to the dark side and see what software can be when written

by noosphr 7mo ago

The GNU parts of GNU/Linux were written the way they were so the FSF wouldn't get sued by AT&T. Come to the dark side and see what software can be when written for programmers instead of lawyers.

1718627440 7mo ago
Any suggestions for which BSD I should try? I currently like Debian, because of the stability and them removing unwanted features and integrating software with the OS. I mostly run a 10years+ laptop.
- noosphr 7mo ago
  I got into OpenBSD purely for the politics. It has the most unapologetic hacker ethos from the 90s. It is also the most toxic of the BSDs and the least likely to suffer from a hostile takeover.
  - anthk 7mo ago
    I used to use OpenBSD, but license wise I'm more pro-GNU. Hyperbola will rebase their OS from GNU/Linux to Hyperbola BSD. The thing is: - wifi blobs under OpenBSD = easy kernel panics. Atheros ath9k drivers were many times easier to debug - Ditto with nasty Radeon blobs. The more blobs you have, the less stuff you can understand. Again, these are a good source of kernel panics. - Blobs from sound SOCs are no better and they look sketchy as hell. Thus, my daily OS it's a netbook with 9front and I regret nothing. From GNU, these would be more interesting if they turn into Scheme at full drive, using Coreutils/Findutils and the like just as legacy interop with Unix and they used for instance some weird Lisp based shell as Emacs does with eshell with can do crazy stuff much easier than with SH, which can be crazy difficult to achieve some tasks. No wonder the Unix folks ran way from it (and from X11) and embraced rc from some Unix v8 at day 1, among rio instead of the X11 disaster. A much easier syntax, no sockets, no bullshit. You know Go's simplicity with dial()? Literal the same there, forget getting crazy with POSIX. I would love the same from GNU. No Gnome, no Systemd, a Guile based desktop environment, fully integrated with Shepherd, config.scm and the rest of Scheme written tools. A second Lisp Machine? Maybe, but faster and without 40 minutes long reboots.
- asveikau 7mo ago
  I got into OpenBSD first and I like it a lot. These days FreeBSD is my go-to. I find it faster whenever I've done do comparisons. ZFS is really interesting. OpenBSD is way more opinionated. Stuff might randomly break or get removed release to release. Sometimes that's justifiable. But it's possible to get tired of tracking all those changes.
asveikau 7mo ago
I like *BSD, I have like 4 machines in my home running Free or Open, but no, this is not why GNU has the personality it does. I feel a lot of it is the way it is because in the pre-linux era, it was common to run GNU tools on commercial Unix, and so it absorbed many options, flags, syntaxes etc. from those various systems that it needed to be drop in replacements for. In the old school Unix wars of SysV vs BSD, it wound up with more of a SysV personality.
anthk 7mo ago
GNU was never sued from AT&T. BSD did, and they rewrote propietary code as BSD one.

by noosphr 7mo ago

The GNU parts of GNU/Linux were written the way they were so the FSF wouldn't get sued by AT&T. Come to the dark side and see what software can be when written for programmers instead of lawyers.

1718627440 7mo ago

Any suggestions for which BSD I should try? I currently like Debian, because of the stability and them removing unwanted features and integrating software with the OS. I mostly run a 10years+ laptop.

noosphr 7mo ago
I got into OpenBSD purely for the politics. It has the most unapologetic hacker ethos from the 90s. It is also the most toxic of the BSDs and the least likely to suffer from a hostile takeover.
- anthk 7mo ago
  I used to use OpenBSD, but license wise I'm more pro-GNU. Hyperbola will rebase their OS from GNU/Linux to Hyperbola BSD. The thing is: - wifi blobs under OpenBSD = easy kernel panics. Atheros ath9k drivers were many times easier to debug - Ditto with nasty Radeon blobs. The more blobs you have, the less stuff you can understand. Again, these are a good source of kernel panics. - Blobs from sound SOCs are no better and they look sketchy as hell. Thus, my daily OS it's a netbook with 9front and I regret nothing. From GNU, these would be more interesting if they turn into Scheme at full drive, using Coreutils/Findutils and the like just as legacy interop with Unix and they used for instance some weird Lisp based shell as Emacs does with eshell with can do crazy stuff much easier than with SH, which can be crazy difficult to achieve some tasks. No wonder the Unix folks ran way from it (and from X11) and embraced rc from some Unix v8 at day 1, among rio instead of the X11 disaster. A much easier syntax, no sockets, no bullshit. You know Go's simplicity with dial()? Literal the same there, forget getting crazy with POSIX. I would love the same from GNU. No Gnome, no Systemd, a Guile based desktop environment, fully integrated with Shepherd, config.scm and the rest of Scheme written tools. A second Lisp Machine? Maybe, but faster and without 40 minutes long reboots.
asveikau 7mo ago
I got into OpenBSD first and I like it a lot. These days FreeBSD is my go-to. I find it faster whenever I've done do comparisons. ZFS is really interesting. OpenBSD is way more opinionated. Stuff might randomly break or get removed release to release. Sometimes that's justifiable. But it's possible to get tired of tracking all those changes.

asveikau 7mo ago

I like *BSD, I have like 4 machines in my home running Free or Open, but no, this is not why GNU has the personality it does. I feel a lot of it is the way it is because in the pre-linux era, it was common to run GNU tools on commercial Unix, and so it absorbed many options, flags, syntaxes etc. from those various systems that it needed to be drop in replacements for. In the old school Unix wars of SysV vs BSD, it wound up with more of a SysV personality.

anthk 7mo ago

GNU was never sued from AT&T. BSD did, and they rewrote propietary code as BSD one.